Huntington Bucks Go Pro Update No. 2
6/28/2019 2:51:48 PM | General
Welcome back to the Huntington Bucks Go Pro 2019 bi-weekly updates with Lindsay Epstein and Ali Beekhuizen! We just finished up our fourth week and are halfway through our internship. The professional development sessions as well as our specific internship within the Athletics Communications department has continued to exceed our expectations. We have had a great deal of beneficial developmental sessions and hands on involvement in our department. From getting professional headshots and mock interviews to releasing a new series of student-athlete feature articles, our weeks are full of valuable experiences. Below you’ll find a breakdown of our four most recent professional development sessions. Scroll down towards the bottom of the post to check out the content we’ve created in the past two weeks as communications interns.
June 17
The theme for this day was “Who I Am + Who I’ll Be” with Jamie Wood and Tyler Jones. Tyler and Jamie discussed the goals of our identity as an athlete, and how to define ourselves through our core values. For this session, we had to come prepared with some pre-work questions that were very vulnerable and required a lot of self-reflection.
The questionnaire consisted of identity questions such as “Who are you?” “What are you?” and “How do you add value?”. Jamie Wood spoke with us about the importance of gaining awareness of who you are as a whole being and how to apply this awareness to living the life you want. A key topic throughout the session was core values. Core values are an individual or group’s fundamental beliefs that guide one’s behavior in life.
For one activity, we defined just four of our top core values for ourselves. This was very difficult considering there are so many important values to consider. Later, we had the freedom to make a blueprint of a “perfect week.” We could write down literally anything we wanted to do whether it be laying out by the pool every single day or working out and finding family time. The point of this activity was to see if your core values are incorporated in your “perfect life.” If not, we were challenged to think about how we can maintain our values and make it a part of our identity every day.
June 19
Week three, day three spun off of Monday’s lesson of athlete identity and challenged the group with different activities on personal branding. Jamie Wood started the group off with a review of what we learned in our previous meeting, then went right into the steps to understand and acquire our own personal brand. Jamie began his presentation by teaching us the steps we should take to form our own personal brand. These included: educate, understand, identify, build, and equip. It was important for each of us to know our core values in order to shape our personal brand and realize who we really are and why.
Jamie had a few teammates from different teams come to the front of the room and complete a unique activity. He asked the younger teammate to describe what they think their teammates personal brand and core values are. He then compared it to the older teammates core values and surprisingly, they were all almost identical.
Next, Jamie had us break into groups and identify different aspects of a specific brand’s four pillars. The different brands were Starbucks, Nike, Bob Marley, Oprah, and Apple. Each group had to identify the brand’s tool to deliver goals, their promise, their reason to believe, and an experience felt across multiple touchpoints.
Following Jamie, Andy DeVito, Director of Creative Services and Branding, spoke to the group on the effect social media can have on your personal brand. He explained the advantages to a good social media page as well as the consequences of a poor page.
To conclude the day, Jamie led the group in one last activity called “The Hierarchy of Like.” This activity challenged our perspectives on what we thought an employer would prefer in an employee verses the reality of what they actually prioritize.
June 24
We started the first session of week four with headshots in both our professional attire and athletic uniforms. For this day, we came prepared with printed out resumes and our future career goals in mind. We entered a room filled with business professionals from all fields who were ready to overlook and revise our resumes. The tips and tricks of what to add or take off of our resume were extremely helpful and informative.
The session then continued with Ashley Jones and Kyle Dunaway speaking to us. They explained the do’s and don’ts of cover letters and Skype/phone interviews. We learned how vital it is to embrace our student-athlete title and compliment it with all the other accomplishments and skills we have. Additionally, Ashley and Kyle spoke to us about how to be confident and execute a perfect resume, cover letter, or interview.
Lastly, we planned out our future career with an end goal and yearly plans to accomplish them. This session was extremely beneficial.
June 26
The second day of week four was a great experience of what we can expect in real life after college athletics. The session started with a Skype call with Craig Butas, Global Account Manager at LinkedIn. Craig discussed how LinkedIn can be of great help to us in connecting with business professionals around the world. He emphasized the importance of starting early in order to grow relationships and make connections. We were then taught how to work the app and connect with our fellow peers in the room.
Following our conversation with Craig, we got right into mock interviews with different professionals from the university. We were treated as though we were at a real interview and received many different questions by at least two different business professionals. The interview taught us skills we can bring to a future interview with a company down the road.
After the mock interviews, we learned the importance of hand written thank-you cards and wrote them to our mock interviewer. The day was filled with excitement and knowledge that will be extremely useful to us down the road.
As an Intern
In the past two weeks, we started a multitude of new projects. We were given a lot of freedom to be creative and reach out to many different student-athletes and staff members for content.
We had a great experience interviewing two remarkable women’s soccer student-athletes, Selina Vickery and Taylor Lisevick. Both of whom have unique and inspiring internships this summer. (Check out our features here – Taylor and Selina).
‘My Hometown’ is a new feature showcasing student-athletes’ hometowns. Here is our first one and you can find the others through the Ohiostatebuckeeys.com page.
Read about @lailahuric and her favorite parts of Milano, Italy, Q&A style in the first edition of ‘My Hometown’https://t.co/XzhleeGvZp
— Ohio State Synchro (@OSUsynchro) June 19, 2019
We also received a lot of assistance in learning how to write in AP format for press releases and were given the opportunity to write and release our own. (Derek Coward Selected to Participate in NCAA Pathway Program).
Along with enhancing our writing skills, we were educated about the ins-and- outs of Photoshop and video editing. As Ohio State announced their Buckeye Hall of Fame class of 2019, we helped with creating social media graphics for the OSU Twitter page. We also created more of these graphics for the wrestling opposing teams and “TBT” graphics for women’s lacrosse.
Being able to see our content published online is very exciting, but we are just as appreciative to learn and participate in the work that goes on behind the scenes. In the past two weeks, we have worked on updating all of the sports team archives into a more organized and accessible table format for the website. Additionally, we have revised student-athlete’s bios as well as initiated the process of adding bios for all staff members at Ohio State.
As a student-athlete, it is amazing to see all the work that the communications department puts in to highlighting the people of Ohio State by telling the story of our student-athletes and staff. We are so appreciative to have this new perspective and opportunity to be a part of it.
Check back with us in two weeks for our next update, go Bucks!
