Building Your Personal Brand

Building Your Personal Brand

Getting that perfect job offer is a struggle. But if you are up for the fight, it is a struggle that can be won. Most companies take for granted that you will have advanced levels of education, training, experience, and also first-rate professional certifications. More is expected if you are to be made an offer. In order to get the position that you have worked and studied and sacrificed for you have to show a coherent personal brand which demonstrates your accomplishments and is available in a publically available digital format.

The best companies today will take only those candidates who have a proven history of high professional performance. It is no longer enough to write down selected accomplishments on a resume. You need to be able to show concrete evidence that you are a thought leader in your field.

The reports, projects, and analytical content that you have generated for your old firm or for previous clients are the property of those companies. That is why you should take any ideas, concepts, and methods that you created yourself, or in collaboration with others, and develop them into something that can be published, with your name attached to it. This is a crucial step in building the kind of professional reputation and personal brand that can make you stand out from other candidates.

And it is the way things are going generally. In time, only those who can prove that they are thought leaders will be able to get the best job offers. Of course, you don?t have to get published in Forbes or the Harvard Business Review. There are hundreds of high quality, well-respected, and well-trafficked business and management sites online; and they are always looking for new articles and fresh perspectives.

You can use your writings to build your online reputation. And when you decide to go for the position you want with the company you want, you can, along with your resume, send links to your published work.

Inc. Magazine has a good piece on this topic. The article offers many excellent pieces of advice.

For example, it rightly states that building your personal brand involves using multiple media platforms to promote yourself. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are just some of the many sites that can be employed to do this. The article also points out the importance of being consistent. You want to present the same image on all of the sites you use. You should not show a polished and saavy business man on LinkedIn and a drunken party man on Facebook.

The full article can be read here. The bottom line is that the job market has changed. You can no longer rely on a well-crafted CV and a few recommendations to get you the job you want. You have to build your own brand. And you have to start by establishing yourself as an authority in your field.