How to Build a Career Brand
What is the crux of your career? What is the soul of your work? In this video, I speak to the importance of identifying, claiming and marketing your answers.
Discover Your Personal Brand: A Step-by-Step Guide
People send me resumes all the time and resumes are very flat document that demonstrates what a person’s normally accomplished up until that point. But it doesn’t necessarily tell me how they were expert.
When marketers start to build their product or service, they’re trained to think of an avatar who their ideal audience is and who their customer is down to the most minute detail. It’s a 40-year-old lives in a urban environment. They may have come to the United States from another country, most likely India. They attended university there, got high grades, completed their Masters and they are working as a cybersecurity expert for a global consulting firm. I’m just using that as an example of the detail to which we could go down the road. We could continue by talking about who he’s married to. how many children he has, where he lives, a whole host of other things.
But, in thinking of yourself as the potential Avatar, What are you strengths? What are you really expert at? Where could you lend credibility to an organization?
In talking about yourself as a brand (because that’s really what we’re talking about), you need to start thinking about building reputation and credibility and marketing yourself because marketing yourself is the branding process. Establishing yourself as the expert is the launch point.
So these days it’s a lot easier to do. So, for example, here I am talking to you as I have done 1300+ times online on video. I also host podcasts I also publish ezines about job search. I have worked in search for more than 40 years. I filled over twelve hundred positions on a full time basis, tons of consultants assignments. Part of what I’ve accomplished comes from my branding efforts and when you think of “The Big Game Hunter” which is the brand I’ve worked on developing that differentiate myself from all the other recruiters, talent acquisition specialists, Head of North American whatever that many recruiters title themselves with, I went out and trademarked that term and have been working on building a brand to appear as an expert.
Personal Branding Shouldn’t Be Neglected
So I’ve been writing, first blogging about the job market since August 2001. I’ve attended meetings and workshops where I have talked to individuals. I market my successes readily. I’ve appeared on other people’s podcasts, interviews, live streams …a whole host of other places. I’ve got a professional website which I developed while I was associated with another firm. So, I started putting out all my content, ideas, and jobs I was recruiting for, very early on in the website game. And when the firms I was associated with didn’t get websites, I did and developed a content website that also had information about jobs I was recruiting for.
Now I’m talking about myself but I want you to think of it for yourself. I don’t expect you to be working on the same schedule that I am. But what’s difficult about writing an article once a month for LinkedIn and marketing it’s your followers or to the groups that you are involved with? What’s difficult about logging on for 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn and getting involved in some of the groups that you have joined and offering people advice? What’s difficult about attending trade groups for your area of specialization? I’m not talking about traveling to places. I’m talking about very simply attending them locally. You can go to meetups and start on a local level to start establishing relationships.
Now, when you think about how people find jobs the statistics are that 70 percent of positions are filled through networking. But 70 percent of the 70 percent are filled through what are called weak ties– People that you have a casual relationship with or people who are friends of friends of people that you know well.
So you know when you think of how you start building your expertise . . . Well, that’s going to involve training and experiences. But how you appear as an expert to others comes from marketing, promoting, and branding yourself. It is very easy these days to build a web web site–$15 for a domain name. Do not use something like (I will use my own name) JeffAltman. whatever the host is.com for one of those services will give you a subdomain on their main domain. Don’t do that. Just go for a traditional website. Try to have it use your name. Put your resume there as well.
Recruiters love to find resumes online and they think they’re very smart when they do so. Make sure your resume, just like your LinkedIn profile, is SEO optimized.
By the way, one thing I learned about LinkedIn recently. If you lose your job do not put a termination date. What it tells LinkedIn search engines to do is push you down further in the search if you are not working.
So, a lot was thrown in there but your job is not just to build your brand when you’re aggressively looking for work but to continue to build your brand way after you found work, to make that part of your continuing effort to brand and market and promote yourself as an expert throughout your career. If you do that jobs come in and opportunities will be coming to you and salaries will be growing for years to come. If you don’t you lurch from job search to job search, always struggling to find interviews, always struggling to be seen as someone valuable and that’s always the harder way to play.
Why Should Branding Make a Difference to You?
ABOUT JEFF ALTMAN, THE BIG GAME HUNTER
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter is a coach who worked as a recruiter for what seems like one hundred years. He is hired to provide No BS Career Advice globally. That can involve job search, hiring staff, management, leadership, career transition and advice about resolving workplace issues. Schedule a discovery call at my website, www.TheBigGameHunter.us
He is the host of “No BS Job Search Advice Radio,” the #1 podcast in iTunes for job search with over 2500 episodes.
I do a livestream on LinkedIn, and YouTube (on the JobSearchTV.com account) Tuesdays at 1 PM Eastern. You can send your questions about job search, hiring better, management, leadership or to get advice about a workplace issue to me via messaging on LinkedIn or in chat during the approximately 30-minute show.
Website: www.TheBigGameHunter.us (schedule a paid coaching session or free discovery call)
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/TheBigGameHunter
Courses: www.TheBigGameHunter.us/courses
Main YouTube: www.JobSearchTV.com
Instagram: http://instagram.com/jeffaltman
Facebook: http://facebook.com/nobscoachingadvice
Podcast: anchor.fm/nobsjobsearchadviceradio
Video Podcast: Spotify
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffaltmancoach
Medium: jeffaltmancoach.medium.com
Resume & LinkedIn Profile critiques www.TheBigGameHunter.us/critiques
My courses are available on Skillshare
CareerFitter offers a free test and if you want career recommendations, upgrade to the paid version https://www.TheBigGameHunter.us/career
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