Ilana Gershon, an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, Bloomington will be the keynote speaker at the 'Metaksherim' ('Communicating') conference. 'Metaksherim' is an annual communication graduate student conference organized by students and staff of the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa. It is held for the 11th time in memory of our graduate student Mark Biano. Prof. Gershon will give an additional talk at the departmental seminar (see full program in Hebrew).

Metaksherim Graduate Student Conference, December 21, 11:15, Rabin Observatory

Hiring 2.0: Career Opportunities are the Ones that Never Knock

What do you need to do to get a U.S. job in this digital age?  Do you need a LinkedIn profile?  Are hiring managers looking for your personal brand? Job-seekers in post-recession America struggle with these questions as hiring and the nature of work changes.  In this talk, I analyze the advice job-seekers receive about how to craft a genre repertoire – an agglomeration of a business card, resume, cover letter, interview questions, Twitter presence and LinkedIn profile.  I then discuss what role this genre repertoire plays in actual hiring practices.

Department of Communication Faculty Seminar, December 23, 12:15, room TBA

I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man: Hiring a Neoliberal Self

Under contemporary U.S. capitalism, white collar workers increasingly view themselves as a business:  they are the "CEO of me."  In this perspective, hiring resembles a business-to-business contract, a short-term connection centered upon solving market-specific problems. This has not been an easy transition for many Americans looking for jobs.   The social dilemmas present in U.S. job markets reveal many problems in enacting the self-as-business model, which are especially prominent when using new media that are designed presupposing the self-as-business model.  My talk draws on a year of fieldwork in California's Bay Area on how new technologies contribute to a challenge so many Americans face these days - getting a job in the digital age.