This post, Cultivate Your Personal Brand to Land That Job, is another in our series providing insight and action steps for those seeking a career in branding. Julie Cottineau gives her top tips and shares insights from her 25+ years at great companies such as Grey, Interbrand and Virgin. You can read more entries in this Career series HERE.
Whether you realize it or not, you are a brand. When you are competing for a job it is not just about your education and your skills, it is also about what’s unique in the way you think, the way you work and the things that you are passionate about. People hire people, not resumes.
Like professional brand-building, your personal brand needs management. You need to actively build, manage and update your personal profiles. Make sure you frequently Google yourself (you can bet prospective employers will) and work toward presenting a professional image.
But beyond professional, you should be able to get across a sense of your passion for branding and marketing. A great way to start is to perform a SWOT analysis on the brand of YOU. In this exercise you identify your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and create a plan on how to continue to build your personal assets and close any credibility gaps.
For example: you say you are passionate about brands on your resume, but are there examples to support this?
Take action to close this gap. Some examples of how you can do this: update your Linkedin profile to include brands that you are passionate about. Start a branding blog or comment/guest blog for others. Create a professional Twitter account that tweets about new and interesting brands and/or re-tweets interesting branding articles from others. Join any branding, marketing, or entrepreneur clubs at school. Intern or volunteer for a brand you are passionate about.
Read more about Making Your Brand Personal HERE.
Brand School, our highly effective, premier branding program will give you the insight and tools you need to express your professional and personal brands. Receive more information about Brand School’s next session and get free brand-building tools and tips when you join our mailing list.
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“Julie gave great examples in Brand School that inspired me to think outside the box. I especially appreciate her attention to everyone’s brands and her insightful comments. Thank you!” – Jamie Lacroix, Marketing Department for a Non-profit
