Career Branding: Building Your Brand To Take Your Career To The Next Level
- By Naff Branding
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- 24 May, 2018
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You want to be the best at what you do.
You want people to choose you over your competition. You have a plan about where you want to go and it sounds fantastic. How do you get there, and how do you get people to see what you see in yourself? By building a brand.
What is career branding?
Building a brand is a purposeful action that makes you stand out from the rest.
Building your brand defines who you are when it comes to your career. It tells those who need the skill or product you have to offer that you are the best choice. Not only that, but it shows the world that you have unique qualities to bring to the table.
When I say you need a brand, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Do you think of big companies or products like McDonald’s or Tide Laundry Detergent? What about people with stellar personal brands like Tony Robbins and Arianna Huffington? Do you picture yourself walking through the grocery store and looking for the brands of the products that you like?
This mindset is a good start to understanding career branding. There is a reason why we choose the things we do when faced with many choices. When you think about your brand, you want people to look at you as the best choice when weighing all of the competitive options.
So, what is your brand? You don’t know? Let’s start building a brand for you.
How do you start building a career brand? You begin by looking at yourself and writing down some key points that make you who you are, not just professionally, but personally. Building a brand is akin to telling the story of your life as an individual. Pull ahead of the pack by giving others a solid glimpse of what they will get by choosing you.
As you think of your career goals, ask yourself the following questions:
1. What problems are you able to solve?
How do you know what you have to offer if you don’t know what problems you will excel in solving for your potential employer? If you are a nurse, are you fantastic at starting IV’s? What issues can you explain that make you stand out from others in your field? You must know and acknowledge to yourself how valuable you are to market yourself to others as the best choice adequately .
Building a brand is about pinpointing problems you can solve that are unique to the organization with which you are involved.
2. What are you good at that others have a hard time with?
If you have a unique skill that others may not be very good at, you have a fantastic chance to set yourself apart from everyone else.
I know a nurse who told me that she hated sticking needles in people, but a big part of her job was to start intravenous lines on patients who needed them. She took numerous IV classes over the years so that she wouldn’t have to “stick” her patients more than once to get the job done. Thirty years later she is an expert and has used this skill to get the jobs that she has wanted. She realized early on that managers want nurses with excellent IV-starting skills, so she took the initiative to make this valuable skill part of her brand.
Having a skill that you excel at is an integral part of your brand and sets you above your competition.
3. How do you help people?
Your career brand should showcase you as a leader who can help others succeed in the organization. To lead in your field, you should have the necessary knowledge, but you also have to be able to be of service to others. Are you willing to help others do what they need to do? Do you have the desire and the skill set to help others?
4. What drove or inspired you to become involved in your field?
Why do you do what you do? Do you know? Good. Write it down and expound upon it. It is essential to understand why you started the career you did. It is also vital for it to be a substantial part of building a brand that tells others who you are. When organizations look at your resume, make them see you: not just your skills, not how you can make them better, but also your unique driving force for doing what you do. Become excited about what you do, and you will excite them as well.
5. You are Not your job
You are unique. You are not your career. Who you are as an individual is the driving force behind your chosen career and the foundation of building a brand that will excite organizations about having you on their team.
Your life experiences are a part of you that makes everything you are passionate about uniquely you. Organizations aren’t looking for automatons. They desire real people who have had life experiences that have made them leaders in their career field. The experiences you have gone through in your life have seeped into everything you do. Knowledge, skills and life experiences set the stage for uncovering what your brand is.
6. What is your passion?
Do you want to build a fantastic career brand? What would you do if money wasn’t an issue? Now, can you make it a career? Can you create a solid career brand around your passion and make your passion your career? Do you love to bake? Start building your brand around baking. Are you a phenomenal writer? Start building your brand around writing.
Look at your talents and passions and see if they can be your key to your career brand and a fulfilling career.
Final Thoughts on building a career brand
Today's market is fiercely competitive: you need an edge. Building a brand that makes you shine brighter than your competition is crucial. If you are trying to create a brand, I am here to help. Call me. More pieces of the puzzle are coming Let’s work on building your unique career brand together.
The year was, yeah, you don’t need to know that, and my college internship was as a promotions coordinator at a now-debunked radio station in Minneapolis. Now I can imagine you are reading this thinking, you lucky girl, I bet that was fun! If you consider driving a massive van around town, filled with crap and a million empty cups, going to events in weird places, and hauling things around, well, then yes, I was lucky. Now there were some perks. I met a few celebrities and did taste what it meant to be an event coordinator, which I wanted to do after school. It was an unpaid position, but I did get college credits for it, and more importantly, it was a job close to what I wanted to do, in the market I wanted to be in.
This experience was so valuable, even if at one event I had to sit at a used car dealership for a live remote or haul hair dryers in the Mall of America. It taught me responsibility, what an office setting is like, and that work is well, just that work. But most importantly, it helped me meet connections and get my first real career job when I graduated from college.
Forbes quotes a study that says a college graduate and working at a paid internship shows, 60% of the time, that internship will turn into a job offer.
If you are a parent of a college-age kid, have you asked them about their internship plans? If you are a college kid reading this, what is your plan? Have you started applying? Internships bring real-world experiences and help fill up a resume. Ideally, look for a paid internship and one that t college credits can be used to. Make sure to checked in with the career services department to understand credits and look for opportunities with alumni. Can you make any introduction to anyone in your network to see what openings they have? Ensure you or your student knows what areas they want to work in, which helps reach out to your network. The more specific you can be, the better.
Indeed lists of their top 12 reasons internships are beneficial. To get these beneficial internships, a quality resume is necessary. Do you have a resume that will stand out? Parents, does your child have one?
Make sure the resume is:
- Free of errors
- Shows a little personality
- Clearly articulates their jobs and activities, Captain of the golf team, make sure to list that!
- The resume should highlight the course load, any employment, volunteer positions, and collegiate sports.
If you are ready to start applying for internships, reach out to beth@naffbranding.com for a review and feedback for $49. Let’s tell your story and get you that first job.
Stay tuned for part two of this series as I discuss why you need to hire interns.
It’s the holiday season. For some, it means putting up decorations, fretting about family coming over, more holly, more jolly and more obligations. It means that you will be out and about more. Are already dreading your partner's company holiday party? Let’s think differently about the holidays. Focus on your career strategy, don’t focus on how many more calories you are going to eat.
In today’s modern digital world, very few job seekers have the opportunity to physically bring a resume to a potential employer. Gone are the days of being able to take advantage of that initial face-to-face interaction with a smile, a handshake, and a witty anecdote.
Instead, you upload your resume and hope like bloody heck that it will make it past a gatekeeper and into the hands of someone who is in a position to hire you. I am here to help. I can give you advice and tips to improve your resume and get past the gatekeeper. Contact me for help in making your resume stand out and be the best that it can be.
The truth is, you likely have about one minute of someone’s attention once your resume lands in front of them, so make it count. With all you have to think about as you craft your resume, don’t lose sight of the small details that matter. Little things like the proper use of punctuation and capital letters are critical in this 60-second window. Don’t miss out on a job opportunity just because YOU COULDN’T CAPITALIZE PROPERLY. (Like that. Don’t do that.)
