‘’ Your personal brand is how you promote yourself. It is the unique combination of skills, experience, and personality that you want the world to see you. It is the telling of your story, and how it reflects your conduct, behaviour, spoken and unspoken words, and attitudes’’
Many of us don’t think about having our own personal brand, indeed some find the term ‘personal brand’ quite cold and impersonal. The most meaningful word for me in the quote above is ‘unique’. There is literally no-one like you so it is really useful just to sit with this and acknowledge it in the first instance.
As you start to unpack this further, you might find it helpful to reflect on these three areas:
Talents – A good starting point here is to think about what you have done in the past. Talk to other people and ask them to remember times when they have seen you at your best. Please remember that talents aren’t the same as skills. They are innate and some people use the word gifts to describe them. Write them down and check them out with people who know you well.
Skills – One definition of skill is a developed aptitude or ability. Many people who have worked in the same organisation for a number of years often feel that they have no ‘transferable’ skills. In our experience this is never the case. Think about technical skills, computer and systems’ skills as well as behavioural skills such as communicating, organising, developing people, selling and marketing to name but a few
Values – Taking the time and effort to discover what is valuable to you in life enables you to recognise internal guideposts that will help you make good career decisions. It’s useful to recognise though that making value choices is not easy at times. Again, many people use career coaches to help them think through what is most important for them
With the information you have gathered from these three ideas, your next step is to put together a brand statement that showcases you to your audience. Think about developing a 30 second pitch that you can practice that really brings you out at your best. Here is a link to some real life personal brand examples (thanks to Influencer Marketing Hub)
https://influencermarketinghub.com/personal-brand-statement-examples/
I hope this has given you greater insight into the value of personal brands and the importance of using them to help you find your next role