Personal Branding

Setting yourself apart from the crowd

Video

• Personal Branding Step 1: Know Yourself ( Time 2:29)

• Effective personal branding requires that you know yourself. Brands are based in authenticity.

• In this video for Personal Branding TV, William Arruda shares with you some questions you can ask yourself so you can unearth your personal brand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi572rshvgg&feature=relmfu&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

There’s only one of YOU

• The branding expressed in your resume should capture your career identity, authenticity, passion, essence, and image.

Promote Yourself• You can have an amazing brand, but if no one

knows about it, you are not going to have much success with your career development. And no one more than you has more reasons to promote your brand.

Find Your Voice

• Throw modesty out the window? There is a fine line between bragging and promoting -- and you need to learn it -- but it's always better to err on the side of promoting your brand than not

Build Relationships

• Nothing in marketing is more powerful than a promotion tool called word-of-mouth, which can be defined as what people say about you.

• Thus, nothing is more powerful in building your career brand than what your network of contacts -- your friends, colleagues, customers, clients, and former bosses -- say about you and your set of skills, education, and accomplishments.

• A message woven throughout your resume that remains consistent and does not contradict the image you want to project.

• Every word, every bullet point should support the branded message you intend to convey.

A branding statement that defines who you are,

• your promise of value, and why you should be sought out.

• A branding statement is a punchy "ad-like" statement that tells immediately what you can bring to an employer.

• Your branding statement should sum up your value proposition, encapsulate your reputation, showcase what sets you apart from others, and describe the added value you bring to a situation.

Keep Strong Networks

• And keeping your network strong involves nothing more than relationship building. Keep in good contact with your network and be sure they know of your most recent successes.

• But the best brand-builders don't stop with their current network; these folks are in constant network-building mode.

• Search out new professional associations as well as the growing number of online networking communities.

• Employers will Google you before they even invite you to an interview. (Your current employer probably has an eye on what you’re doing, too.)

• And when you interact with people, both online and offline, they’ll build up an image of who you are over time

And here’s where you come in:

• You want to be in control of all of those impressions.

• Why leave your professional reputation to chance, when you can be your own PR guru and manage your image?

It’s About YOU

• Your personal brand is all about who you are and what you want to be known for.

• And while that’s a pretty broad concept, I’m going to break down the process for building your brand into a few easy steps, which we’ll cover over the next few days.

Why change?

• Personal Branding can replace the “Objective” statement as a more strategic approach to engaging the reader’s attention.

Focus: Why should I hire YOU?

• A current and well-written resume focuses on answering the employer’s question “Why should I hire you?”

• It should quickly and concisely describe your qualifications for the position and the unique value you will bring upon your appointment.

• While many students are challenged to describe themselves as a product, a resume is your marketing document and must embrace the use of Personal Branding to sell your abilities and entice the reader into granting an interview.

•

Why the importance?

• Consider this statistic: – an HR professional spends a maximum of 30 to 60

seconds conducting an initial resume assessment. • It is therefore critical the resume is structured

and strategically composed to maximize the impact made upon the reader in such a short timeframe.

Why Personal Branding?• The secret to compel

hiring managers to seek you out is to identify, develop, and market your Personal Brand.

• Everyone has a unique Personal Brand whether they are aware of it or not.

IT’S ALL IN YOUR SELF-PACKAGING

• How you are presented. What qualities you have that make you unique from your peers.

• The benefits those qualities have to an employer.

• The value proposition they create and return on investment they offer to a prospective employer.

• And leveraging your unique brand across marketing channels and all of your business communications to get the word out.

PERSONAL BRAND MARKETING• It is important to convey your Personal Brand message in

all of your career marketing materials and business communications, including your Cover Letter and Resume, your Web Resume, your Social Networking Profile, your online identity, and throughout all of your networking.

Have Your Brand Available

• By having your brand developed into three versions: – your short and– long bios and – your elevator pitch,

• you will have all forms of your brand message readily available to copy and paste when and where you need it.

Personal Branding Compels HiringManagers to Seek You Out

• Today, developing your Personal Brand is the single most critical thing you can do to get hired quickly at your highest salary potential.

• When strategized well and developed articulately, Personal Branding helps position you in the Top 2 percent.

• Branding is what compels hiring managers to seek you out over others because they cannot pass up what you have to offer.

• Personal Branding is what will help you achieve your goals at a much quicker rate than the “norm.”

Benefits of Personal Branding

1. Empowers you to confidently and compellingly sell yourself because you believe in your own value proposition and self-worth.

2. Helps you discover your true career niche.

3. Positions you as an expert, increases your notoriety, and builds a solid reputation in your field.

Benefits of Personal Branding5. Compels hiring managers to seek you out because you offer a high return on their investment.

6. Is sought after and brings opportunities your way—ahead of your competition.

7. Commands higher compensation just like any high-end brand would.

8. With your unique promise of value, you will enjoy career and life success: Working to live, not living to work. Doing what you are passionate about. SUCCESS. However you define it.

Identifying Your Unique Personal Brand Becomes Enlightening

• You will work to identify and define your brand by first determining your target market; listing your assets; identifying the benefits of those features; determining your competitive edge, value proposition, and return on investment to your prospective employers.

• Once your Personal Brand has been established, it will become an epiphany for you and you will become propelled with empowerment to catapult your career. It is ever self-empowering.

Capture Your Personal Brand in One Sentence

• Your personal brand is the keystone to communicating your value during a job-search campaign.

• Once you have a clear statement to describe your value to an employer, you can start convincing others to believe it.

I employ cutting-edge technologies to speed manufacturing so companies can grow revenues, cut costs and increase profits.

• Gain a competitive advantage by honing a personal brand statement. – Include it in your resume; – revise it to create an attention-getting, 30-second

elevator pitch; – expand upon it through career success stories in

an interview and – communicate it frequently to others at networking

events.

• Not many job seekers are providing personal brand statement; therefore by doing so, you will stand out from the pack.

Brand Mantra

• Your first task: Developing your “brand mantra.” Basically, this is the “heart and soul” of your brand, according to branding expert Kevin Keller. • It’s the foundation of all of your

branding efforts.

Samples

• Poised to apply strong leadership, entrepreneurial, and business-development background as a successful high school business and marketing student.

• Positioned to draw on record of achievement and success to deliver exceptional sales results that maximize unequivocal strengths as outstanding, top-producing sales professional.

Samples

• Poised to contribute strong interpersonal, communications, and organizational skills and experience to your organization in a front-line, customer-support role.

• Equipped to deliver current education and training in computer-science applications delivered through enthusiastic, positive, "can-do" attitude and trainability.

Samples

• Delivering project-management expertise, along with unsurpassed business analysis and application design, development, and implementation proficiencies, to organizations seeking a dynamic, self-motivated professional to build winning partnerships that produce exceptional results

Samples

• Delivering excellence in operations management, design implementation, and strategic, collaborative problem-solving to the industrial construction industry.

• Specialize in raising the bar, creating strategy, managing risk, and improving the quality and caliber of operations.

• A highly motivated experience professional with skills in marketing, e-commerce, relationship-building, promotion, and management

Samples

• Poised to deliver excellence and professionalism in call-center efficiency, organization, and operations.

• High-performing senior-level, training professional eager to provide leadership and deliver results for [name of firm].

• Dedicated nursing professional committed to excellence in patient care and poised to deliver unsurpassed, individualized nursing care in an acute care setting

Samples

• Poised to contribute strong coordination skills and experience in marketing, sports, and agricultural operations to new career focus in your organization as Events/Sponsorship Coordinator

• Prepared to contribute enthusiastic sales support and provide "face-of-the-brand" recognition to your marketing campaign.

Top 1/3 of your Resume

• You have an opportunity in the top third of your resume to grab people’s immediate attention.

• To quickly communicate important and unique aspects of your skill and experience that will trigger a decision to keep reading.

• Because with an enticing positioning statement, a strong career summary, and a short list of key strengths, you can brand yourself up front.

The Experience Section

• Perspective employers what to interview people who can come in and make a big impact or solve a problem.

• If your resume details the role you played for each company without detailing the value you added, you will look like everyone else. – So in two short sentences under each prior position,

tell them what you did. And in 4-6 bullet points tell them what you accomplished while there.

Experience Section

• It helps to know where you’ve been and how you’ve been influenced and educated in the world of business.– Include Name of Business, Address, how long you

were employed. – Title of your position, and indicate if you worked in

a particular section or Division

Relevant and Details of Your Experience

• Resumes should be full of relevant and tangible accomplishments.

• Relevant in that they will make the hiring manager think “that’s the kind of impact I’m looking for”.

• Tangible because it measures the impact and suggests a direct benefit and value. We all want to interview people who can come in and make a big impact or solve a problem.

Soft Skills

• Each company looks for a different mix of skills and experience depending on the business it's in.

• Yet it's no longer enough to be a functional expert. To complement these unique core competencies, there are certain "soft skills" every company looks for in a potential hire.

Importance of Soft Skills

• "Soft skills" refer to a cluster of personal qualities, habits, attitudes and social graces that make someone a good employee and compatible to work with.

• Companies value soft skills because research suggests and experience shows that they can be just as important an indicator of job performance as hard skills.

Premium on People Skills

• Today's service economy and the ascendance of work teams in large organizations puts a new premium on people skills and relationship-building,“

Top Soft Skills Sought by Employers

• Some of the most common soft skills employers are looking for and will be assessing you on include:

• 1) Strong Work Ethic• 2) Positive Attitude• 3) Good Communication Skills• 4) Time Management Abilities• 5) Problem-Solving Skills

Soft Skills Continued…

• 6) Acting as a Team Player• 7) Self-Confidence• 8) Ability to Accept and Learn From Criticism• 9) Flexibility/Adaptability• 10) Working Well Under Pressure

Hard Skills

• A great resume is going to discuss both your hard skills and your soft skills.

• Hard skills are about application and “doing.” Computer programming in all its many languages is a “hard skill.” Doing a budget is a “hard skill.” Planning a house, building it, and painting it are all “hard skills.”

What makes these “hard skills?”

• Unfortunately, it’s hard to say — but one way to look at it is that these produce a tangible result.

• A computer program, a budget, a house, and a mural are all results.

• You can point to them, and your level of skill makes the difference.

Soft Skills - Sample

• Adaptable• Motivate co-workers• Good listener• Team player• Dependable• Conscientious• Punctual• Analytical

• Organized• Honest• Energetic• Artistic• Enterprising• Outgoing• Productive• Responsible

Hard Skills - Sample

• Operate a forklift• Program a computer• Fix motors• Read a GPS• Build furniture• Install a dishwasher• Paint• Order merchandise

• Count money• Write a manual• Set-up equipment• Drive a vehicle• Perform surgery• Teach a language• File documents• Plant a tree

Integrate Your Skills and Abilities cleverly throughout the Resume

• Make it easy and comfortable for the prospective employer to learn about you.

• And include key points that create a growing sense that you might just be the one to help my company grow.

80% of Employers

• As many as 80% of employers use keywords to decide which resumes are worth a look.

• Using the right resume keywords can get you noticed and earn you an interview.

• Keywords are used in job descriptions to describe critical job qualifications. – They can be degrees, • programming languages or other specialized skills.

Keyword Importance

• Essential resume keywords are usually positioned higher up in a job description, appear most frequently and are listed as required rather than preferred skills.

• To target top candidates for this position, employers searches the database using keywords reflecting the “must haves” – for their ideal candidate.

How to Use Keywords

• Step 1: Create your keyword list• Step 2: Add a Summary of Skills to Your

Resume• Step 3: Weave Keywords throughout your

Resume

Repeat is OK

• Don’t worry about repeating the same keywords more than once.

• In fact, keyword frequency counts in many applicant tracking systems so this can work in your favor.

• When possible, use different forms of the same keyword to account for different search terms including abbreviations and synonyms.

Summary Report for Your Career• Find the Summary Report for Your Career:• http://www.onetonline.org/• In the Occupation Quick Search Box key in your dream position.• Then, select all, then copy paste the summary report for your

occupation onto a word document. Also book mark the Website on your computer for future reference.

• You will select all, then copy and paste the entire document onto a word document then use the highlighter key to highlight those areas that you are already proficient in performing.

• You will use this document to assist you with your resume.

Let’s Get Started

Personal Branding Made Easy:

• Personal Branding Part 1: Discovery Who You Are (Time 7:46)

• • Personal Branding is a clear, powerful, compelling image

of who you are; therefore, every entrepreneur must cultivate his or her personal brand. In this video, Kellie Gardner shares the first step which is discovering who you are. She addresses four components that make you, YOU.

• • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpCGQXOD1Xc&featu

re=relmfu&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

Videos• Personal Branding Part 2: Identifying Your Specialty

(Time 8:36)• • Specialization is the single most important personal

branding strategy in your arsenal, according to Peter Montoya, author of the Brand Called You. Therefore, it is critical that every entrepreneur know his/her specialty. In this video, Kellie Gardner shares 6 benefits of identifying your specialty as you cultivate your personal brand.

• • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91gn7X0fGBc&safety_m

ode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

videos• Personal Branding Part 3: Determining Whom You Are

Willing to Serve (Time 8:51)• • Niche marketing is critical to the success of a personal brand

as it specifies the ideal clients within a target market that an entrepreneur wants to attract. In this video, Kellie Gardner shares the importance of leading your brand with the idea of serving a definitive micro-niche--creating a win-win situation for you and your clients.

•http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQaczVNwnBA&feature=relmfu&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active

Videos• Personal Branding - What Color is Your Brand (Time

4:49)• Personal Branding: From William Arruda at Reach Personal

Branding. What's the color of your personal brand? Just as companies use color to express their brand attributes, you can benefit from the power of color. Find out what color best communicates your personal brand attributes.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDohoPavchc&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1&safe=active