What is a personal brand?
A personal brand is a widely recognized impression others have of you based on your skills, experience, accomplishments and expertise in a particular industry. Through strategic personal branding job, seekers can better reach potential employers and influence how these employers perceive them.
How to brand yourself:
- Assess your current brand
- Identify passions and goals
- Define your unique value proposition
- Set a target audience
- Publicize your brand
- Assess your current brand
At this point, you probably don’t have an official brand. Before making any changes, run your name through google and see what pops up. Suppose you have a LinkedIn, other social media or a website. In that case, you’ll want to see what impression the information currently available says about you and does it align with your goals. When doing this, get in the mindset of a hiring manager. Based on your current professional persona, would you want to hire yourself? You can also consider reaching out to peers or connections already in your network to give their own feedback on your current personal brand.
- Identify career goals
What motivates you to get up and go to work every day? What do you hope to accomplish in five or ten years? Having a solid grasp of your career goals will help in many aspects of creating your brand. When you’ve established your desired career path, it will be much easier to determine your target audience, craft brand messages, create original content, and choose which channels to communicate through.
- Define your unique value proposition
You want to stand out from your competitors. What do you have to offer that others don’t? For example, at Live Assets, one of our value propositions is our human-first approach to hiring. There are many staffing firms, but our recruiting methods and strategies make us different. The same idea applies to personal brands. Analyze your competition and look for gaps in the market. If you notice similarities in brand statements or the content they create, try to avoid matching these brands. Review your technical and soft skills and see if any match the market gaps.
- Set a target audience
To brand yourself more efficiently, determine and define your target audience. A target audience is a specific group of people or population segment most likely to utilize your skills and services. In other words, what employers are you looking to work for?
To determine your target audience, you first need to identify your area of expertise. For example, if you’re a freelance web developer, are there clients in a particular industry you want to service? Acquiring this information will help you better focus your brand and reach out to your audience more effectively. If you haven’t settled on a particular industry or field, your goals and passions that you previously identified can be of help.
- Publicize your brand
Once you’ve established your professional persona, it’s time to put it into action. Like any other brand, you’ll want a website and some other form of an online presence.
Just like any other company has a website to build their brand, so should you. A website is a great way to showcase past projects and back up your brand. With the various website-building platforms out there, it’s easy for anyone to create a personalized website. Your website should include an updated resume, bio, and other relevant content that reinforce your brand. Include your personalized URL on your resume and social media to gain traction.
Social media has become a handy tool for employers and job seekers alike and can help you establish your brand and build your reputation. If you’re unsure which channels to utilize, your best bet is to start with LinkedIn. Slowly update your social profiles by adding a professional headshot, sort through and archive pre-existing content that doesn’t align with your brand, and include a bio or brand statement. You can create content, share industry news, connect with colleagues, and more on your chosen platforms. You ultimately want to use these channels to get you noticed and set yourself apart from competitors.
The Best Recruitment Agency in Toronto | About Live Assets | IT Staffing Solutions
Live Assets is a boutique IT Staffing/Recruiting firm specializing exclusively in building IT teams of excellence for the Information Technology sector.
We are a small, but productive team that works closely together and has had a 96% success rate for the past number of years!
We have a diverse number of clients and industries and focus on both full-time and contract I.T. opportunities.
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