WhyHire.me is a Career Success Network for students and educators that includes an education program that provides instructor led materials, online curriculum and integrated personal branding software. Each participant will have the means to develop a professional, online personal brand in a virtual classroom setting. Students and faculty can elect to publish their profiles on the Internet or share and connect across classes, schools and other institutions.

The underlying program includes a 70-page ebook, instructor learning materials, videos and an online workspace that students, peers and professors can use to privately or publicly work through the Four D's of Online Personal Branding.

The power of search engines has impacted how we learn, chose and make purchase decisions. According to Cross-Tab Research (download research overview - 721KB PDF), 75% of US recruiters and HR professionals have rejected candidates based on data found online. Students today have tremendous familiarity with social network sites and a host of personal communication tools.

That being said, having a Facebook or MySpace page is not a necessary determinant of career success and entry into the workforce. Building a compelling story is something marketers strive to do each and every day. WhyHire.me is personal branding 101 for students, and it's methodology should be taught, applied and reinforced through the post-secondary experience. It calls on coaching and professionalism that each and every post-secondary educator can facilitate.

The WhyHire.me program provides::

• 1 - a powerful set of resources students can use to sell themselves into companies

• 2 - a set of documented experiences that can be used before, during and after interviews and;

• 3 - a valuable understanding of how to apply social media in a professional setting

Why wait until the final weeks of graduation? Give your students the awareness, know-how and coaching they need throughout their post-secondary experience. They will be more confident, professional and more dialed into their course of study and how it applies in the working world.

The WhyHire.me instructional materials offer a set of modules that support the underlying Four D's of Online Personal Branding. The modules include scripted presentations, worksheets, a marking rubric, supporting videos and how to instructional content. The materials are designed to require approximately eight hours of learning time. Life-to-date, the program has be implemented a number of ways including: