Career Brand Management

Market Yourself Professionally

Learn how to develop, manage and communicate a strong career brand in just three courses.

About This Specialization

In the business world, smart organizations use branding and strategic management techniques to differentiate themselves from their competition and to achieve a competitive advantage. In this Specialization, you will learn how to use proven brand management methods and tools for individual career development in competitive job environments. You will gain knowledge and analytical skills for career self-management and learn techniques for career brand building. You will create a robust self-management information system that will help you self-organize and increase your human capital by building high demand employability skills. During each week of the Specialization, you will be practicing various career branding techniques in your custom-built, individual Career Development Lab. The final Capstone Project is designed as a training facility where you will create your evidence-based portfolios, professional development plans, personal self-marketing and branding strategies, presentations, and public profiles.

Created by:

4 courses

Follow the suggested order or choose your own.

Projects

Designed to help you practice and apply the skills you learn.

Certificates

Highlight your new skills on your resume or LinkedIn.

Courses

Beginner Specialization.: No prior experience required.

COURSE 1
Strategic Career Self-Management
Upcoming session: Oct 2 — Nov 20.
Commitment
6 weeks of study, 3-5 hours/week
Subtitles
English, Vietnamese, Romanian, Chinese (Simplified)
About the Course
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the current economy, Americans shift jobs every 4-5 years, which translates into 8-10 job transitions, including several career changes, over one’s life time. With competition for jobs on the rise, a person’s continuing employability and career success are increasingly defined by his or her mastery of individual career development and the ability to effectively "manage oneself" (P. Drucker). In this course, you will learn how to think strategically and professionally about your career self-management. Through this course you'll develop an objective, external view of your marketable skills as a solid foundation for building a strong career brand. In particular, you'll be able to: - explain why developing a protean and boundaryless career perspective based on transferable (portable) skills is advantageous for continuing employability and career growth; - design your portable skills portfolio, identify and examine critically important competencies underpinning your transferable skills, and analyze your career self-management competency gaps; - increase self-awareness, pinpoint your career goals, and envision your future work self; - recognize the central role of self-management for developing transferable, marketable, skills and create a customized self-management information system (Career Development Lab) for ongoing personal development and professional growth; - conduct a thorough, competency-based job analysis in your area of interest and examine practices of evidence-based, data-driven competitive employee selection; -implement your newly developed skills for crafting effective selection criteria statements and refining your job applications.
COURSE 2
Career Brand Development and Self-Coaching
Upcoming session: Oct 2 — Nov 13.
Commitment
5 weeks of study, 3-5 hours/week
Subtitles
English
About the Course
In this course, you will engage in developing and strengthening the functional component of your career brand. Acting as “your own Chief Executive Officer” (P. Drucker), you will learn how to use strategic management models and techniques for enhancing your skills portfolio. You will learn how to increase your human capital by developing and documenting high-demand marketable skills. After completing this course, you will be able to: - Implement business strategy and models and tools, such as benchmarking and SWOT analysis, for identifying and analyzing your competitive strengths and addressing competency gaps in a skill-based, competitive job selection context; - Understand evidence-based, data-driven skill assessment methodologies and techniques; - Select appropriate assessment tools and apply them for a thorough, accurate, evidence-based and data driven self-assessment of your transferable skills; - Create your critical competency profile ("The Self-Assessment Grid for Evaluation, or SAGE") and use it as an effective instrument for an objective, 360 degree self-assessment of your competitive strengths and competency gaps; - Create and use an effective instrument for organizing, directing and monitoring your skill-building activities (“The Skill-Building Dashboard, or Skill-Builder”); - Develop an effective tool (“The T-Portfolio”) for gathering and organizing samples of standards, best practices, assessment instruments and techniques in your chosen field; - Effectively organize your self-management information system to systematically collect and analyze job-related data, evaluate and assess required competencies and skills, develop and implement plans for self-improvement, and monitor your progress; - Develop and implement a realistic performance metric for your career development activities ("Your Present Job Market Value"); - Engage in self-coaching to support active self-development.
COURSE 3
Strategic Self-Marketing and Personal Branding
Upcoming session: Oct 2 — Nov 6.
Commitment
4 weeks of study, 2-4 hours/week
Subtitles
English
About the Course
In this course, you will learn how to use strategic marketing and personal branding techniques for designing, enhancing, and promoting your professional image. Acting as "your own Chief Executive Officer" (P. Drucker), you will learn how to use relationship and network marketing and impression management to showcase your skills to prospective employers, colleagues, supervisors, and other interested parties. This course will help you to: - Recognize the importance of marketing orientation and career brand building for your career development; use marketing communication strategies for your self-marketing; - Implement strategic marketing planning for your career development and engage in creating your own strategic self-marketing plan; - Devise strategies for managing your professional reputation; begin creating your personal brand, and plan steps for strategic personal branding; - Create personal branding statements, and integrate social networking into your career branding; - Refine your self-management information system to systematically collect and analyze self-marketing and personal branding related data, select appropriate tools and apply them for a thorough, accurate, evidence-based and data driven self-assessment of your self-marketing and personal branding skills; - Develop and implement an effective instrument for displaying your artifacts and monitoring your marketing communications strategies ("The Showcaser") and a realistic performance metric for evaluating your career brand building activities ("The Career Brand Equity Builder").
COURSE 4
Career Total Fitness Annual Retreat
Upcoming session: Oct 16 — Nov 20.
Subtitles
English
About the Capstone Project
In the business world, modern organizations conduct corporate retreats on a regular basis to consider their strategic direction, review progress, and set up goals and objectives for the year. In this course you will use the same approach to organize, strategize, re-energize, and re-invigorate your career building activities. The final Capstone Project is designed as an annual retreat aimed at facilitating your ability to step back from day-to-day demands and strategically focus on gaining a competitive edge on the job market by investigating new opportunities for career growth, conducting a thorough audit of your skill-building and self-marketing strategies, and developing new ways to enhance and showcase your marketable skills. The Capstone Project will allow you to integrate concepts and tools from the entire Career Brand Management specialization to effectively manage your career brand and increase personal effectiveness. Some unique program highlights: • The Capstone Project is designed as a virtual training and development facility where you will engage in career investigation research, self-audit, and creating evidence-based portfolios, professional development plans, self-marketing and personal branding strategies, presentations, and public profiles; • You’ll be actively working with your cohort (study group members) to review their work and receive peer feedback; • You may also use the Capstone as a “career fitness gym” and work independently on a project where you will share your results with others and receive peer feedback. Examples of these projects include but are not limited to developing a self-marketing plan, creating a new digital artifact, developing communication strategy, working on a job application, creating a selection criteria statement, and looking for best practices and self-assessment tools; • It is completely self-paced; you may want to either do it as a 4-week course, or focus and complete in just 3-4 days. Overall, the Capstone Project will help you organize yourself, fine tune your self-management information system, provide a framework for strategic self-management, and serve as an effective self-coaching support system. In the end, you will be well positioned to succeed in the marketplace as the CEO of your own career!

Creators

The State University of New York's Empire State College was created over 40 years ago with the mission to use innovative and flexible approaches to higher education that transform people and communities by connecting individuals' unique and diverse lives to their personal learning goals. On the photo: SUNY Administration (image credits: Felix Lipov / Shutterstock.com)
The State University of New York, with 64 unique institutions, is the largest comprehensive system of higher education in the United States. Educating nearly 468,000 students in more than 7,500 degree and certificate programs both on campus and online, SUNY has nearly 3 million alumni around the globe.