264: Personal Branding — What You're Probably Doing Wrong and How to Get it Right
Personal Branding - What You're Probably Doing Wrong and How to Get it Right
In episode #175, I talked about articulating your brand on your resume. Here’s the link to that episode:
Today, I want to delve into the three biggest mistakes I see people making in their attempts to brand themselves — as well as the solution.
First, let’s talk about why personal branding is important — not just when you are looking for a new job, but throughout your career as you look to get promoted, get selected for key assignments, or look for opportunities to leverage your strengths through volunteer and/or Board positions.
Personal branding is important because:
It differentiates you — you avoid being seen as “generic” (interchangeable)
When people know what you’re about, they come to you with tony opportunities
It helps you make strategic career decisions — your brand becomes a lens through which you view the opportunities and choices available to you.
Mistake #1: You haven’t articulated your brand. At all.
Many of the resumes I review have no branding at all. The client just launches into their work experience, without any framework to help the reader understand and contextualize that experience.
It’s safe to say that most of these same people can’t articulate their brand verbally, either. Either they don’t understand the importance of having a personal brand, or they have no idea how to go about identifying their brand.
Let’s go back to those reasons for having a personal brand: When you don’t have one, you risk being viewed as generic (a low-cost substitute for the real thing), you miss out on the best opportunities because the decision-makers don’t know you would be good at that thing — or interested in doing it, and you may make impulsive or inauthentic career decisions without the guideposts of a personal brand.
Mistake #2: Your brand is non-differentiating.
Here’s the kind of thing I see most often on resumes of people who have attempted to identify their brand:
“Hard working team player” (as opposed to all the slacker anti-social people out there)
“Good with numbers” (on an accountant’s resume)
“Experienced professional looking for a position that leverages skills in BLANK, BLANK, and BLANK” (a thinly veiled objective statement)
Here are the things a brand ISN’T:
A description of skills and experience that are required of EVERY. SINGLE. CANDIDATE. (Math skills for an accountant, a teacher who says she is good with classroom management, a PR associate who is a good writer.) This is the equivalent of Nike marketing their athletic shoes as “they stay on your feet and you can walk in them.” Duh.
What YOU want. Think about Nike — you don’t see them advertising their athletic shoes as something they need you to buy so they can spend more money on R&D or give huge bonuses to their senior executives.
So sorry to be the one to break the news to you, but employers don’t care what YOU want — not really. They want to know what you can do for them.
Mistake #3: Your brand is words on paper that haven’t been translated to your actions and decisions.
We all know of companies who have their mission statement written on the walls of the company. Everyone can recite it by heart. It’s in the marketing materials.
BUT — they don’t walk the talk. They don’t make decisions with their brand in mind. In fact, they often do things directly opposed to their supposed brand.
How does this translate to you? Once you have done the work to identify a truly unique, differentiating brand for yourself, that brand should inform your decisions about which assignments to take on, which promotions to go after, how you treat people, which companies you seek employment with, and so much more.
For example, let’s say your brand is that you have consistently high retention rates for the employees you manage because you have an open-door policy, make an effort to spend 1:1 time outside of work with each team member at least once a quarter, and believe in on-the-spot praise when you see an employee doing good.
On a day when you aren’t at your best, you may be tempted to close (and lock) that office door. You may be in a hurry and be tempted to not take a moment to thank one of your employees for how he just handled a difficult customer. You may think you have too much on your plate to meet 1:1 with every employee this quarter.
No can do — your brand is your brand. You make decisions based on your brand.
The solution.
I have a saying, “You can’t read the label of the bottle you are in.” This applies especially to determining your personal brand — if you can get professional help from someone like me, I highly recommend it.
In lieu of that — speak to people who know you well, and in different capacities. What are you hearing consistently from them?
Here are some questions you can ask them:
What do you think I do especially well?
Is there something I have done that has especially impressed you, and why?
What do you see in me that you don’t typically see in someone of my age/profession/seniority level (whichever is most appropriate)?
Here are the components of a great personal brand:
It summarizes who you are, what you do, and why you do it.
It communicates your value and expertise to others.
It showcases your unique value proposition.
It is succinct and to-the-point.
Here are some examples:
“I am an HR manager with experience in industry, consumer product goods, and finance. I have led efforts to improve retention by as much as 40%, reduce time-to-hire by as much as 75%, and built a best-in-class HR function that serves as true business partners.”
“As an operations professional, I have been able to save my employers as much as $1.4M by introducing lean methodology, conducting employee movement analysis, and helping employees do their jobs more efficiently.”
This is mine:
“I help high-achieving, mid-career professionals land their dream job with best-in-class marketing materials, a job search strategy that optimizes their chance for success, and the interview skills to nail even the toughest job interview.”
One final word: How you present your brand will vary slightly depending on the medium. For example, you wouldn’t use the wording I just gave you in your resume, because there are personal pronouns. You also might vary your words slightly depending on your audience — a networking event with people in your same profession versus a networking event within your employer, for example.
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