The 2020 BIC PiP goes VIRTUAL
Each year, the BIC PiP showcases the talents of soon-to-be graduates who present their portfolios-in-progress to a roomful of industry recruiters, talent seekers, and career catalysts. BICsters in the Management, Strategy, Public Relations, and Creative Tracks use the PiP to not only expose their thinking to recruiters, but use the feedback to elevate their portfolios for the rigor of BIC's Portfolio Thesis Defense in May. In anticipation of this year's March 20th event, the PiP was at full capacity with RSVP's from recruiters at companies such as Golin, TBWA\Chiat\Day, DeVries, Virtue, Vox Media, and Google. And then, on March 11th, an unprecedented global pandemic led CUNY to close down campuses across the city and prohibited large gatherings of people.
But BIC found a way to work around the misfortune. For the first time ever, the annual BIC PiP (as well as the weeklong Portfolio Bootcamp) went off-campus and online. Within hours of the university-wide shutdown, recruiters were replaced with 35 enthusiastic BIC Alums whose expertise and understanding of the process were deployed to evaluate the BIC Class of 2020 portfolios-in-progress virtually.
How did it work? Students produced and submitted six-minute videos of their online portfolios-in-progress. In voice-over, students introduced themselves, stated their title, unique positioning and process, and then showcased examples of work that demonstrated their expertise. Videos were submitted to BIC Program Manager Marlene Leo who assigned three to five videos to each BIC Alumni Reviewer along with feedback guidance from the BIC Portfolio Evaluation Rubric, the BIC Virtuous Circle, and the BIC Portfolio framework.
Turning around in a little over week, BIC Alumni Reviewers submitted detailed feedback and offered students in the Class of 2020 suggestions on how to improve portfolios in the areas of content, storytelling, and showcase. In this way, the alums simulated the advice students would've received from PiP recruiters as well as from some of the experts who would've tutored them at the Portfolio Bootcamp -- which also got cancelled in response to the COVID-19 crisis.
BIC is so grateful to be able to rely on a generous alumni community with professional expertise from companies across the country, such as Apple, Droga5, TBWA\Chiat\Day Raad, Ogilvy, Hunter, Google, IBM, Futurebrand, Unilever, The New York Times, Arnold Worldwide, RooneyPartners, and others. Thank YOU, BIC Alum, for being so substantive and generous with your feedback!!
