For this assignment you will prepare a Personal Marketing Plan (PMP). I believe you are much more than a product, but it is a useful metaphor for this assignment. The product you are selling is you. The buyer is your ideal employer/industry. You will treat yourself as you would any other product in development and you will apply the concepts of this class to making that product a success in your chosen market when it is ready. You will analyze the current and potential market, product design process (your education), and other important factors that you identify with what you learn in this course.

Deliverable:

2000+ word Personal Marketing Plan for your career

The objectives of this project are to:

Assure that you can effectively apply the important concepts of this course to the most important product you will ever deal withyou/your career

Contribute something of value to your own personal development

Focus your precious personal resources and time towards achieving your long-term goals

How youll do that:

Identify your career goal(s) after graduation

Identify target customers (employers, loan officers, investors, clients)

Identify and Define the current product, the ideal product, and differences between them

Understand and explain market environments and their impact on your plan

Identify a plan to convert the current product into the ideal product

Apply additional course concepts as applicable and/or needed

Pieces you will write/concepts you will address:

Ideal Job Description, 10% of overall grade: This is, ultimately, what you hope to achieve While majcareer goals change over time, you should at least have one that you are working towards. Be as specific as possible. Think of it as your Personal Mission Statement.

What is your ideal job? Does it already exist or are you trying to create something new? Do you want to work for a specific company? Particular industry? Particular field? The more detailed you are then the better you can design the ideal product (and the easier the rest of this assignment will be.

Target Market and Ideal Product Description, 20% of overall grade: Who are you selling this product to? What does the market want? What does their ideal product look like? Get (giving credit to the source) or create a job description. Learn the necessary qualifications (degrees, credentials, certification, etc). What kind of experience do you need? Dont try to decide what they want, learn what they actually want. Your Target Market is organizations who hire people for this kind of job. The ideal product is the perfect candidate for this job.

Current Product Description, 20% of overall grade: This piece tells me who you are NOW. Here is where you describe the product as it currently exists. Do the internal elements of a SWOT Analysis to understand your Strengths and Weaknesses as part of this. This is about honest assessment and recognizing strengths and weaknesses for what they are. Exaggeration and puffery have no place here.

Clearly identify the gap between the existing product and the ideal product for the market. Heres where the advanced SWOT Analysis becomes useful. Do you have Leverage, Problems, Vulnerabilities or Constraints?

Environmental Analysis, 10% of overall grade: Tell me about the market in which you will sell this product? You should conduct a Porters Five Forces analysis as part of this section to understand what the field looks like. You should use external elements of a SWOT Analysis to identify Opportunities and Threats in the environment. You should address all 5 market environmental factors (even if only to dismiss them as unimportant) as part of this section.

Marketing Mix Variables, 10% of overall grade: Identify each of the Four Ps as they relate to you. What value do you offer? What is your value proposition? Do you have a Sustainable Competitive Advantage?

Plan of Action, 20% of overall grade: Concrete steps in your plan of action. No, I could. No, I can. I want to see clear, definitive actions. A Plan! You will give me a blueprint for turning you (the raw materials of this project) into the previously identified ideal product (the finished product).

How are you going to close the gaps identified in the current product and ideal product analyses? What concrete actions are you going to take to prepare your product to be the ideal product for your target market? How will you use leverageyou have identified? How will you address weaknesses that are causing problems or constraining your actions? How can you counteract threats creating vulnerabilities or feeding problems?

In business this would be your plan for creating the ideal product. You would tell me how youre going to make something the market truly wantswhich is exactly what you should be creating with your education for the job market you intend to enter.

Include a Budget: No production process is without its costs. How will you pay for this production process? What potential returns can you expect?

Executive Summary, 10% of overall grade: When its all done you are going to write a 1-pageand only 1-pagesummary of the Personal Marketing Plan that tells me why I want to read the whole thing (Im going to read the whole thing regardless, but you should make me want to). Your Executive Summary tells a reader who is pressed for time exactly what they will find inside and why they should spend the time to read the whole thing. This now becomes your first page for the entire document.

Sources, 0 to -100% of overall grade, as long as needed. I dont care what style you use as long as you give credit where credit is due. Failure to cite sources is plagiarism (a form of fraud) so you gain no points for providing citations but lose all your points for failing to cite properly.