Career Soup: What's Your Brand

Image Credit: Business World from Vector.me (by vecteezy.com)

Workplace buzzwords often die off like "paradigm shifts" and "thinking outside of the box." However, there seems to be one that keeps hanging around: "personal branding." How important is personal branding to your career success? Very important! I realized this when I was speaking with a friend and she was asking for some social media design advice. I suggested that she needed to "get your brand popping!"  All roads should lead to your passion and what you want people to think of when they thing of you. If you are a widget counter, but your passion is financial planning, then you should read as much as you can about financial planning, blog about financial planning in your free time, offer gratis financial planning to family members, and suit up in all profiles pictures on your social networking pages.  If you are a teacher, but you'd ultimately like to be principal or move to higher education, expand your vocabulary to include graduate level education and administrative terminology. Shift your brand from a stellar teacher to a stellar school leader. Branding is about who you want to be using your strengths to guide you!

Take products for example. When you see a certain logo, there is an expectation of what you're going to get.  Your mind pulls up past experiences (good or bad), advertisement jingles, and the like.  What images and thoughts are retrieved when someone sees you or your online presence? Doing a quick Google search for images for "headshots" in your current or desired profession will give you plenty of ideas how to style your profile pictures.  I can offer you assistance in designing an industry-appropriate resume that will fit in AND more importantly stand out in the right way to get you noticed. Feel free to contact me for assistance!