Creating Your Brand Statement: Core Competencies

In previous posts about the importance of a personal brand, we concentrated on how to create a personal brand using web tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Now it�s time to create your own personal brand statement. A brand statement will help your cover letter or resume stand out from thousands of others! In the next several blog postings, I will share information with you taken from leading personal branding expert and career advancement coach, Robert Allen Paul, and his �Company Of One� presentation at Buena Vista University. I would recommend his valuable message to every student. (Part I: Your Brand.) Part II: Core Competencies:

What do you do? What you do is best explained as a summary of your accomplishments. Just as on a resume, you skip the list of responsibilities and lead with accomplishments instead. If you think you haven�t done much yet, you need to change the way you think about what you�ve done � shift your perspective!

Defining your professional core competencies is all about discovering your personal strengths; you need to look beyond what you�ve done in school. Consider everything you�ve done in the rest of your life � college and childhood - what other people think you do well. Those things form the foundation of your core competencies.

Are you a sympathetic listener? A great planner? Well organized? A master at getting others to do what you want? There are professional applications for all these personal aptitudes. Think of several things you do well. Ask others who know you what they think. What do your friends and family see as your personal strengths? How about your professors, counselors, or advisors? Now just identify the common denominators.

Are you hearing your strengths as �you always get your work in on time, or early� or �you have odd ideas� or possibly �you seem to like to argue�? Whatever the common denominator might be, consider it a core competency. Regardless of what your personal skill turns out to be, you can turn it into a professional talent. And no matter what your talent may be, there are hundreds of employers who would love to put it to work. Change �odd ideas� into �a talent for delivering unexpected results�. If you like a good argument, then say you have a talent for critical thinking. If you usually beat deadlines, then you have a talent for exceeding expectations.

Discovering your core competency not only provides you with some personal direction, but some professional confidence, too. So, start making a list of all your strengths and successes, and then look for the common denominator. Once you�ve done that, there�s only one thing left to do: Pick one. But only one.

Focus. It�s critical that you focus your core competencies on a single business category and then do everything you can think of to own it. No matter how many things you do �or how well you may do them �people are likely to recognize you for only one.

You can�t be all things to all people. And when you try to promote yourself as a jack of all trades, you come off as the king of none. People (including employers and recruiters) have very specific needs; they don�t want generalists, they need specialists. So, if you want them to believe you can actually solve their problem, then you�re going to have to focus on it. The real impact of focusing on one core competency isn�t exclusion; it�s inclusion. Summarizing your key talent helps everyone who can really use it find you and add you to their list of candidates.
Make that list of achievements and accomplishments; of personal strengths and skills and successes. Then make a note of any common denominators that might point to a central theme. Are you an instigator or instructor? A promoter or problem solver? What seems to happen with projects or positions you make your own?

In 20 words or less, write down what you do - I have a talent for (so the next word should be some sort of active verb like �developing,� �helping,� �creating,� �delivering). Write down a number of different summary sentences. Read them aloud and think about what they really say. Whatever you decide will be fine � as long as it is clear and concise and true.

Next up: Creating Your Brand Statement � Brand Attributes

Creating Your Brand Statement: Your Brand

In previous posts about the importance of a personal brand, we concentrated on how to create a personal brand using web tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Now it�s time to create your own personal brand statement. A brand statement will help your cover letter or resume stand out from thousands of others! In the next several blog postings, I will share information with you taken from leading personal branding expert and career advancement coach, Robert Allen Paul, and his �Company Of One� presentation at Buena Vista University. I would recommend his valuable message to every student.

This is what you need to do:

• Concentrate on what makes you unique; focus on �different� so you stand out in the crowd.
• Identify your unique personal strengths and develop a summary that helps others recognize the professional applications and advantages of those strengths � help employers understand why they might want to read your resume.

This is how to do it:

Your Brand

• The first question posed by the branding process (or any prospective employer) is simply: Who are you? The answer becomes your brand. In simplest terms, a brand is really a name, and that�s where you start � with the name you want on your business correspondence.
• Every name communicates its own unique characteristics � �serious�, �fun�, �friendly�, �reliable� � and so on. [Some international students take on an English name when they study abroad � perhaps because it�s easier for others to remember. Some keep their name, or use a shorter nickname.]
• Just as words have meanings beyond their literal definitions, names are also infused with certain attributes. Whatever name you decide to use, it�s important to choose one that communicates who you really are � or at least who you want to be.
• Your first exercise in building your personal brand is to take a few minutes and choose your personal brand. Write out all the possible names under which you could choose to do business and then go ahead and pick one. Write that name after the words �I Am� �and start thinking about who that person is.
  

Up next: Creating Your Brand Statement: Core Competencies

To Remember is to Forget: Rethinking Memory

�Having a memory that is too accurate is not always good� [from an evolutionary standpoint] . . .

Put another way, memory and imagination are two sides of the same coin. Like memory, imagination allows you to put yourself in a time and place other than the one we actually occupy. This isn�t just a clever analogy: In recent neuroimaging studies, Harvard psychologist Daniel Schacter has shown that remembering and imagining mobilize many of the same brain circuits. �When people are instructed to imagine events that might happen in their personal future and then to remember actual events in the past, we find extensive and very striking overlap in areas of brain activation,� he says. Other researchers have found that people with severe amnesia lose their ability to imagine. Without memory, they can barely picture the future at all.

Finding Scholarships and Grants

If you are looking for sources to help you finance your education, knowing how and where to search can be crucially important. Many scholarships and grants aren�t well advertised, so it will be up to you to do the work and find the opportunities. If you are already enrolled at a college or university, start with the professional services available, such as financial aid or career services. If you are not yet enrolled, contact college or university admissions offices directly and ask them about the opportunities and support they provide for international students - a number of them offer discounted tuition and scholarships. These opportunities are increasing, as universities see the value of having a diverse population of students.

When searching on your own, there are a number of free scholarship search sites/databases on the Web (also referred to as �multiple-source� sites, some are listed below). Profile-based scholarship searches allow you to register an account, have you fill out a student profile that includes your education history, intended major, group memberships, awards, test scores, and so on. Based on the answers in your profile, the website software will direct you toward scholarships and contests that you�re eligible for. Be sure to fill out the profiles with as much information as possible, for more search matches.

You can also search for scholarships on the Web yourself, using search engines. Knowing the right tips and tricks can help you find more relevant results for your scholarship search. First, don�t limit yourself to using one search engine � try several, including Google, Bing, Cuil, and Yahoo for example; the results and the methods will differ. Next, know how to search. If you want to find scholarships in your chosen field of study � Computer Science for example, typing "Computer Science scholarships" will return a number of relevant results. To see the latest CS scholarships that are being offered (this works only for Google), type in and enter your keywords "CS scholarships". Once you get to the results page, you now paste this string of words: &as_qdr=m at the end of the URL and press enter. Doing this will give you only the web pages on CS scholarships that have been published in the last month. You can also filter results in the last 24 hours (&as_qdr=d), the last week (&as_qdr=w), or the past year (&as_qdr=y1).

To get specific search results using any search engine, you have to add other relevant words to your keywords when you make your query. In scholarship searches, relevant words include "deadline (insert month)", "study in (insert location)", and "for (insert nationality, country of origin)". In our example, specific keywords could be "CS scholarships for Indians deadline December 2009", "CS scholarships for Indians in US" or any combination of keywords and modifiers that would best define your search. The key here is to be specific. Put the keyword/s inside quotation marks ("") only when you want exact search results for that keyword.

Aside from Google and other engines, you can search for scholarships in different platforms like Blog or Blog Networks (using Google Blog Search), Twitter (using search.twitter.com), LinkedIn (joining groups) and even Facebook (search for scholarship groups). Once you find a source that you think is helpful, you can follow many of them on Twitter or RRS feeds to keep up with current information.

Also consider contacting organizations, associations, foundations, or government agencies. For example, contact the local Rotary International Organization to ask about their Ambassadorial Scholarships; or if you are a student member of an organization, ASME, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (for example), many have scholarship opportunities for international students. P.E.O. International provides a number of scholarships for international women students to study in the US or Canada. Google and Microsoft have tech-related scholarships, with some specifically for women. Ask your professors what professional organizations they belong to, and contact the national headquarters, or look them up on the Web.

Many of the sites listed below also have links to other important and useful information, including blogs, forums, discussion boards, etc. You can follow many of them on Twitter or RRS feeds to keep up with current information.

Scholarships for International Students would greatly appreciate your recommendations of websites with useful information regarding scholarships or internships. SIS would also appreciate guest blog postings from students, or university professionals who would like to share ideas, information, or suggestions! Please feel free to leave comments below.

Sampling of a few Scholarship and Financial Aid Sites:

� International Education Financial Aid: http://www.iefa.org/
� FastWeb: http://www.fastweb.com/
� International Scholarships: http://www.InternationalScholarships.com
� Careers and Colleges http://www.careersandcolleges.com/
� FinAid: http://www.finaid.org/
� UNESCO: http://www.unesco.org
� Scholarship Experts.com: http://www.scholarshipexperts.com/
� Hispanic College Fund: http://www.hispanicfund.org
� CHCI - Developing the next generation of Latino Leaders: http://www.chci.org/
� The Gates Millennium Scholars: http://www.gmsp.org
� ScholarshipsCanada: http://www.scholarshipscanada.com/index.asp
� InternationalStudent.com: http://www.internationalstudent.com/
� eduPass: http://www.edupass.org/
� Scholarship Monkey: http://www.scholarship-monkey.com/
� P.E.O. International: http://www.peointernational.org/about/
� Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation: http://www.rotary.org/programs
� Advance-Africa.com: http://bit.ly/NJNn9
� Google Scholarships: http://tinyurl.com/5ruvgg
� The Foundation Center: http://foundationcenter.org
� Sport-Scholarships.com: http://www.sport-scholarships.com

These are just a sampling of different kinds of sources you can use to find funding � there are so many more! Watch for a tab in the Facebook Page where I will list more sites. Follow me, IntStudentCon, on Twitter for posts on individual scholarships, or join the Facebook Page for postings (click on the icons on this blog site to access both).

Next up: Creating your Brand Statement (A follow up on the �Creating your personal brand� series). How to write cover letters and Resumes that stand out in a sea of competition! Valuable information from leading personal branding expert and career advancement coach, Robert Allen Paul. Don�t miss this series!!

Another Misleading Report About High School Dropouts and Income

So, below I have reproduced the take home table in a new report on the social/economic loss resulting from high school dropouts in America, and the major gains we could make if we could just get people to graduate.

Of course, this argument is totally ridiculous. Among other things, it assumes the following:

• That if inner-city kids got high school diplomas they would automatically also head up into the next income strata.
• That having or not having a diploma is THE key influence on one's income strata.
• That new graduates would have the same academic rigor and opportunity of prior graduates.

Reports like these simply feed the "Education Gospel" in America, the myth that education is a solution for economic and social problems. There is little or no evidence that this is the case.

The report concludes with the following two sentences:

1) There is an overwhelming national economic and social
justice need to prevent existing high school students from dropping out without earning a diploma and to encourage the re-enrollment and eventual graduation of those dropouts who have already left the school system.

2) In the absence of concerted efforts to bolster their academic achievement, their formal schooling, their occupational skills, and their cumulative work experience, their immediate and long term labor market prospects are likely to be quite bleak in the U.S. economy even after the end of the current economic recession, which for many of these youth has turned into a labor market depression.

Note that #1 is not saying the same thing as #2. It is not at all clear that high school graduation will lead to the results discussed in #2. Furthermore, as I have noted before, EDUCATION DOES NOT CREATE JOBS. So even if you get #2, you won't necessarily (likely will not) get many graduates into the next income strata.

These kind of reports especially piss me off in today's economic crisis. "Hey, kids, if you had just stayed in school, look what you could have done. But too bad. You didn't. So your unemployment is your own fault." Not what the authors meant to say, I'm sure. But that's part of what it does say. And it's wrong.

Note: in the comments, Sherman Dorn correctly adds:

. . . Yes, increasing graduation will not in and of itself change the macroeconomic circumstances that shape people's lives. . . .

On the other hand, there are also recent reports that use better estimates, and even if you are persuaded (as I am) that there are significant sheepskin/queueing effects of graduation, there is at least part of education that has a human capital benefit for general productivity. It's not as much as Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz claim, but it's not zero, either.

And there is also reason to be concerned from an equity standpoint. Even if high school graduation does nothing other than confirm credentials, the unequal distribution of those credentials should worry us.

Bottom line: I dislike the crude calculations and the "crisis" rhetoric, but there is a problem we have to address.

To which I reply:

I agree with your points. Wasn't cutting the issue quite this closely. The point is not that we shouldn't care at all about graduation. The point is that this link is much weaker and problematic than framed here and in many other places. And this framing has effects on our public dialogue around education.

If we actually educated poor kids to "think" it would be even more critical.

I wish it was more critical than it is.

Educational Attainment	Annual Tax Payments	Annual Earnings Plus Prison Costs	Lifetime Net Fiscal Impact
<12 or 12, No H.S. Diploma	6,087	6,197	-5,191
H.S. Diploma/GED	9,938	3,551	287,384
Some College	13,244	2,508	461,661
Bachelor Degree	20,580	1,236	793,079

This may be an example of learning too much SPSS and not enough social theory and research design. Correlation is not causality. Prior results do not guarantee future returns. Too harsh? Feel free to comment.

At least I learned how to make tables in html. Not a total waste of time. [Note retitled columns to save space]

The Lost Generation

Only 46% of people aged 16-24 had jobs in September, the lowest since the government began counting in 1948.

The Encultured Brain: Why Neuroanthropology? Why Now?

Why Neuroanthropology? Why Now?

By Greg Downey and Daniel Lende

Neuroanthropology also has direct implications for anthropology and neuroscience. It demonstrates the necessity of theorizing culture and human experience in ways that are not ignorant of or wholly inconsistent with discoveries about human cognition from brain sciences. Rather than broad-based concepts like habitus or cognitive structure, neuroanthropology focuses on how social and cultural phenomena actually achieve the impact they have on people in material terms. Rather than assuming structural inequality is basic to all societies, neuroanthropologists ask how inequality differentiates people and what we might do about that.

Similarly, on the neurological side, the principal theories of brain development, neural architecture and function remain tied to a biological view of proximate mechanisms and evolutionary origins. Yet it is abundantly clear that many neurological capacities, such as language or skills, do not appear without immersion in culture. Neuroanthropology highlights how that immersion matters to the brain�s construction and function. For example, neuroanthropology can take a basic idea like Hebbian learning � �what fires together, wires together� � and examine how social and cultural processes shape the timing, exposure, and strength of activity, such that the coordinated action of brain systems emerges through cultural dynamics. Neuroanthropology opens up a vibrant new space for thinking about how and why brains work the ways they do.