Thursday, May 26, 2011

Personal Image


We had a couple more sessions with the students this week. We spoke about networking and personal branding. For the session on networking, the students were much more quiet. We realized the term networking, outside of a computer environment, was foreign to them. But during the presentation we realized that the concept of networking was completely foreign. In their minds, building relationships is something you do after you have a job not before. We did some role playing of different personalities that a recruiter might meet (i.e. quiet shy girl, cocky hooligan, sexy bimbo) which gave them a lot of laughs. But I think we finally got the point across that how you present yourself to a recruiter can help you get hired or rejected. A whole group of girls came up to me afterward telling me how great my acting skills were. But then I just told them, it’s easy to be someone who’s quiet or doesn’t seem to think. It’s a lot harder to be perceived as someone who can think. I hope more of them will be more confident and be noticed when they look for a job.

For the second session, we did a game on personal branding. In the session, Mukul asked the class how they perceive us. Apparently he’s an Indian who speaks difficult to understand Indian English, and I’m a Chinese girl who doesn’t speak Chinese. So somehow we both confuse them.

The language situation is pretty funny. I think it took almost a week for my team to stop asking me to try to read Chinese characters. After Tom jokingly said read that sign, I read the numbers which were the only things not in Chinese characters. He says, “wow I can read as much Chinese as Andrea.” And I exclaim, “Exactly!” We were at lunch yesterday with our ABV coordinator, and I was yapping away. She laughs because a couple girls sat down behind us and commented, “wow her English is so good.” Mukul says I just need to get plastic surgery.

Well it’s not plastic surgery, but I did get a digital perm. You’d think that getting curly hair would actually make me look less Chinese, but I think I’m starting to blend in more with the locals. Check out this contraption used to do the perm. Pretty awe inspiring.





-Andrea

1 comment:

  1. I'm so glad you are having all these adventures!!!

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