Marketing and branding aren’t just for businesses. Building your own personal brand is an important tool in your career arsenal. Your personality, interests, job experience, goals all make your “brand” and help tell your story and differentiate yourself from other candidates to prospective employers.
How do you create a brand that communicates your qualities and abilities to your employer?
- Keep An Up to Date LinkedIn profile: When it comes to modern recruitment, everything is on the table for employers to review in their candidate search. LinkedIn is one of the first places that a hiring manager will search when looking at a candidate’s background. That means it’s important to keep it current and complete. In addition to listing job experience and education, it’s important to list hobbies, volunteer experience, and other projects that can give employers a full picture of who you are.
- Keep Other Social Media Accounts Clean: The rest of your online personality and presence can also come into play when employers are searching for your history. It’s ok to have elements of your personal life in your public social media presence – in fact, you should as an authentic show of self – but you want to make sure there isn’t anything that an employer might see as a red flag to their bringing you on board.
- Ask For References: One of the strongest points in a personal brand can be someone else vouching for you. Asking a former boss, professor, or other professional contacts for a reference can be a good way to market yourself to employers. Using that as part of your application submission can go a long way in telling employees about who you are.
Having a strong personal brand is an important part of getting an employer’s attention. Giving potential new employers a way to see the whole package of everything you have to offer makes them more likely to see you as an asset to their company.
If you need help finding your next position, our experts can help. Our network of employers searching for qualified talent means we can find you a great match. Get in touch today.