Who is *Alex Jackson*

Hi everyone! Welcome to my first post, where you will learn all about me and my personal brand. Let’s start, my name is Alex Jackson and I am a senior at The University of Tampa. I will be graduating in May 2019 with a double major in Marketing and Management! What am I going to do after graduating? I would love to work in event planning or meeting planning. But as all other college students know, sometimes you just have to take what you can get. The best way to get what you want though is to stand out and make employers realize they NEED YOU just as much as you WANT THEM. How do you do this? Building your personal brand.

The first thing I think about when branding myself is what is the best way to present myself that will grab an employer’s attention. Before UT I went to the University of Louisville where I started my collegiate student athlete career as a soccer player. After being there for about a year and a half I realized it was not what I wanted and decided to come to UT where I continued my student athlete career. So, my experience through being a student athlete has a lot to do with how I brand myself. Being a student athlete says so much about you that employers realize. For example, being an athlete tells someone you are competitive, coachable, a team player, and above all being a student-athlete demonstrates how well you manage your time. By promoting myself as a student athlete in interviews or just conversations with business people, they automatically know that I carry these 4 characteristics. And through further conversation they will learn about my great leadership skills that I also have gained through being on a soccer team.

The next thing I think about when branding myself is what else do I possess that will give me a leg up on other students in my position. This makes me look at my experiences I have had through my 21 years of being alive. Obviously, I have done a lot of things during that time, but it is important to focus on the things that help differentiate you and also apply to the position you are looking for. After a lot of thinking I have narrowed it down to may 2 internships and 2 opportunities to plan an event. To start off I’d like to explain how my interest in event planning started when I planned a 5K race my senior year of high school. Ever since that day, I knew event planning was what I was meant to do. After that I also planned my moms 50th surprise birthday party. I know some of you may think, well that is not a big deal, why would you bring that up. If you get anything out of reading this blog, it is that no experience is too little to include. I learned more about planning my mom’s birthday party than I have in most classes I have taken in college and if you can articulate that to employers, they will also see the benefit. These 2 events really gave me some experience in event planning and all it entails, as well as grew my passion for event planning. I also had 2 pretty irrelevant internships, my first one I was pretty much a receptionist for a financial planning firm, and my second was to handle social media for a car dealership. How do either of these relate to event planning? They didn’t. I had to make them relate. I took a receptionist job and recommended planning more events for the clients and they let me handle this. And in my social media position I made sure to interact with the company’s event planner to learn more about how she got there and the ins and outs of her job description. My point through all of these experiences is that I bring a lot of experience to the table when dealing with event planning. Not many other college students can say they have planned multiple events and worked closely with an event planner for a luxury car dealership.

Thank you to everyone who read all the way through my first post, I really appreciate it! I hope you guys learned a little about me and my brand as well as got some tips to get you thinking about how you can start to brand yourself. Check out this article that talks about 5 ways to build your personal brand!