Why You Need a Personal Brand

Jun 17

Introduction

A major challenge for the job market is noise: tons of jobs and tons of applicants. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in January of 2024 alone, there were 5.7 million hires with 5.4 million job separations. The numbers were similar in February. And, this doesn’t take into account all the open jobs that were being actively managed by employers (8.7 million), or the total number of applications submitted by job seekers.1

There is so much activity in the US job market, that it can be both difficult for employers to find the right candidate, and for the right candidate to be noticed by employers.

To put a pin in this last point, according to Zippia, the average corporate level job receives 250 applications!2 Imagine how many great candidates are overlooked for each job. I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine that employers often make bad hires simply due to the overwhelming amount of noise.

So how do you avoid being collateral damage from all this noise? How do you stand out in all that noise and increase your odds of being the one who gets hired? With personal branding.

Here are two great definitions of a personal brand:

“Your personal brand is your reputation, and your reputation in perpetuity is the foundation of your career.”
Gary Vaynerchuk

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”
Jeff Bezos

And while we’re quoting, Forbes has a great perspective on personal branding: “Unless people know you personally, what people think, feel and, in turn, say about you is based on what they find online. And employers are looking.”3

It takes time to build a personal brand, admittedly, but there are things that you can start doing today that will pay dividends down the road. Eventually, building a strong and positive personal brand will become a habit.

Before we go any further, there’s something important to understand: in a world that operates largely online, it’s easier than ever for employers to research you. In fact, “98% do background research about candidates online”.4 Which means, if your personal brand game isn’t strong, or worse, paints a bad picture of you, it’ll hurt your chances of landing that role. But it’s important to be authentic and consistent with how you express yourself. Your personal branding efforts will backfire if you present yourself as one way in one place and then another way in another place.

Start by doing some research on yourself

Personal branding efforts should always begin with personal reflection. Who are you, truly? Knowing who you are will help you to ensure that what is being told and shared, aligns with who you are.

When applying for a job, nearly half of all employers will search for you on Google.4 So, I would recommend that you do a Google search to understand what employers would find and ensure that it aligns with who you are. It’s possible that you may not find much. It’s also possible that what you find you may not have much control over. But for those things you do have control over (e.g.: your LinkedIn profile, and your other publicly accessible social media), ensure it aligns with your true authentic self and does a good job of telling your story. If it’s done well, it will highlight your strengths, values, and accomplishments, and not put you in a bad light.

So, what all goes into a Personal Brand?

Your personal brand encompasses anything that communicates who you are to someone else. Like we discussed before, this certainly would include anything that is publicly accessible, but there are other elements to consider as well. Although not an exhaustive list, here are the big ones you want to consider:

LinkedIn Profile: if you don’t currently have a LinkedIn profile, I would highly encourage you to create one. Having a strong LinkedIn profile is critical to your personal brand. Potential employers are likely to search for you on LinkedIn first. Setup your LinkedIn profile to work for you. There are many great resources online to guide you through setting up a strong LinkedIn profile, but this one does a great job of covering the important pieces.

Other publicly accessible forms of social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.): 90% of employers say that social media is important when evaluating a candidate, and 79% of hiring professionals have passed on a candidate based on what they found in their social media.4 Review your privacy settings to ensure that you’re only publicly sharing what you’re comfortable with. Consider removing any content that you wouldn’t want a potential employer to see (you know, that post you made in the heat of the moment years ago and have since forgotten about).

Personal / Portfolio Website: Depending on what type of job you’re looking to land, a personal / portfolio website is critical. 80% of employers say that a website is important in evaluating a candidate.4 Photographers, graphic designers, writers, marketers, software developers, are just to name a few of the many jobs where it’s expected that you have a website that will showcase your work. More often than not, having such a website is a great way to stand out. This is an opportunity to showcase your personality, accomplishments, and make yourself shine. Having your own personal domain name is ideal and there are many inexpensive ways accomplish this along with a nice website.

Medium, Quora, LinkedIn, or other sites where you can share your expertise with others: if you’re looking for bonus points, this is it. Employers seek out experts in their fields: someone who is a thought leader and is happy share that wisdom with others. Consider writing articles on Medium or LinkedIn. Or consider answering questions on Quora or other similar sites like Stack Overflow.

Resume: whether you chose to publicly share your resume online where it’s easy to find, or not, once your resume is in the hands of an employer, it begins communicating your personal brand. Rather than look at your resume as a lifeless document that only shares facts about your work experience and education, consider your resume as an extension of your personal brand. How can you use your resume to tell your story as best as possible to the employer? I recommend creating a strong base resume that you can modify later on for each job that you decide to apply to. This base resume should include things that you want in each version of your resume (contact info and education, for example) and all of your past experiences. As you apply to jobs, and review their job descriptions, you’ll either remove experiences that aren’t helpful and/or you’ll update examples of your accomplishments to better align with the job descriptions. Having a strong base resume will help save you time as you’ll have a great starting point for different versions of your resume that you’ll submit with your applications.

Create a Brag Book

It’s easy to forget all the great work you do throughout your time in a job, and this is why I recommend creating a brag book. What do you include? I would suggest things such as finishing a big deliverable or solving a challenging problem. These will be things that you’ll want to incorporate into your personal branding and ensure that you speak to during future interviews. Bonus points if you are able to tie these things back to goals you’ve created that will help you land your next job.

Working on your Personal Brand never ends

Working on your personal brand isn’t a once and done. As you grow as a person so will your personal brand. You aren’t the same person today that you were 10 years ago, nor who you will be in 10 years. Always practice self-reflection and ensure that anything communicating your personal brand to the world is kept updated.

What to do next?

A Personal Brand is the foundation of your career. Take some time to think through what your Personal Brand has been up to this point. What has worked well? What changes do you need to make? If the Personal Brand you’ve been putting out isn’t consistent nor authentic, start there. Then with a better idea of what your ideal job is, start framing your Personal Brand in that direction so that you can begin showing how the value you offer aligns well with your ideal job.