Corporate Culture 101: Building Your Personal Brand Online with Self-Management Skills

Businesswoman on laptop screen. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Adapting to corporate culture is something everyone has to do if they want to make it in the professional world. Despite the fact that everyone has to make this transition at some point, the process isn’t as easy as it looks. Just like any culture, corporate culture has its own set of rules, values and criteria that members must exemplify in order to be accepted into the culture. This two-part series explores a few fundamental skills one must have to mesh successfully with modern corporate culture, along with a few tips on what not to do.

Using LinkedIn to its Full Potential

Not taking advantage of the networking opportunities on LinkedIn is one of the biggest mistakes corporate newbies make when adapting to this new professional culture. Just having a LinkedIn profile will help get a person’s name out there, but this isn’t enough for developing a solid reputation and generating the interest of employers.

Remember: the goal of LinkedIn is to ultimately reach out to a certain crowd in the professional sphere, which means users should cater their profile information to this specific audience. Users with a more broad educational background, such as a degree in business management, will want to discuss how this degree has prepared them for specific jobs. Listing other skills and formal training that applies to each job is also crucial for showcasing expertise.

What NOT to Do

HR professionals typically look for potential employees and partners by utilizing the search function on LinkedIn’s website. This enables them to be matched up with users who fit the exact professional criteria they are looking for. Using the most common terms like “extensive experience” may intuitively seem like a smart decision– after all, the most common words are the ones most commonly searched, right? Wrong.

Employers are looking for individuals who exhibit more specific traits and have specific professional training. In other words, they aren’t looking for just anybody to fill the position. Many users make the mistake of going into automatic resume mode when filling out their profiles and just throw out the most obvious word choices that roll off the tongue. Ironically, “creative” was listed as the number one most overused buzzword in LinkedIn profiles among U.S. users in 2012. Instead of these buzzwords, users should look for less-common alternatives that more accurately and actively describe specific traits and skills.

Enhancing Professional Image Online

In the modern, tech-driven world of today, self-management skills largely deal with how one is presented online. A strong Internet presence connects professionals with their peers, superiors and even those in other professional industries in ways that weren’t possible in a pre-digitalized society.

LinkedIn is just one of the ways that professionals are making connections and getting heard today, but there are a number of additional online outlets that work toward enhancing one’s professional image. From starting a professional blog to creating a work-related Twitter account, professionals can take action by being active online for a well-managed image and an entirely unique personal brand.

The next part of this series will focus on how to apply this newfound professional image in the professional world, while discussing the importance of social skills in the job interview. In the job market, it’s not enough to simply be an outstanding professional–one also must relate to professional peers in an effective and influential way.