Recently we discussed with the team the topic of personal brand and I was asked an interesting question: “ Why do I (the questioner), a regular analyst or a hired project manager, need a personal brand. What will he give me? More money? More interesting projects? Expand your social circle? »The short answer is yes, all this and much more.
And here's another question that comes to me: “ How do some people get the best job offers (although they are not looking for them), but I have already sent a dozen resumes and no one even calls me back? "
What is a personal brand and what value does it give us when we consciously come to the need to rebuild it
For some, a personal brand is a way to achieve their professional goals: to move up the career ladder, find employees for a team, attract clients or investors. For others, it is an opportunity to gain recognition, a kind of self-expression.
Competition in the IT industry is still strong and while demand continues to grow, many of the top positions are closed before it comes to posting a job. And sometimes positions are specially opened for a specific specialist. And this happens because these people are known and talked about, they are recommended.
Before we talk about what a personal brand is, let's understand the basic concepts.
A brand is a word that is associated in the minds of representatives of a certain group with a certain product or service.
For example, FAGMA (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple) are the very top 5 corporations that launched the global digital transformation. Each of them is a brand. They brand together. But only for a certain, albeit very large, group.
Nutella, BMW, Victoria's Secret (did you google?) - all of these words say something to certain groups.
By the way, did you know that the word "brand", which came to us from the English language, comes from the Old Scandinavian verb "to burn out" - after all, it was by burning that they marked livestock, showing who it belongs to. Of course, over time, branding has changed: first, artisans began to tag their works, and then it turned into a manufacturer's race, when everyone tried and tries to prove that it was the product of his brand that was better than the others, and the “scorched” name alone speaks for itself.
Does your name mean something? Again in your specific group. And how big is this group? If we start talking about a personal brand , we can give the following definitions:
- A personal brand is what others say about you when you are not.
- A personal brand is an impression you create through your words, actions, and confirm through results.
- A personal brand is the correspondence of your inner self-image (and for this it must be) with how others perceive you.
Then a professional personal brand can be described as a value proposition that you can boldly and confidently offer to the market. After all, the presence of a Youtube channel, instagram with a two hundred thousandth army of fans, 5000 subscribers on facebook do not yet speak of a professional personal brand. As my colleague, the author of the book "Talks with Dolphins" - Maxim Romensky says:
The goals of a personal brand are different.
There are people who need a brand to create a fanclub. These people feed on attention. There are people who need a brand in order to transform it into money / power / influence / promotion opportunities.
It is important to understand that your position will not make people think of you when they open an interesting job. If you want to stand out, you need to share what makes you memorable - “burns” you into the memory of others. These differentiating factors may include your skills, education, and interesting companies that you have worked for, but they can also be related to your personal life, hobbies, hobbies, charities.
Try to answer the question about your strengths right now.
And no, this is not a hackneyed interview question. This is something that you need to really understand well about yourself.
Who am I today and how am I perceived? What facts and results speak of me as a good specialist? What makes me different from others doing similar work? What kind of specialist do I want to be tomorrow? How can I come to this?And so, step by step, asking ourselves these questions, conducting an as is -> to be analysis, we come to that unique image of ourselves, which will be our personal professional brand. This image will make us more in demand, more successful, possibly happy.
At the same time, you need to remember that a personal brand is a constant work on yourself. This is a deep understanding of “who I am today” and how I can fully reveal my potential for myself tomorrow. You are changing and the world around you is changing - therefore your “proposal” must also change.
How to build a personal brand?
- Understand what unique skills and value proposition you have or might have
- Create an offline image and online presence that showcases your best qualities
- Become an active member of the professional community: writing articles, participating in conferences, volunteer programs
- Working with a mentor
- Be a mentor to others
- Develop a personal development plan and your brand development plan accordingly
How does a personal brand work?
You will get to a new level just in the process. The very desire to build it and the appropriate steps will give you tangible and unexpected results. And then your reputation will work for you.
Example of situations where personal brand helped me
Situation 1
Several years ago I started an IT conference in Dnipro - RUN IT. The first conference attracted 450+ participants with zero advertising budget. A personal brand, a strong reputation, wide networking, support of the co-founder and the local IT community worked.
Situation 2
When I moved to work for another company as Delivery Manager, my task was to start a project for a new client - a Swiss bank. At the same time, it was necessary to recruit a team of 50 people in a short time. For the small Dnipro market, this is not an easy task. Having a reputation in the market for a "sane" manager (as others say), we managed to close 50 vacancies within the specified period. About 30% of the team came from my personal network of contacts.
So what does the development of a personal brand give us?
Self-confidence, awareness, openness to the world and a calm attitude to negative events, adaptability and understanding that I can. After all, the strength of a chain is not only weakest at the weakest link, it is also strongest at the strongest. And we can and should know our strengths and be able to rely on them.