The Importance of Defining, Designing — and Working — your Own Brand 

One of the most often-asked questions of HR professionals comes from friends, family, co-workers, the checker at the grocery store – you name it.  And it is always “Can you help me with my resumé?” I have given hundreds of hours of free career advice and edited hundreds of resumés, and found, after a huge number of them, that I was repeating advice focused on one single topic: brand.

Most people think of “brand” as applicable only to really big things – big, commercial things. The average Joe (or Julie, given the audience) striving for professional leverage does not necessarily consider themselves a brand to be loved, followed and sought after.  But everything that applies to a traditional, commercial brand applies to you as a brand – are you relevant, recognizable, consistent, properly positioned, sustainable, credible, inspirational, unique and appealing? If the answer is “no” to any of these things, I implore you to spend some time developing your brand.

Your personal brand should be a framework for your personal or professional journey: the things you have done and who you are combine together to tell your story, differentiated from others. After all, the labor market is tight, and there are hundreds of people competing for the same job; your brand is the way that you can stand out from the rest.

Brand Perception is A Recipe:  Identity + Knowledge + Skills + Experiences + Essence/Style

Let’s break it down:

Your identity is comprised of the values, beliefs, norms, patterns and practices woven throughout your personal experience. It is what makes you uniquely you, and it is what informs the choices you make to seek out the experiences and roles in your professional journey.

Next, the knowledge + skills + experiences (KSEs) are what you learn during those professional opportunities – the competencies you develop, the learning you undertake, the attributes that describe what you do when you execute your body of work.

Lastly, your “essence/style” talks about the qualitative aspects of what you do – it’s the “how” you get it done. Whether it is through collaboration, negotiation or transformation, the essence/style focuses on the way you do things in your body of work that only you do.

Brand Focus and the Power of Threes

Strong messaging platforms distill, and sum up, disparate thoughts into concepts, or messages. Strong brands carry those messages in threes.

Exercise:

• Read through your resume. Write down words that describe your strengths in each role you have had in the past.
• Jot down what it was that motivated you to do your best in that role.
• Now, take a look at the list – what words are similar?
• Bundle together like words, and whittle them down to the three that you can use to reflect you.
• Another way to think of this: what three words would you want a prospective employer to think of after you walk out the door after an interview? Are those three words present in the list you compiled?
• Can you talk credibly about how those three things showed up in your previous roles?

Lastly, piece together those examples for each word, and have a trusted friend help you clarify your statements so they are cohesive. This becomes your “Three Key Messages” script, and how you talk about those three words become your “Brand Statement.”   You want your brand to stick – so remember to keep it clear, concise, memorable, relevant and engaging.

Brand Integration, Voice and Awareness

What you determine as your “three messaging pillars” and how you want to be perceived should be present in every way that your brand gets to market. Your messaging pillars should be reflected and your identity clear in whatever way people engage with you – so that you build consistency and credibility. Trusted brands do better – and when people get the same in person, as they do online, as they do on paper – you will have succeeded in building your “brand voice” and tapping into every “instance of you” that exists out there.

This includes your physical persona – the way you dress, the way you carry yourself, the way you speak and engage with others.  I like to think of this as “best foot forward.” and that anyone who engages with you should walk away with the perception you envision them to have.  It should also be visible and tangible in other media – your resumé, social media profiles, and any other online presence.

Why is this important? Because when you neglect to tell the story of you, you leave an empty space.  In this fast-paced world, people will not hesitate to fill that vacuum in for you, often in ways you don’t want.  It is crucial therefore that you integrate your brand into your story, and ensure that your key messages and identity are interwoven with the experiences you have had that have brought you here, today.  In other words, connect your roles and experiences together in a cohesive way that show how they build, one upon the other, to either demonstrate how you arrived “here” — or plan to get “there.”  What other experiences or knowledge are you missing, and how are those things relevant for the next step on your journey? And how do your key messages and identity fit together to paint a picture in someone’s mind?

Hoping that people find you and discover how fantastic you are is a lovely idea, in theory. In practice, it is incredibly difficult.  It is important that you find interesting ways to build awareness of you. There are traditional ways, such as social media (Facebook and Linked In) but there are other ways to get your brand out in the market.

Traditional networking is the best way to get the fullest expression of your brand out there, but it isn’t scalable; there are only so many networking mixers you can go to! However, volunteering for a cause you are passionate about gets you exposure to others, and lets them experience your brand, first-hand, giving you a new way to connect with others outside of traditional professional boundaries.

You may also want to try your hand and writing, speaking or educating others; this is particularly great if you have a skill/capability that is highly sought after and provided in a way that is lower-key and non-confrontational.

The thought of creating your own brand can be daunting, for sure.  But when you break the endeavor into smaller chunks that you can tackle and use each building block to build, the idea becomes much more manageable.  Creating, finessing and sharing your brand not only differentiates yourself, but helps others see the uniqueness that you bring, and can sometimes be just the “oomph” you need to get from here to there. Happy branding!