Your personal brand

The job market is increasingly competitive. Now more than ever, graduates need something more than a good degree to be hot candidates, to make employers sit up and take notice. Once you could expect to be invited to interview for your dream job if you presented your certificates, a resume of your past experience and some glowing references from the good and the great. Now that's probably not enough. You may not even be shortlisted if you don't stand out from the crowd. The selection process is increasingly unforgiving. Employers have such a choice of well qualified but unemployed young people right now, new graduates often don't even get a look in. So what exactly will tip the balance and get you noticed?

One way to improve your chances of being employed is to develop your own personal brand. There are several tools and services that will help you to do this, and unsurprisingly, they are all digital. Here are just 5 simple ideas on how to develop your personal branding:

1) Make your own personal web site. A few years ago it was very difficult (and costly) to make your own personal web page. You would either need to be able to program in HTML or have access to FrontPage or Dreamweaver and know how to use them, or have a mate who was ace at making websites. Now it's very easy and very quick indeed. You don't need to spend a single penny. One option is to use about.me - a free service with which you can create a simple web page. You can include a photograph as a background, write a short CV and also create links to your e-mail account, other websites and contact details. Here's one I made earlier. Alternatively, write a blog. You never know who might read it.

2) Set up a presence on a professional social network site. There is nothing quite as powerful as good connections if you want to make some career progress. As they say 'It's not what you know, it's who you know that matters'. Currently the most popular professional social network service is LinkedIn - which touts itself as 'The World's Largest Professional Network'. With over 225 million members worldwide, LinkedIn will increase the likelihood that you might link up with other people who have a similar interest or background to you - and who might, just might - be able to connect you with someone important who might influence your future career.

3) Get yourself a Twitter account. It's a much simpler idea that LinkedIn and a lot more fun. Twitter is a large social networking tool (with almost 500 million regular users) on which you can send messages or 'tweets' of up to 140 characters. This may not sound like a big deal, but if you connect with the influencers in your specific field of expertise, you will be surprised at how powerful Twitter can be in getting your message out there. If you work at it, you can build up quite a sizable following by tweeting the right stuff. And most importantly, you get to have live conversations with some of the leaders in your field.

4) Consider putting yourself out there on the Web on video. Set up your own YouTube channel. YouTube is the world's most popular video sharing tool (other brands are available) with hundreds of millions of visitors every day. Many people have found that their ideas and talents have been very widely showcased through YouTube. If you are a musician, artist, or simply trying to get noticed, and can make a connection with your audience, YouTube might just be the perfect channel for you. Take care though, because YouTube audiences are notoriously caustic and can make very cruel comments, and don't expect to achieve success over night - it almost never happens like that. Finally, make sure you have total control and ownership over what you 'broadcast', because once it's out there, it's there for good.

5) Get yourself a personal logo - this could be your name in a specific typeface, or an image that represents you, or a combination of these and some other unique feature. Make it memorable. Give it impact. Add it to everything you do on the Web so you maintain consistency of your personal brand. Whatever you use, just make sure it's yours, and you're not breaking copyright in some way.

There are many, many other options open to graduates who want to get themselves noticed by potential employers, and employers are increasingly trawling the Web to find out what and who is out there. Gone are the days when you could send off your CV and expect a phone call. Now you will need to work harder to be heard over the clamour of all the other graduates out there who are seeking that perfect job. I bet there are loads of other ideas people have on how to develop a personal brand. If you have an idea, please share it with us in the comments box below.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons


Your personal brand by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.