For six weeks, FIU Business senior Danielle Cuervo searched for a way out of giving her final presentation.
Public speaking made the finance major nervous. Yet when the day arrived, Cuervo stood before the class with her teammates, pitched their candidate to a panel of fictional investors and earned a perfect score.
“Showing myself that I could do the hard thing gave me a lot of confidence,” she said.
The presentation capped a redesigned version of MAR 4354, Marketing Yourself in the Global Marketplace, taught by marketing professor Otis Kopp. The RPG-inspired course placed students in the role of interns at Northstar Creative, a fictional marketing agency tasked with preparing candidates to compete in the global job market.
"My goal is to create a space where students are excited to learn and can immediately connect the material we cover to their professional goals,” said Kopp. “This course is relevant across disciplines because the ability to communicate your value is essential in any career."
Developed with support from FIU Online’s Learning Design Innovation Team, the course connected assignments to a personal branding toolbox students built throughout the semester. They created résumés, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles and other professional assets before working in teams to develop the strongest possible candidate.
Each team then pitched its candidate to the fictional Future Makers Venture Capital Group, seeking a $10,000 investment in the candidate’s future.
Cuervo’s team created Avery Davis, a digital marketing manager with a résumé, professional history and portfolio designed to demonstrate her potential to investors. The experience required students to consider not only a candidate’s qualifications but also how effectively those strengths were communicated.
For Cuervo, who works six days a week in government security while attending FIU, the lessons carried personal significance. Her work schedule has left little time for internships, student organizations or other traditional networking opportunities.
“Learning how to market myself helped me feel confident that I could still pursue a finance job, even without internships or direct finance experience,” she said.
The class also helped Cuervo expand her professional network. She began the semester with about 12 LinkedIn connections and finished with nearly 70, including classmates and their mutual contacts.
Marketing senior Sofia Cardenal said the assignments prompted her to think more deliberately about her career plans and how she presents herself to employers.
“You need to be prepared,” Cardenal said. “It is not just about the conversation. It is also your résumé, your LinkedIn and how you present yourself as a whole.”
Final portfolios incorporated generative AI to create candidate images, elevator-pitch videos and infographics mapping five-year professional forecasts. Students were required to disclose how they used the technology.
Cardenal, who had encountered restrictions on AI use in other courses, welcomed the opportunity to explore it as a professional tool. She used AI to improve the background and lighting of her own LinkedIn photo and learned how to generate images and video.
“In our jobs, we are going to be using AI,” she said. “There are so many benefits when it is used the right way.”
Both students said the in-person format made the experience more valuable. For Cuervo, who previously attended colleges in two states and completed much of her education online, the course offered something she had been missing: a sense of community.
“I made friends and professional connections that I didn’t have before,” she said. “Taking the class in person was outside my comfort zone, but I benefited from it more than I expected.”