Ever thought that if you are a brand what do you want to be known for? You can think of your brand as a uniquely image with a magnet attached to it. Your personal brand is made up of a combination of skills or competencies that you have learned and possessed. Your expertise will be tied to your personal brand and people will trust you with their work. Once you become a well-known brand, employer will want you and are willing to pay a premium and that is how you contribute to the world of work.
Career Brand
The benefits of a career brand are numerous and it will make you more attractive to employers even when there are no major openings. You can see this clearly from the product that you buy; you are more willing to pay a premium for branded products as compare to non-branded ones. A career brand means that you are recognized as an expert in your chosen job and it elevate you from the status of commonplace commodity to one of a kind service.
Elements of Your Brand
Career minded individuals are likely to build their brand and you can see head-hunters hunting for them with attractive salaries even when they are not looking for any job. Career branding means you need to plan out how to market yourself so that you will be recognized as the expert through networking, contribution to magazine or as an expert speaker.
Your Are The Product
Whether you realize it or not, in the job market, you are the product and your future employer is the consumer. When you search for a job, you are actually doing marketing just like any branded product such as Prada or Rolex. Your skill and knowledge is what you can offer to your employer.
Consumer Benefits
You as the product will have to demonstrate a track record for contributing to the employer bottom line who is also the consumer. In your current employment, you should develop a habit for tracking what benefits you have bring to your current employer. How are you better than others who have similar credentials? Your track records will strategically reposition you from run-of-the-mill to out-of-the-ordinary. In short, be the Rolex among the watches.
Role Model
Find and emulate a successful role model and you'll improve your chances of professional branding. Find out what actions your role model takes that cause success. Study your role model mindset and attitude. How does he or she dress? What is their posture like? How does your role model communicate with others?
Conclusion
As we can see, building your personal brand will bring success to your career. With the popularity of social media, it is also important that you create a professional profile using Linkedin.com to market your skills, knowledge and experience of your chosen career brand. Although posting about your life in Facebook.com is fun, try not to upload anything that could hurt your personal brand.
