5 Easy Steps to Create a Personal Brand

By Paul Cecala, GCDF, April 2, 2023

Note: Recently I have been experimenting with ChatGPT to assist with my writing and blogging. One question I asked it is, What are the best things I can do to create a personal brand for my job search? What follows is the Artificial Intelligence’s response in italic font and my additions in standard font. I have to say, with respect to this question, the response was insightful but not the full picture or concept.)

(Paul Cecala) Many recruiters and HR professionals will tell you that, even with low unemployment, they are still getting many more applicants for a position than they can realistically evaluate.

So, using Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and other forms of artificial intelligence, social media sites, personal referrals, and networking techniques helps everyone in the hiring process eliminate the candidates perceived as less appropriate from the candidate pool.

So, how does a candidate make themselves standout in the crowd?

(ChatGPT) Creating a personal brand can help you stand out in a crowded job market and showcase your unique skills and abilities.

Many of my clients get scared when I talk about their personal brand. According to https://personalbrand.com/, A personal brand is a widely recognized and largely-uniform perception or impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise, competencies, actions and/or achievements within a community, industry, or the marketplace at large.

Your personal Brand is all the information about you available to the public. This is your online or digital footprint. It is also all the things one can learn about you from non-digital sources like how you are viewed or experienced when you are seen around town, in print media, on the job, or comments made by others to their network. Personal Branding is your attempt to actively curate or influence the information available to the public about you.

Here are some of the best things you can do to create a personal brand for your job search:

1. Define your brand identity: Start by defining your unique value proposition, which is the combination of skills, experience, and personal qualities that make you stand out from other candidates. Use this as a foundation for your personal brand and develop a consistent messaging strategy that highlights your strengths and unique selling points.

I suggest to my clients that your value proposition is about how you are going to solve the challenges the employer has. Your goal is that when others think of you, they immediately come up with those qualities, competencies and experiences that prove you can solve the issues presented by the employer.

2. Develop a professional online presence: Create professional social media profiles, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, that showcase your skills, experience, and interests. Use a professional profile picture and banner and write compelling summaries that highlight your brand identity and career goals.

I go beyond what ChatGPT recommends here. I wholeheartedly agree with the need to have a strong professional profile on the social media site(s) most used by your target audience. (See the additional nuances I introduced here!) Who is your target audience? What social media brands are those hiring authorities you want reach active on? Likely LinkedIn is one, Twitter maybe another. For some professions it will likely be Instagram or Facebook.

Beyond this, though, the true value of social media comes when you engage and interact with people on social media. So, more than just having a presence or simply clicking like to posts, you need to post your own content, comment on other’s content, share posts with other people to encourage their comment. Ask your audience questions, solicit their opinions, and respond again to their comments. In essence, create a conversation with your audience.

When I started engaging more actively, I saw an immediate increase in the people who were reading my content, commenting on my comments, engaging with me. Once that began to happen, I also began to see people reaching out to connect with me for professional services and employment options. I try to limit my LinkedIn/social media time to just 30 minutes per day. One person you might look to as an expert in engaging is Ed Han (see https://www.linkedin.com/in/edmhan ).

3. Create a portfolio: A portfolio is a great way to showcase your work and demonstrate your skills and abilities. Depending on your industry, your portfolio can include writing samples, design work, case studies, or code samples.

As old-fashioned as it sounds, I do still recommend my clients create a portfolio. It can be digitally like a personal website, or via paper. To me the venue is not as important as having the portfolio put together and accessible to the hiring authority when they want it. Artists, graphic designers, architects, software developers and programmers clearly should have such a repository for their work. But so should the rest of us. You should have reference letters, performance evaluations, certificates/certifications, PowerPoint presentations, white papers, and any manner of other proofs of your skills, competencies, and successes. The portfolio is where you keep all these things for easy access when a potential employer wants to see them.

4. Network strategically: Attend industry events, join professional associations, and connect with people in your field. Be active on social media, comment on industry blogs and participate in online discussions to build your network and increase your visibility.

When I think of strategic networking, it means more than doing the things suggested here. Remember, networking is about building relationships. Why do you want to attend these events or be active on social media? I believe you do these things to become recognized and known by the hiring authorities you are interested in working for, as one significant way to build a relationship with them. While I do not want to sound like everything I do is to use the relationships I am cultivating, but the result is that I want these relationships to work for me help me access the roles and hiring authorities I want.

Usually that means I need to be ready to offer to help the people I am building relationships with. I am usually asking myself questions like: Who do I known that this person can benefit from meeting or knowing? What information do I have that I can offer to this person? How can I help resolve the challenges they face and make their lives a little better? The answers to these questions will give me the ideas I can bring to the relationship table, to be seen as a problem-solver, a valued consultant.

5. Personalize your job search: Tailor your resume, cover letter, and interview responses to align with your brand identity and the specific job you’re applying for. Show how your skills and experience match the job requirements and emphasize your personal qualities that make you a great fit for the role.

The key here is not just that you are personalizing your information to the specific position or interview, though you very much NEED to do this. It goes the one step further that ties EVERYTHING you are doing in your job search together with a single cohesive message across all the information about you available to the hiring authority.

Personal branding should not be taken lightly nor frivolously and cannot be so consuming that it overtakes your search for employment. I try to spend about 60-90 minutes per week on social media to help cultivate my brand. However, using these five guideposts as parameters for curating your own brand will improve your image in the world and give people reason to seek you out as the professional you are. The most important thing to do is simply think about what information is being put out there into the cosmos or ether about you; and ask, is that what you want others to know? If you take nothing more from this article than that mindset adjustment, your will significantly improve your personal brand.

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Paul Cecala

Paul Cecala can help you navigate to your success. Learn more about his services here.