How understanding your own personal brand is crucial to boosting your career!

Who ARE you?

Your personal brand is everything that makes you, you. This includes your expertise, your knowledge, your experience, your character. Every social interaction you make – actual or online – helps inform your brand. Use your personal brand effectively in your job hunt and it might help you win your next dream role.

What’s in a brand?

Have a good think about you. Your personal brand consists of:

• Your great strengths – what makes you special?
• Your singular talents – what can you do that on-one else does?
• Your unique qualities – what are you known for?
• Your successes (both professional and personal) – what’s your track record?
• Your audience – who are you doing this for, how do you present to the outside world and how would others describe you?

All these elements feed into your personal brand.

Out there are potential employers who will be impressed by your brand – but how can you use your brand to create the impact needed to impress?

Time to tune up…

Let’s start with your CV. Your first chance to establish your brand and differentiate yourself from other applicants is through your brilliantly written CV, reflecting your best ‘you’. It is crucial that the reader can immediately see your key achievements and gauge whether your personal qualities and character suit the role and will add value to their team/company.

Your social media profile is arguably the most important area of your brand. If you are going through a recruitment process, you need to ensure your professional pages (such as LinkedIn) are up to date, engaging, full of insight and demonstrate you are a motivated professional committed to your career. Make sure you are setting aside time to post regularly and get involved in relevant groups or discussions.

Thoroughly audit your personal social media, such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to remove any posts, tags or photos which paint you in a less than stellar light. Remember, employers are increasingly using information they are gleaning from your social media to help them make recruitment decisions.

Your brand is important as employers will be looking out for excellent team members who they hope will be outstanding company ambassadors. Therefore your business and personal brands are closely intertwined and your online presence should reflect this.

Now blow that trumpet!

Make a list of your biggest wins: anything that will “wow” potential employers and help them appreciate immediately how you will add value to their business.

Now, sprinkle that brilliance tactically throughout your CV and social media profiles.

Your second opportunity to unleash your personal brand is during interviews.

Practice weaving your key achievements into answers to interview questions so that your responses are natural. By rehearsing, you will also be sure that the interviewer is getting the most complete picture of you.

Hitting the high notes

Undertaking your own personal branding exercise will give you the clarity of vision to help narrow down the opportunities that are the right ones for you to pursue.

The process will also build you up, giving you the extra confidence to really reach for those dream roles – the ones which truly will boost your career.