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How Academic Integrity Affects Personal Brand and Long-Term Career Aspirations
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How Academic Integrity Affects Personal Brand and Long-Term Career Aspirations

In order to help students understand the importance of committing to academic integrity, it is very helpful to coach students early on in their post-secondary journey to understand the value of building their brand.

Over the course of their studies and experiences, the decisions that they make will impact their future success. According to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, “your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room”.

Students that engage in academic misconduct can get caught up in the need to get a good grade or get through a course without regard for the bigger picture view of what will enable them to be successful in their future careers.

While grades are one of the elements looked at by employers, most employers look beyond transcripts and ask open-ended questions to assess whether the students can apply their learning experiences to the demands of their careers. If academic programs can help guide students to build their brand early on in their programs and help them understand how their learning links to their field of study, students will be more engaged and committed to focusing on the learning outcomes and the need to maintain a strong reputation.

In many post-secondary environments, students don’t begin to think seriously about their career prospects until they reach their third or fourth year. These students are missing out on a significant opportunity to develop their reputation in their chosen field of expertise. In today’s connected world, students can benefit significantly by taking advantage of opportunities while in their academic settings to consider ways in which they can build their career readiness and personal reputation.

Personal branding involves understanding what differentiates you – taking your unique set of values, talents, and competencies and showcasing them to your immediate network of peers, acquaintances, mentors, and potential employers. Students that stand out as confident in their brand by focusing on developing not only the technical knowledge required in their industry but also the job-ready skills and values will enable them to prepare for graduation and will better excel in their careers. Effective personal branding and a strong reputation will help students to stand out amongst other candidates in seeking employment. Students that see a link between their learning and job-ready skills are more likely to be motivated in class and are less likely to engage in academic dishonesty.

According to the ICCO World PR Report 2020, “reputation is consistently ranked by corporate leaders as the most valuable asset”. The value of a strong reputation is what makes brands like Coca-Cola worth more than 100 billion. More and more employees are realizing the importance of building their brand. According to Business Insider “personal branding is primarily about becoming aware of your uniqueness and communicating to the outside world what you can do and what you stand for”. The exciting part about this is students do not need to be concerned with what their peers are doing in this area, as they can focus on developing a sense of what their values are and what matters most to them. It also will help them to identify employers that align well with their value system. Feeling confident in their education and their values and beliefs also helps students to seek relevant work experiences, and job-ready skills through their involvement in campus activities and clubs and to market themselves effectively in a job interview. On the career-networking site LinkedIn, if an individual frequently researches and posts articles on the importance of considering sustainability when making consumer product decisions, they will develop a reputation as an expert in this area.

Business Insider also identifies how committing to developing your brand helps you not only professionally but also personally. According to Franziska Schaadt, an award-winning personal branding coach at – Future Work Academy - Netherlands, “When I know and reflect on myself, I can live with integrity…because then I make decisions based on my values...there is then no temptation to be guided or distracted by external factors”. She also indicates the importance of building relationships with others by sharing your values and experiences. Whether it is classmates, teachers, employers, friends, or family, all students maintain relationships with those around them.

When students understand the importance of the reputation they are developing throughout their experiences in their post-secondary setting, students will be more aware of how their decisions and actions impact their brand value and will be less inclined to engage in conduct that diminishes the value of their brands, like cheating on assignments or exams.

Students looking for their first jobs will need to be able to communicate who they are and what makes them stand out amongst their peers. Help students to see challenges as opportunities to build their brand. If they find a course particularly challenging to engage with because the nature of the content or the delivery method may not be easy for them to navigate, consider how they can use the challenge to demonstrate to employers their flexibility, adaptability, and creativity with respect to mastering the concepts and assessments.

Common interview questions for students to be aware of include:

  • “Tell me how you think other people (your classmates/your professors) would describe you?”
  • “Do you feel you work well under pressure?” “What coursework prepared you for this position?”
  • “How would fellow students who have worked with you describe your attitude and work style?”
  • “Tell me about a project in school that you struggled with, and how it went?”
  • “What were your favorite classes and why?”
  • “What was your least favorite class? How did you approach it?”

It’s also important to help students understand why they should be aware of the digital footprint associated with their virtual presence. According to Forbes.com “70% of employers use social media to screen candidates during the hiring process. It is critical to be respectful of others and professional, as you never know when something we did or said in the past may be re-circulated.

One of Warren Buffet’s famous quotes reminds us that “it takes 20 years to build a good reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

28 February 2022