You might often associate words like “promote” or “brand” with a company branding their product. While that holds true in every sense of the word, it’s equally important for job seekers to consider promoting and branding themselves while looking for opportunities. One of the ways to set yourself apart from your competition is the ability to communicate the value your experience will bring to the company through your personal brand. If you manage to build a consistent personal brand, a company will assume that you’ll be willing to put in the same effort into their brands.
What is a personal brand?
A personal brand is a unique combination of your skills, experience, and personality that you want the world to know about you. It’s the best way of telling your story, explaining your core values, and offering to discuss your passions that often may not come up in interview processes. Professionals that can successfully create their personal brands can change jobs faster. They manage to build a reputation within their industry which makes it easy to reach out to their network when they plan to move.
Promoting yourself can be difficult and uncomfortable but you are the only one who can do it for yourself so why not give it a go. Here are some strategies for building your brand and marketing yourself during your job search.
Get started in understanding your core values, ask yourself a few questions
- What about your job motivates you every morning?
- What sets you apart from your colleagues?
- What are you most passionate about?
Once you have discovered your core values, you can easily draft your personal career statement. Your statement will serve as your guiding light and will keep you in check as you continue your job search and promote yourself.
Consider all the tasks that you are good at and worthy to call as accomplishments. Try to recall all the job compliments you received from your managers, peers, and team members that you’ve collaborated with. This exercise helps you craft a less task-driven but more
accomplishment driven resume. Make it more impactful by telling a story. Apply the CAR Method (that stands for describing the Challenge, Action taken and Result achieved) to develop a narrative.
You always have 30-60 seconds to create the right impression and that could be in interviews or at networking events. To craft an engaging elevator pitch try keeping your target audience in mind and ask yourself
- Who you are?
- What do you do?
- Why should your audience care about your work?
Once you are confident about featuring your personal brand on your resume and cover letter. It’s time to go online to catch the attention of hiring managers and recruiters. Use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to craft and display a professional profile that’s frequently updated with information about your professional assets Some guidelines to keep in mind while establishing your online presence.
LinkedIn
- Create a well-optimised LinkedIn profile by leveraging every section
- Craft a content strategy plan and schedule posts daily or least thrice a week
- Make sure to engage with your audience by liking, sharing, or commenting on their post
- Use the LinkedIn code feature while connecting during in-person meetings or send in a personalized invite after an offline networking event.
- Leverage your network better by conducting informational interviews
Facebook
- Safeguard your profile by not setting all your activities open to public.
- Strategically use Life Events to post your achievements to your timeline
- Set those posts to public so recruiters can see them.
Twitter
- Schedule some Twitter time each day to reply, retweet, and converse.
- Use the list function to set up lists for leads, businesses, news sources, etc.
- Update your bio to reflect your personal vision statement.
- Take care of who you follow and who follows you.
YouTube
- Create a consistent intro and outro to your videos.
- Make sure that the lighting and background to your videos is polished and professional.
- Closely monitor comments.
- Include detailed descriptions of your videos.
Website
- Create a website to showcase your expertise
- Leverage the about me section to speak about your skills and experiences
- Publish regular and relevant blog articles to present yourself as a thought-leader within your industry
Your talents are equally important as your appearance and how you carry yourself does play a part in your job search journey. Research your industry and dress accordingly. After all, you as a complete package matters.
Both online and offline networking events are a great way to meet new people and learn about companies and their culture. Introduce yourself using your engaging elevator pitch. If you already have a list of targeted companies, look for events they might host or the different events their employees speak at. If it’s not possible to introduce yourself at the event, make sure to reach out by sending a LinkedIn connection request.
Conduct extensive research about the company, its products, and its culture. All the skills required to be successful at the job are well stated in the job description. To differentiate yourself, understand their pain points, and explain how your skills can benefit the company. Demonstrate your skills by talking about past real-time scenarios in which you’ve used your skills. Prepare for yourself for a remote interview the same way you would for an in-person interview. Leave no stone unturned.While seeking opportunities, it is important to resonate with the company values and culture besides the job role. Personal branding helps you reflect on your core values, skills, experience so you can land your next opportunity at a company that aligns with yours.
