Ottawa – Leighann Neilson, assistant professor with the Sprott School of Business, is offering her marketing class hands-on experience this fall.

She is using a program called WhyHire.me developed by three people, including two Carleton alumni, that will help her students learn how to market themselves to employers.

Professor Neilson teaches Marketing New Tools and Approaches to third-year business students. The course focuses on new marketing practices, such as the use of social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Flikr, podcasting, RSS feeds, YouTube and blogs.

“WhyHire.me will not only teach my students how to define their personal brand in order to market themselves effectively to employers but it will allow them to get hands-on experience on how to combine aspects of social media such as images, video and blog posts to solve real-world marketing problems,” says Professor Neilson.

WhyHire.me is currently available through participating post-secondary institutions. It includes eight hours of instructional learning which focuses on the four D’s of personal branding: dig deep, declare your brand, display yourself and deploy your brand. It includes online or instructor-led curriculum, a comprehensive e-book and an online personal profile that each student can securely develop through their post-secondary education.

Two of the founders, Patti and Andy Church, met when they were both pursuing undergraduate degrees in commerce at Carleton University. After graduating in 1988, Patti worked with the Apple Channel and then multi-media and communications services at Animatics. Andy graduated in 1989 and pursued interests in the technology sector with Oracle in California and Ottawa-based technology startups. A third founder, Robert Saric, graduated from McMaster.

“By pulling the latest social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo and RSS into an interactive profile, we provide the means for students to help create professional connections with future employers,” says Andy Church. “We advocate a clean break from Facebook to develop one’s brand with peers, professors and third parties. No matter how much fun sharing content online can be, party photos, sarcastic wit and gaming scores should be shared amongst friends, not professional contacts.”

“We’re delighted that our own alma mater is using our system,” says Patti Church. “It’s great to be able to give back to Carleton and to share what I have learned and applied with future Carleton Grads.”