Student Introduction

For this assignment, you will need to reflect upon your personal raw materials and determine how you can use those raw materials to construct, develop, and present your personal brand and your professional brand; in other words, how you can market yourself. Using your raw materials, your resume (paper and LinkedIn versions), the concepts from the verbal promotion assignments (elevator, conference, and phone pitches), your closing-the-sale preparation (your scripts for the interview questions), and any othersources you deem necessary, you’ll create a personal video introductionas though it’s your first introduction to a group of people on a professional LinkedIn Group. You should know by now that introducing yourself is not a generic process. It is context specific, meaning that how you introduce yourself will depend on the situation, environment, participants, and purpose of your introduction. Thus, there is no one way that is best or that is “right” for you. Instead, there may be a way that is best for you with respect to a particular situation. For example, in a formal business situation, you might introduce yourself as a marketing manager with four years of experience in digital branding and explain some notable work-related successes. Conversely, in a casual situation where you’re meeting someone with whom you have a mutual friend, you might introduce yourself appropriately as “a friend ofSara” and talk about how you like to windsurf. Much of the decision making involved in howyouintroduce yourself will likely be driven by whether you’re presenting your morecomprehensive personal brand or whether you’re presenting your morefocused professional brand to the target(s) of your introduction. In this case, you’ll be pretending to present yourself to a professional LinkedIn Group audience, but you’ll also include some personal aspects in your introduction because the group members promote the environment as a casual groupsetting. Assignment Instructions 1.After viewing the assigned videos, read through your Resume, LinkedIn profile, and Raw Materials Assessment toreview some of what constitutes who you are, and how you’re presentingyourself. 2.Re-watch your Elevator Pitch, Conference Pitch, and Phone Pitch video assignments. What did you like about how you’re presenting yourself and what didn’t you like? Remember that because those assignments were constructed to be like real pitches—short, without edits, and without video enhancements—they were raw and couldn’t get more in depth as to who you are and what you canoffer. 3.Create a brief written outline as to how you would introduce yourself via video in a professional manner, but add in some personal/human elements (e.g., perhaps you might briefly discuss your interests or hobbies or leisure activities and how you’ve learnednewskills or developed positive traits because of them). You should construct this outlineas though you were going to post a video to a professional online group (such as aLinkedIn group) in response to the group leaders asking all members to post acasual intro video wherein you would want to show your professional side, yet some of your personal side as well. 4.Create the video. You can shoot it in segments and edit the pieces together if you’d like. You’re welcome to use titles, still images with voiceover, background music (as long asit doesn’t drown out your voice), etc. Be as creative as you like, or just simply speak to the camera if that’s what you’d rather do. There is a great degree of flexibility to how you format thevideo. 5.Follow these requirements and guidelines: a.The video cannot be more than two minutes(120 seconds) long. I will only watch the first 120 seconds. Any material you present beyond the 120 seconds will neither be seen norgraded. b.At least 60 seconds of the video must be video footage of you speaking to the camera(as in looking directly at the lens of the camera—not looking off-screen to read a script). This 60 second of videofootage can be edited portions that add up to 60 seconds and, if desired, it can be segments separated by titles or still photos or illustrations or other video content. In other words, it does nothave to be 60 seconds of uncut (continuous) footage. (Or it canbe uncut continuous footageif that’s what you’d ratherdo.) c.Have a polished feel to what you do. Just “winging” it without planning will likely show andwill result in a less than spectacular grade. Remember,this is your brand and would be meant to be an impressive firstimpression. d.Relax and enjoy yourself while you’re constructing this. It’s only a video that will be used as an assignment for this class. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You can always get feedback and perfect it later if you’ll want to use somethinglike this in the future. So don’t stressout!Don’t be afraid of beingcreative!Don’t be afraidof being boring! If you’re more of a sit-there-and-talk kind of a person, that’s perfectlyokay. e.Remember to discuss who you are, what you do, your skills or abilities or interests or passions or personality or strengths or values or experiencesoreducation or unique attributes or yes, perhaps even your weaknesses if you’d like. Let the viewer know what you bring to the table and why someone might want to think about hiring you or promoting you or doing business with you or even just associating with you as a professional colleague.f.Create a mix of the professional you (i.e., your professional brand) andthe personal you (your personalbrand). g.Don’t be obviously reading a script!If you use a script and have difficulty memorizing the entire thing, memorize only a short portion instead and then shoot short clips that you can later edit together. Perhaps when you edit them together, you’ll insert a still image with a voiceover in between, or some video footage of your activities or hobbies with a voiceover if that fits your plan. The formatting and arrangement and styling are up to you (except forparts “a” and “b”above) .h.Don’t worry about having the perfect camera, equipment, and editing. You can shoot this with a smart phone if you’d like. Just make sure that you have appropriate lighting, clear and understandable sound,and enough of a professional feel to YOU that it represents your brand in a positivemanner. i.Don’t be afraid to ask a friend for camera/production assistance. Enlist the help of a friend to hold the camera or help you edit if you’d like. However, theideas and bulk of the work should be yours and should reflect your personal/professionalbrand.j.Shoot the video in a professional setting and wearing professional clothing. No obvious bedrooms, bathrooms,barking dogs, cars passing by, etc., and don’t be overly casual in your dress. 6.Upload the video to YouTube (this is a must!) and provide the link via the appropriate location on Canvas by the deadline. Make sure that the link is viewable when you are notlogged in to YouTube. If you set the link privacy to “unlisted,” then it’s accessible only if you share the link, but it’s notsearchable. URLs that do not work must be corrected by the due date or the assignment will be counted aslate. 7.Provide a brief written statement that includes thefollowing:a.Yourname.b.A one-liner as to who you are and/or what you do (think of this as likethe subheading beneath your name on LinkedIn).c.The top three skills that you improved or learned from completing this assignment (at least one complete sentence per skill).d.Two skills that you’ll work on improving after this class has ended (at leastone complete sentence perskill). Requirements: the requirement