Personal branding: How to Look Back on your Work History to Create a Killer Resume
Building your personal brand to a form that appeals to employers will help you get hired and get paid more when you do get hired. Your employers will percieve you as being a better asset for the company and will see you as indispensable. The first thing employers see about you is your cover letter and resume, which is why I am going to explain how to go over two aspects of your resume to improve your personal branding.
Work history
“Work history” does not mean dusting off your resume, nor updating your LinkedIn page; it means looking back at the jobs you’ve had, the projects you’ve worked on, and the people you’ve worked with.
Throughout your work life, you’ve been exposed to many work opportunities, situations, and challenges. What you’ve enjoyed, what you’ve been successful at, and what you have continued to choose to do all play a role in where your personal brand stands right now.
Taking stock of your entire work history will give you a sense of the beginning of the arc of your personal brand. What you’ve done up to this point is the launching pad for what you will do in the future.
Work history to-do list
- List all the jobs you have ever had.
- List all big projects you have worked on in the last five years.
- List all leadership positions you have held in the last five years.
- List all public speaking opportunities you have had.
- How would you describe yourself?
- How would you describe what you do?
- What are the areas you have worked in?
- Which areas have you enjoyed the most?
- What areas would you consider yourself an expert in?
Current Interests
The work history you’ve just assembled is a good starting point for your personal branding, but it is only that—a starting point. Whether you are in a job or a position that you enjoy, between positions, or looking to build your personal brand so that you can move to a new position you will enjoy more, the next step is to figure out your current interest set.
When you ask people what they are interested in, it is a lucky person who is able to say that what they are interested in is what they do at their job. Is this the case for you? If so, congratulations, and prepare to figure out how you can grow in that area. More likely, you’re not doing exactly what you would list out as what you’re interested in. Personal branding is not about completely changing what it is that you do. Nor is it a way of shifting within your field or using your current work as a springboard into the future.
When you think about your current interests, don’t just limit them to what you are interested in as part of your work life. Take this opportunity to expand into what you are interested in outside of work. In the process of building your personal brand, you can often set the stage for working some of your interests from outside of your work life into your personal brand, and eventually into the work that you do.
Current interests to-do list
- What are the most interesting projects you’ve worked on recently?
- What about them was interesting to you?
- What interests do you have outside of work?
- Which of these interests would you like to incorporate into your future work?
- If you could be working on anything right now, what would it be?
Think about your personal brand
When you do all of these things, think about your personal brand and how that effects how other people view you. There are lots of online resources about personal branding, but if you’re serious about getting that killer job then you should pick up a few books on Amazon or in a bookstore:
What is Personal Branding?
by Jim Kukral & Murray Newlands
About the Author: This is a guest post by Murray Newlands. Murray is an online marketing expert who founded Influence People, a San Francisco-based online marketing and blogger outreach consulting firm. Jim Kukral and Murray Newlands recently wrote What is Personal Branding? How to Create a Memorable & Powerful Brand that Sells YOU! to help people learn how to market themselves.
Want to be our next guest author? Click here for details…
14 Questions to Ponder When Building Your Personal Brand
If you are looking for a blog post that gives you all the answers, you’re going to be sorely disappointed in this one. As I was reading a post over at PeiProfit.com on branding, it got me thinking about how and why it is important to build a personal brand. And as I thought through the “how’s” and “why’s” I found I was asking myself more questions than I was answering, and therein was the learning for me.
Below is a list of questions I came up with when thinking about building a personal brand. Possibly I will follow up with some answers, but for now I think I will just leave you with questions.
Questions to Ponder When Building Your Personal Brand
What is my passion?
What is my purpose?
Am I unique?
What am I already known for?
Am I influential?
Can I gain influence?
How am I perceived?
Can I alter the perception of me?
What makes me authentic?
What is my vision for me?
What is my mission?
What does my brand say about me?
What do I want my brand to say about me?
What am I doing to strengthen my brand?
Am I missing something? Please add it in the comments section.
Photo credit: Stéfan’s photostream
Building Your Brand By Branding Yourself
No doubt about it, brand and brand awareness is huge! For the most part branding is why we choose Coke over Pepsi, or like Nike instead of Reebok. Branding has us consumers believing there is a big difference between Ford and Chevy, or that Miller is better than Budweiser. For large companies the equity in their brand is priceless, and sometimes the sole differentiator between products. But for a small business entrepreneur the brand dynamic is much different.
Want to focus your efforts on the one thing that will blow your business wide open?
It’s not the brand of your products, or services you should concentrate on, it’s the brand of YOU that will take your business to the next level.
That’s right, it doesn’t matter what you do, sell, market, or peddle, the way to make it HUGE is by branding yourself!
Small business entrepreneurs are in a unique situation to leverage their brand more than GE, Coke, HP, Dell, or any of the other big name businesses in the United States. Do you know why? Small businesses by their very nature are able to connect and interact with their customer base on a much more intimate level than Budweiser ever can dream of.
Think about it. When you are doing business, like it or not, for the most part your customers are buying YOU. That’s right, when you don’t make the sale, don’t close a consulting contract, or somebody walks out of your store empty handed it’s not the products or services they are turning their back to, it’s you. I know that hurts to hear at first, but by building your own brand you can change that.
So how do we go about building our personal brands?
1. Be Transparent and Be Yourself
A large component of brand building, is building a trust in your product or service. Branding yourself is no different. People build trust over time when they feel like they know someone, and are not being fed a line of BS from them. Be yourself, never try to emulate or become a charachture of what you think people want to see. Also, be transparent. Let your customers know you, know what you stand for, let them have a peak behind the curtain at the Wizard of Oz once in a while. The more they identify with the real you, the more likely they are to do business with you, and the stronger your personal brand becomes.
2. Become an Expert in Your Field
Another way to say this is…know your stuff! This doesn’t mean you need to know everything there is to know about widgets in order to sell them. But it does mean that you know enough to become a trusted authority on widgets in your region. How does this help build your brand? You may not be the national expert on widgets, but when your customers feel they know and trust you personally (thanks to #1 above) they are more likely to be a customer of yours even if you’re not the world renowned expert on widgets…just know enough to answer their questions and you most likely have their business.
3. Never Fake It
Nothing will erode your brand, and cost you more customers, than when you are faking it. What do I mean by faking it? If you are not 100% into what you are doing, the message you are sending, or the product you are endorsing your customers will know it immediately and shun you like the plague. When people can see you love what you are doing, and are totally into your work, it becomes contagious. People love dealing with people who love what they do, and I am sure there is some law of attraction that proves this. Don’t love what you are doing? Stop doing it, and do something you do love.
4. Network, network, network
Leverage any and all networks available to you in order to build your brand, demonstrate your expertise, and let people get to know you (#1-3 above). This could be brick and mortar business networks, online social media outlets, or any other medium where you can get in front of people who can help build your business and your brand. How many of you get a friend request from somebody on Facebook you don’t know, yet accept their request anyway because when you check them out they have a million friends? Most people do that because we think “hey all these other people are following them, I should too”. Same thing will happen with your business network and your personal brand. Because everyone is following you more people will want to follow you, thus strengthening and reinforcing your brand. Another law of attraction in action.
5. Do the Little Things
I can’t stress enough how important it is to do the little things. The little things aren’t really little! When you do them consistently, they become one big thing and that in an of itself can differentiate you from your competition which is what branding is all about. When building your personal brand you want to stick out. Make that email, phone call, or follow up just a little different, a little better. Stand out just a little more than your competition and guess who is going to get the business? I say “little better” on purpose, it doesn’t take something drastic to get the attention of your customer, the little things are the big things!
If you apply the five concepts above you will see your personal brand start to emerge, and the brand equity you will be creating is priceless. Nothing will blow your business wide open more than being a brand unto yourself. Coddle and foster your brand with the same care and attention you devoted to starting up your business and it will quickly become your number one asset.
What have you done to brand yourself?
