Because you’ve done the branding work, you’ve clearly defined and incorporated the following personal marketing imperatives into your job search and career management toolkit:
- Your vision and purpose
- Your values and passions
- Your top personal attributes
- Your top motivated skills (the ones you love doing and excel at doing)
- Your SWOT Analysis (Strengths – Weaknesses – Opportunities – Threats)
- How you’re uniquely qualified to meet the needs of your target employers (if job hunting) or current employer.
- What differentiates your promise of value to your target audience over your peers.
You know who you are, what you’re capable of, and the value you offer in the marketplace. You’re ready for job search when it comes, and you rely on your brand once you’re in that next gig.
In job search, defining and communicating your executive brand:
1. Helps you reconnect with your values and passions so that you can move toward the kind of work you love doing.
2. Empowers you to gain clarity about your authentic self and the combination of personal qualities and qualifications differentiating the unique promise of value you offer over your competition in the job market.
3. Forces you to be introspective and reflective, and to examine the weaknesses that may be holding you back.
4. Helps you identify your competition and target audience, so that you can create differentiating personal marketing communications designed to resonate with them.
5. Beckons you to solicit feedback from those who know your value best (peers, management, staff, employees, clients, mentors, etc.), helping you understand the true measure of your brand — how you’re perceived by the external world.
6. Makes your personal marketing documents (resume, bio, LinkedIn profile, etc) a more interesting and powerful read. Compared to a traditional executive resume, communicating your brand on paper or web page casts a richer and deeper impression of who you are, compelling people to want to meet you.
7. Helps you take control of your real-life and online identity, and the way you’re perceived by others.
8. Generates chemistry for you when networking and helps decision makers assessing you more readily determine whether you are the good-fit candidate they’re looking for.
9. Empowers your interviewing finesse. You’re pumped by what differentiates you from the others being interviewed, what unique value you bring, and how you’ll best add value at that company.
10. Your strategic brand communications plan – expressed clearly, consistently and constantly across all channels – helps you position your value proposition directly in front of your target audience and stay top of mind with them.
11. Helps you establish yourself as an industry subject matter expert and thought leader within your area(s) of expertise.
Once you land that good-fit job, your executive brand is like career management insurance. You draw on your brand and what you know about yourself.
For the long term, knowing your brand and consistently communicating it:
12. Helps you ease into the new job more seamlessly because you were hired based on the authentic “you” and the understanding that you will fit in with management and your team.
13. Helps you know your limitations, so that you lead with your strengths instead, as you progress through your career.
14. Precedes you and reinforces your reputation. Your brand can be the deciding factor in advancing your career to the next level, and matching you with good-fit opportunities.
15. Establishes you as the “go-to” person for your areas of expertise. People know they can always rely on you for certain things.
16. Empowers you daily, as you deal with people and go about your work day, with that same brand “chemistry” that defines the way you operate.
17. Boosts your confidence. Understanding what is authentically you, your value and what you’re capable of delivering leads you to embrace business opportunities that will positively impact your company’s profitability, growth and reputation.
18. Compels you to use your strengths to help your teams achieve their own career goals and benefit the company.
19. Guides you to make the right career decisions for you, and the right business decisions for your company.
20. Keeps you top of mind with key decision makers when they need to select the best people to lead future projects and initiatives.
21. As your brand reputation gains traction and visibility, internally and externally, more people with opportunities will be naturally drawn to you, leading you to career advancement and fulfillment.
Keep in mind that your brand may need tweaking, as your career progresses and responsibilities shift, but your core brand attributes will probably remain the same.
This article appears in the new Personal Branding for Dummies® book, by Susan Chritton.
Related posts:
10 Keys To a Memorable Personal Brand
Top 10 Executive Resume Branding Tips
How Good Is Your Executive Brand Elevator Pitch?
photo by cogdogblog
