A brand is your BOAST. A Positioning Statement is HOW you use your Brand (your boast).
Branding is not just for businesses. It is the word that has now replaced ‘making your mark’ in the personal career-advancement world. Branding yourself is essential in showing your uniqueness. But, I like to say, personal branding is also about reaching further with emotional factors such as situation handling, and, what innovation and insightful thought you can bring to a business.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is also when you get to pick the things you like to do. Because the dirty little secret is that when you work at something you like, you succeed at it.
ANOTHER IMPORTANT NOTE: Like a positioning statement, your brand identity should easily ‘start a discussion’. What is the one thing you can say about yourself to get employers interested to hear more about you and your ideas? Figure it out and build your brand identity around it.
So, Here’s an idea on how to start building your personal brand:
- Analyze your previous work experience; focus on your roles and responsibilities and identify where you were most effective.
- Pick the roles or tasks you enjoyed doing the most. Dirty little secret: we excel at what we like to do.
- Based on what you find in #1 and #2, explain what was unique about how you handled your responsibilities.
- Understand and quantify the growth that your work contributed to the companies you worked for. If you brought in a new client, can you show how much this contributed to the bottom line? You can say for example, ‘brought in a new client worth $50,000 of business yearly’. Thinking in such terms effectively demonstrates the impact and results of your efforts.
- Identify areas where you think improvements could be made. Think this through clearly because employers may dwell on this area as they are keen to know if you are likely to repeat the same mistakes.
- Re-read the experience list you crafted in #1.
- Re-read the list of things you like to do.
- Go through your list of where you think improvements could be made.
- Once satisfied, come up with ideas that show how your experience and interests will grow your target employer’s business and improve systems.
- Lastly, identify why people want to work with you. You can focus on questions such as:
- Are you easy to ask a question?
- Do you have a good sense of humor?
- Do you handle stressful situations with ease? Include relevant examples to support this claim.
The Bottom Line
How to put all this into a Brand Identity:
By now, you have collected your thoughts on your experience, your interests, and, developed ideas on how you could use these to offer solutions to further a company in which you want to advance your career, or, an industry you are re-entering.
This is the way job searches are conducted today. You need to establish your brand so you are not in the dark, therefore, this is worth the time and effort. It’s okay if you have to step away. But always to go back to it until you finish.
Remember, your personal brand is not only a leadership requirement that lets people know who you are and what you stand for, but it’s also a tool that allows you to show your attributes and your visions to really make an impact on your interview.
So, answer this question: (practice writing it to make it so concise that it can be delivered in a short elevator ride because sometimes that is all the time you have to catch an employer’s attention.)
My brand is __________
Example:
I am a 30-year old marketer using my strategic, copywriting, and sales choreography background to arc individuals into better approaches for securing positions in companies rich in leadership and culture.
For more on coaching and helping through this process from Vermilion click here
I hope this has helped you. Please let me know so I can address things I didn’t know you were going through.
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