In today’s digital world, personal branding isn’t just for influencers. Every professional can use this opportunity to showcase their personality, ambition, and core values.
Your personal brand is a little space on the internet dedicated to who you are, your story, and your achievements, both in your personal life and your career. It’s also a place where you can connect with others in order to grow your personal and professional network.
This is important because one in five recruiters have rejected a candidate after looking them up on social media and finding information that negatively impacted their application . So, by creating a strong personal brand you can avoid this pitfall, level up your professional identity and pave the way for exciting new career opportunities.
If you’re not a digital native or it’s been a long time since you were last looking for a job, it’s possible that your brand might need a bit of a TLC. You might even be starting from scratch.
Whatever the case may be, you need to optimize and elevate your personal brand to support your job search. Here are five strategies to get you started.
Create a website or portfolio
It’s a good idea to create a space outside of social media that is dedicated to who you are, such as a website, blog, portfolio or even a vlog. This could be related to your career or it could be something you're passionate about that you do in your spare time.
You can then link to this from your social media profiles and include details of this on your resume. This can also give you some key talking points in interviews.
What’s more, by doing this, you can help potential employers to build a stronger and more well-rounded picture of who you are.
Utilize social media
Social media can be a hugely beneficial tool for your job search, with 8 people getting offered a new role every minute on LinkedIn. Not only might it land you your new role, it’s also a chance for you to connect with others, as well as share updates about your life and hobbies, and interesting content like news stories or pictures related to your chosen industry.
Again, you can share details about your social media accounts when applying for jobs, but only do this if it will enhance your application.
Before you do this, it’s crucial that you go through and check all your profiles to make sure there is nothing damaging that could cost you a job. For example, inappropriate images, profanities, and offensive content could cause the recruiter to reject your application.
In today's digital world it's important to optimize your personal brand to support your job search.
Curate your tone and aesthetic
What’s the one thing we know to be true about branding? It must be eye-catching, engaging, and most importantly, consistent. Imagine a business using a different logo on multiple products or websites - it would be confusing and disjointed.
Well, the same applies to your own branding, which is why curating tone and aesthetics needs to be an important part of your strategy.
Some of the top ways to do this include, ensuring that your name and job title are consistent across platforms, as well as getting a professional headshot and using this in relevant places, like on LinkedIn and your website.
You might also wish to settle on your own personal tone of voice for the content you share, as well as choose a color scheme that reflects you and remains consistent.
Nail your one-line bio
Perhaps not something you’ve thought about in the past, but it’s a good idea to nail down a value-driven one-line bio that sums up your personal brand. This can be helpful for social media profiles, website tag lines, and more.
The important thing to remember is that this will likely be the first thing the recruiter reads about you when checking out your profiles. So it needs to be engaging.
In this one sentence, you must give a clear idea of who you are and what you’re passionate about. So try to avoid cliches and overused phrases as every word counts.
Engage authentically
It’s important that you're contributing to meaningful conversations and engaging with the world around you. You should also be connecting with like-minded individuals, both personally and professionally.
To do this, you could share valuable and relevant content like podcasts, blog posts, videos, etc, across your platforms. Particularly content related to your industry, hobbies, and passions.
But don’t just share for the sake of it, you should only interact with content you find genuinely interesting and that you think your connections will also engage with.
Our final suggestion is that you also engage authentically with the real world around you and highlight these interactions online.
For example, getting involved in the local community, even if that’s as simple as sharing a Facebook post from the local library. Or, if you’re doing something impressive to raise money for charity, use the internet to bolster your fundraising efforts and share updates on your progress.
Any one of these five strategies can instantly help to boost your personal brand and make you more desirable to employers who may be searching for you online. So be sure to use one, or several of these ideas to elevate your brand and drive your job search.
