Time and time again we hear professors say it: “Make yourself stand out”. Very often though we are taught how to make a statement for ourselves when competing for a job among thousands of other college students just like us. In order to distinguish yourself from other job applicants you have to capitalize on your personal brand.
What is your personal brand? Personal branding helps differentiate yourself in the market so you can obtain your objectives, in this case landing the job search.
1. What is your career objective?
It is important to establish your career goals first. Your brand ultimately embodies who you are and where you hope to be in the future so obviously this would vary from people wanting to become a director of media, VP of marketing, or someone wanting to develop their own non-profit organization in the future. Establish your ultimate goals clearly so your brand matches this goal. It is crucial for college graduates to define their career aspirations in order to obtain a job after graduation. You can attend interview after interview and not get callbacks or you can assess your goals and focus your goals and bag your dream job.
2. Research first.
Take a look at successful people who are in the position you seek and how they made it to where you want to be. It is important to look at both the good and the bad in how others have accomplished themselves to determine how you want to reach your goals. It is also important to research your competitors and their branding efforts. Remember those other thousands of graduates competing for your job? Find them. Research their branding methods and how you can improve yours to stand above the rest.
3. Who are you?
Before you can change your perception to the public you need to focus on your how people currently perceive you. An important thing to remember for upcoming graduates is to mind their social presence affects their professional presence. Clean up your social media and online presence. Remember that once its out there, it stays out there.
4. Who do you want to be?
An important question to ask yourself when creating your brand is: how large is the gap between who you are and who you want to be, and how do you fill the gap? After setting goals and doing research you should have a pretty good idea about how you want to be perceived in the professional world. It is important to remember however that your personal brand is an embodiment of who you are all together; this includes your professional goals and your personal attributes.
5. Set your game plan.
Your plan should include more than just changing your profile pictures and deleting risky tweets. Your personal brand should represent you as a whole product, not just your social media brand. This includes both tangible and intangible things. Because majority of our perception before a job interview is done online of course your social media and online presence need to portray what the interviewer is going to meet. This also includes a more tangible clean up routine for the non-virtual interview. If you’re like me your parents won’t stop nagging you about your crazy hair colors or your “new” nose ring you’ve had for a year. Our parents may not understand that this type of authenticity is not as obscene as in the past, however we can still learn a few professional techniques from our parents. A professional groom, dress, and mannerisms are appreciated when job searching.
6. Personalizing your brand.
You just spent four years or more experimenting and finding the real true you in college, so how do professionals expect you to disregard your authentic you? Contrary to popular belief, no one is asking you to put on a suit and pretend to be someone you are not. Authenticity is appreciated in the work force. Personality and individual characteristics are what separate people, even in the work force. So while you have created a professional presence online and in life, it’s okay to be proud of your tattoos, your obsession with pugs, or even that nose ring girl… rock it.
7. Manage your brand.
The greatest importance of personal brand management is consistency. Do not create a mismatched brand by conveying different attributes online versus yourself in person. Consistency in real life and online are important but as is fluidity online. Your LinkedIn account should be similar to your Facebook presence, as well as your Twitter and so on. A good tip to remember is to keep your profile picture on each medium the same, which is easier for employers to find you.
8. Evaluate your brand.
To be committed to a brand and say that it will never change is unrealistic. It is important to not change your brand often, but it is understood that people change and as do their goals. If your goal was to become a reporter for an online news source and you reached that then it may be ideal to create a new goal like executive editor and adapt your personal brand to portray that. Consistency is very important but keeping your brand up with changes is equally important.
BRAND YOURSELF 