Join the IUP Career and Professional Development Center on Tuesday, November 1 at 6:00 p.m. in the Great Room in Elkin Hall for the final installment of this fall’s Career Ready Seminar Series, Crafting Your Personal Brand: Showcasing Your Professional Self.

Whether you know it or not, you have a personal brand. Much like fast food restaurants, sports teams, and tech companies, people hold associations about your work habits, values, and, more broadly, what you are “about.” The professionals who do not craft their brand will have others do it for them—or worse, leave no impact at all. People often put their heads down and focus on their work. But what should they do when hard work is not enough? This presentation will discuss the steps a person can take to put their narrative back in their hands, take control of their image, and open the doors to professional opportunities.

This event is a part of the Career and Professional Development Center’s Career Ready Seminar Series, which aims to provide targeted programming to help IUP students gain and understand the necessary skills and competencies to be successful in life after graduation. Topics vary each semester and, in many cases, involve employer sponsors.   

Bennett Nesley, a Graduate Assistant in the IUP CPDC is the presenter for this program, and he stated, “In my role at IUP’s CPDC, I have met with numerous students with wonderful qualities and experiences that would make them valuable additions to the working world; however, these same students can feel invisible in that working world. Why? I believe self-promotion unfairly gets a bad rep. Students who come to Crafting Your Personal Brand: Showcasing Your Professional Self will learn how to best position themselves for the opportunities they deserve. Along the way, they will learn how communicating their professional values and skills to others can lead to a better understanding of themselves.” Bennett knows what he’s talking about, too, based on his previous career with a NYC-based public relations firm!

Associate Director of the IUP CPDC, Kelsey Thompson, is looking forward to the final workshop in this series for the fall. “We have had a great lineup of speakers and topics this semester and are pleased with how everything has turned out thus far.  We are already looking forward to the spring 2023 semester and are excited to share our topics and speakers soon – keep a look out for those to be shared with the IUP community in early December.”

For more information about the IUP Career and Professional Development Center, please call 724-357-2235, visit our website at email career-development@iup.edu, or stop by our new space in Stabley Library B20!