Job Seekers-Socrates Said it Best
Branding yourself well can get you on the top shelf at the candidate supermarket, which in this job market is the only shelf where the hiring manager is looking.
Many marketing gurus believe that the most powerful brand in the world is Coca-Cola. You may not be aware that a company’s brand name is actually listed on the balance sheet of a corporation, using accounting methods to estimate its value. The Coca-Cola name is said to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars—maybe much more—because of its widespread recognition around the world. What is your brand worth?
While you may not be a world-renown soft drink, you do have your own personal brand, whether you realize it or not. Your professional reputation, personality, skills and knowledge all add up to a public persona that is your unique brand.
Companies with famous brands such as Apple, Sony, BMW, Target, and others use principles of branding that every advertising and marketing major studies. These principles are not closely held secrets, but they are curiously absent from many job candidates’ search strategies. Yet, they are essential to establishing the link between the customer and the product.
In a job search, you are the product, and what people see and know about you is your brand. You should learn the same principles that companies use to market their products and apply them to yourself. If you understand these principles and employ them, you will market yourself better than your competitors and likely achieve the results you want.
Even before you get started on a new resume, your first step is to follow Socrates’ famous adage, “Know thyself.” Take an honest accounting of your skills, talents, and achievements. Write a brief description of yourself, listing your greatest strengths and weaknesses.
Ask yourself if the career you have chosen is really what you want to be doing. While it may not be economically feasible to switch careers right now, it is never a bad time to think about what direction you should be heading. Perhaps your professional skills and experience translate well into a different or related field which would not require a major retooling of your education and completely new story on your resume.
Next, do the really hard thing—ask for feedback from people who know you and have worked with you. Perhaps asking is not the difficult part, but hearing it may be.
Nobody is going to hit the mark 100% of the time, but people who share important feedback with you care about you and will generally be honest. Try to be open to hearing the good and the bad, and be honest about it. This is one of your keys to success, because if you are getting some consistent feedback about a potential weakness, you can be sure that an interviewer will spot it, too.
Even if you can get past the interviewers and are lucky enough to be hired, those weak points remain and will follow you wherever you go. These “weaknesses” are not moral flaws and you have no reason to be ashamed of them. However, you should demonstrate a responsibility toward yourself by finding a way to overcome and conquer these things that may be holding you back. A career coach (please allow me to place a free ad for my profession here) can be extremely helpful in not only helping to identify a bad habit or misconception, but guide you through the process of breaking through those barriers that have kept you where you are.
In the short run a good strategy is to try to reduce the appearance and the reality of the weaknesses, and focus on how you can communicate and display your strengths. This set of strengths (which may be specific to one particular job) is your Value Proposition. Your Value Proposition is the value you bring to the company for the position. One of my first business mentors was fond of saying “You’ve got to bring something to the party.” Think about why you buy a particular brand, or shop at a particular store and what it offers you personally. This is the Value Proposition that the product offers you. The larger the demand for this value, the more successful the brand will become.
In the same way, your personal brand can be your very best asset either looking for a new job or managing your career. For a job search, your biggest challenges are 1) to discover who you are (know thyself), 2) figure out your unique value proposition-your raw talents and skills, and your area of excellence, 3) engaging an effective search strategy to discover a great company that has a need for your area of excellence and values, and 4) effectively communicating this to potential employers. Know where you would like to be and take proactive steps to get there.
Make sure your resume represents you in the most positive light and clearly communicates a positive picture in the mind of the hiring manager. This procedure will get you “top shelf’ positioning in the candidate store—where the hiring manager is most likely looking while he shops for his new hire.
