Sharing Your Personal Brand With Others
In my last post I talked about personal branding, and what it is. This post will give some examples of HOW you can share it. Actually, I like to call it "quantifying" your personal brand.
So this is about how to quantify your breadth, depth and passions (aka, personal brand). There's no way you can do this with a resume - you are so complex and have much more to offer than what can fit on a resume. Don't get me wrong - a resume has its place and should be taken seriously. But its the difference between a table of contents and the actual content in a book - there's no way that you can get all the knowledge from a book by just reading the table of contents, right?
There are three easy ways to quantify your personal brand. You can even start on this today (and if you are senior or a recent graduate, I'd say you BETTER start on it today!).
Personal Website
That is, a nice website with a good URL. So don't go bland or boring (but not overly flashy either). And don't use a generic domain like geocities or something like that. You are branding yourself - so try and get a URL with your name!
The website could have things like basic contact information (I recommend against putting phone numbers and home addresses), a resume (take out that nice contact info), and a portfolio. Your portfolio can be anything to quantify what you do - even a list of articles you have written.
Here's an excellent example of a website used to quantify a personal brand - HeatherHendricks.com. Click here to see why I like it so much.
If you don't know how to do this, go make friends with an Internet junkie - they are all over the place ;)
A Blog
This is the easiest thing to start and maintain. Don't write about what you ate for breakfast, and don't blog about details of a job search or something else that isn't professional. The purpose isn't to be 100% transparent and show how cool you are - its to quantify your personal brand!
Here are three excellent examples of professionals that use a blog to quantify their personal brand:
Kent Blumberg - Leadership, strategy and performance (click here to see why I think its cool!)
Adelino de Almeida - Profitable Marketing (click here to see why I think its cool!)
Mike Shaffner - Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms (or, Mike Schaffner on Creating Real Value Through Information Technology)
For more info on using blogs to quantify your personal brand check out my "Winner of the Month" awards. One last blog thought - if you think you don't have any time to have a blog while you are in school, just realize that your competition is - check out the Owen Bloggers from Vanderbilt!
Articles
Articles, white papers, stuff like that. This is a chance for you to show your expertise in a professional forum. For a mere $20 (more or less) you can distribute these articles to thousands of places which might reprint them. This does two things immediately:
1. It gets your name and expertise out into professional "rags" - my experience is that most of these are online, but that's ok.
2. It allows you to put an Articles Published section on your resume.
There you go - you can do this right now - there's nothing stopping you from beginning to quantify your personal brand - even if it is nascent!
Jason,
Thanks for the kind words.
As you point out websites, blogs and articles are all great branding vehicles. These along with making presentations, speeches etc. are a great form of “pull” marketing in that they can create demand for your product, namely you. This is a nice complement to the “push” marketing of the traditional networking, resume distribution where you go out and seek potential buyers of your product. Using both methods can be a good way to maximize your exposure and sales potential.
You are also absolutely correct about these methods being a good way to provide information beyond what is in a resume. A hiring manager has 3 questions about potential hires:
1. Can they do the job?
2. Will they do the job?
3. Will they “fit” with our culture?
A resume helps to answer the first 2 questions but really give no insight to the third which is often the key factor in how successful a person is in their job. Websites, blogs etc. do help to address this all-important third question by revealing something about your personality, the way you think, and your attitudes on key issues.
Candidates and employers may be intimidated by blogging because it requires a substantial time commitment if they plan to write their own blog. I tell people not to blog unless they are prepared to spend at least 15 minutes a day on it. That may not sound like a lot, but that's 1-1/4 hours of additional work each and every week and that's a minimum. So what's the solution for those who want to blog but don't have the time or aren't prepared to make that commitment? Blog in a group blog, such as those on CollegeRecruiter.com. You can sign up at http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/weblogs/intern-signup.php .