Refection Essay on Three Social Entrepreneurs LinkedIn Profile

According to Petrella and Richez-Battesti (2014), SEs are those individuals who set up organisations with a view of pursuing new opportunities of creating social value through a process of continuous innovation. This is realised by organising action to generate social, cultural and environmental benefits to society, especially for a marginalized group of the population. Despite the efforts that have been made over decades to alleviate certain issues in some segments of society, evidence suggests that a lot still needs to be done in this respect (Sekliuckiene & Kisielius 2015). The current situation explains why SEs are very important people in society today. The essay discusses the LinkedIn profiles of 3 SEs who I draw great inspiration in their entrepreneurial ideas motivated by social needs, change and personal experience.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Save 25%

One of the SEs entrepreneurs who greatly captured my interest is Shelley Saxena. He is the founder of Sevamob. Saxena came up with the idea when his mother who resides in Lucknow, India was misdiagnosed after a bout of Hepatitis thereby delaying her treatment. The organization offers health care services through mobile clinics which arrive in the place of residence of patients, camp for checkups, and provide the patients with results and basic treatment before departure (Zurer 2017; Chhabra 2015). By leveraging on technology, Sevamob is able to connect patients with medical professionals and provide prompt services. Saxena is a perfect example of a social entrepreneur who saw an unmet need and developed innovative ways of meeting it. In his LinkedIn profile, Saxena worked as a product manager at IBM, illustrating how technology influenced the idea of the start-up. As Petrella and Richez-Battesti (2014), note personal experience is a major motivator for social entrepreneurs. For Saxena, he saw a need and exploited available resources to meet the social need for the benefit of a disadvantaged segment of society. His initiative has created a great impact both in his country of birth and Africa.

The second SE worth mentioning in this discussion is Simon Baker. He is the founder of Kennemer Foods International (KFI), a social enterprise based in the Philippines. Baker's company provides high-quality planting materials, training services, and also facilities access to financing and markets for cocoa, a product that has been almost abandoned by the Philipino farmers due to limited technical support and financing (Loudenback 2016). Like many other social entrepreneurs, Loudenback notes that Kennemer has capitalized on technology to innovate solutions that meet the farmers' needs. This has encouraged farming practices that are sustainable, resulting in a significant increase in the income of the Philipino farmers. As noted by Petrella and Richez-Battesti (2014), a social entrepreneur seeks to fulfill a social mission by creating social value in society. Accordingly, Baker saw farmers struggling with producing a treasured crop and stepped in to address their challenges. This has created financial security to rural farmers in the Philippines thereby creating positive change in society. This gesture is very comforting to me as it evokes a sense of hope when one is struggling to build their careers.

The final SE that this discussion explores is Fonta Gilliam. She is the founder of Sou Sou, based in Washington. Gilliam's company focuses on financial inclusion among women in disadvantaged environments whereby a group of participating persons contribute for each other every month/week after which the money is given to every member in the pool (Zurer 2017). Gilliam has developed an app that seeks to make the banking to take place on a modernised platform due to easy access to mobile phones (Zurer 2017). One of the attributes that she considers as a personal strength is the ability to consider feedback. To me, this trait evokes great interest in her ability to improve herself as a leader while satisfying the needs of clients. As argued by Peter R Drucker in Managing Oneself, taking attention to feedback can help one identify areas of strength and weakness concerning client relationships (Drucker 2005).This can assist in improving my abilities and skills on what I will do in future as I scale up the career ladder.

The above-discussed leaders have demonstrated that they have the ability to come up with solutions to issues in the society. Saxena, Baker, and Gilliam scanned the environment and identified unmet needs, devised innovative ways of addressing these needs. They did so by leveraging on the latest technological offerings to create solutions to problems facing rural residents, farmers, and women respectively. The successful stories about their enterprises demonstrate how personal experience and interactions with people from different backgrounds could enable me to generate ideas on solving some of the most troubling issues in society while building my profile.

References

Chhabra, E. (2015). Technology alone is not the answer in healthcare. Forbes.

Loudenback, T. (2016). 12 entrepreneurs who are changing the world. Business Insider.

Petrella, F., & Richez-Battesti, N. (2014). Social entrepreneur, social entrepreneurship and social enterprise: semantics and controversies. Journal of Innovation Economics, 14(2), 143. doi:10.3917/jie.014.0143

Sekliuckiene, J., & Kisielius, E. (2015). Development of social entrepreneurship initiatives: A theoretical framework. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 213(1), 1015-1019. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.11.519

Zurer, R. (2017, March 1). 19 social entrepreneurs to watch in 2017. Retrieved from https://consciouscompanymedia.com/social-entrepreneurship/19-social-entrepreneurs-watch-2017-2/

Reflection essay on my areas of experience, skills and knowledge expansion in at least 5 years

Due to the massive advancement in digital technology, companies have fundamentally shifted how they hire employees. One of such platform is LinkedIn. According to a recent survey on employer recruitment processes, 92 percent of employers use social media to find high-quality talents with 87 percent of the social media users opting for LinkedIn as their preferred social media recruiting platform (Morrison 2015). In building my career, it is essential that to create a personal brand about my skills, experience, and knowledge which is capable of attracting prospective employers when scanned through the LinkedIn platform. As Peters (1997) and Wilson and Blumenthal (2005) observed, we are all brands and what is needed is a deliberate effort to shape one's qualities to create personal brands that could be appealing to employers or fellow workers. Hence, it becomes imperative for me to fill the gaps concerning my knowledge skills and experience for me creates the brand that employers would desire. This will be achieved in a realistic plan on how to improve my skills, knowledge, and experience as outlined below. Skills and Experience

Communication

Communication plays a vital role in everyday life. From having subconscious conversations about food to formal discussions about an organisation's policies, virtually every activity is actualized through communication. According to Abbasi, Siddiqi, and Azim (2011), having effective communication is critical not only for daily formal and informal interactions but also essential for one's survival as it affects many factors that influence human survival.

Outline of Action-Throughout the working experience, I have had the chance to interact with various people, and in effect, developed my communication skills quite significantly. However, I feel more needs to be done to improve my skills further considering the nature of the program I am pursuing as well as my professional orientation. The ability to engage effectively in a two-way communication enhances one's potential to succeed as a student but also as a professional (Abbasi et al.2011). Given these benefits, I intend to volunteer in writing organisation reports outside my current position to sharpen my communication skills. I believe that this is an area that needs to be strengthened since I have spent most of my time engaging orally with people. According to Wilson and Blumenthal (2005), a careful self-analysis is an important step towards building a strong personal brand.

Marketing Management

Marketing is a vital function in any organisation. My goal is to become a marketing consultant for the next five years. Currently, I am pursuing a Bachelors Degree in Marketing, and I intend to use the knowledge gain after completion and the experience I have gathered over the years to offer marketing services. The crux of the idea is to help various organizations and individuals to establish a productive relationship with their customers and managing such a task requires a strong brand.

Plan of Action- After completing the current program, I intend to enroll for a professional course in marketing. This will enable me to get the necessary certification and license to operate as a consultant. Consultancy is a services business. Therefore, it would require excellent communication skills to create networks for sourcing and maintaining clients. In this respect, I would seek an audience with prospective corporate organisations to make presentations as a strategy of creating awareness about my firm and also as a platform for building my oral and written communicant to build the reputation of the firm as a marketing consultancy destination. As Peters (1997) argues, building a brand is making an effort to become the best agent in the field by creating a remarkable track record.

Experience

Marketing -Currently I am working as a retail account manager. I have also worked in customer service and human resource management departments. Upon graduation, I intend to improve on the skills gained in these fields to offer quality services to my clients. As a rule of the thumb, I would list these responsibilities on my LinkedIn profile to boost its standing on consultancy. However, leadership is pivotal to harness these positive attributes for personal benefit.

Leadership- Leadership is critical to the successful building of a brand. A leadership entails having the power to influence people's actions, behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. And having a strong leadership means becoming a role model to subordinates (Hao & Yazdanifard 2015). In practical terms, entails creating a brand before subordinates. In this respect, I intend to seek more opportunities for more responsibilities in my current position to build my leading skills. Additionally, I plan to attend at least four workshops /seminars yearly on effective leadership for the next five years to improve leadership skills as well as build my LinkedIn credentials.

In summation, I intend to draw on the leadership and innovative accomplishments of social entrepreneurs Shelley Saxena, Simon Baker and Fonta Gilliam to build my LinkedIn profile over the next five years in preparation for the time I will start my own organisation. Additionally, I expect that completing my degree would equip me with the requisite skills in the marketing industry. However, succeeding in this field would require effective leadership and personal sacrifice to improve my current profile. That is why trimming my leadership skills and acquiring more experience in human relations is vital to me regarding my future career. I believe that harnessing skills, knowledge, looking up to other leaders can be a springboard to becoming a great entrepreneur.

References

Abbasi, M. S., Siddiqi, A., & Azinm, R. (2011). Role of effective communications for enhancing leadership and entrepreneurial skills in university students. Intern...