Think of any category of well-known people — how about singers this time? Think about Britney Spears … Madonna … Celine Dion. Again, they’re all very different. That’s because each of these individuals has a very specific personal brand that is absolutely unique and ownable as compared to the others.
“But, wait a minute,” you may be saying. “Those people are all celebrities, and they have the money and the means to hire full-time image specialists to manage their personal brands!”
Fair point! But you don’t need that kind of high-priced help to define and communicate your job-seeker personal brand. The personal branding system shared in How YOU™ are like Shampoo for Job Seekers will help you build your personal brand without writing checks to a publicist. It’s designed for the millions of job seekers all around the world who may not be famous and certainly don’t plan on turning their personal brand into a global household name. What you want to do is define yourself in your world in order to achieve your ultimate personal career goal: to land the job of your dreams.
When it comes to job seeking, your personal brand is defined as:
The way you want potential employers to perceive, think, and feel about you
as compared to other candidates.
Just as name brands exist in our minds, your job-seeker personal brand exists in the minds of recruiters and potential employers in the way they perceive, think, and feel about you as compared to other candidates. Let’s look carefully at this definition, and focus on three key words: perceive, think, and feel. They’ve been carefully chosen for a reason.
Perceive: Perception is reality in marketing. When it comes to your job-seeker personal brand, it doesn’t matter who you think you are. What matters is how the interviewer perceives you. If your potential employer sees you as very different from who you actually believe you are inside, you’re probably not communicating the personal brand you want. You’ll want to do some work to make sure you’re presenting your best job-seeker personal brand in interviews.
Think: On the one hand, our brains have a lot to do with how we think about brands, so branding is a fairly rational exercise. There are logical reasons we choose one brand over another. The same holds true when using personal branding for a job search — you need to consider what your potential employers will think about you. What are the logical reasons a potential boss would choose you over another candidate?
Feel: On the other hand, branding is also a very emotional process. Stop and think about that one brand you said you were intensely loyal to earlier in this chapter. What is the feeling you have about that brand? Trust? Reliability? We establish connections with name brands, and these connections go far beyond just what the products do for us. We are loyal to these brands based on emotional connections. It’s the same in personal branding. The way potential employers feel about you has a profound influence on your success. The stronger the connections you create before, during, and after your job interviews, the more powerful your personal brand will be throughout your job search process.
Colleagues’ Brands at Work
Still don’t believe the average person has a brand? Think of someone from your current job or your most recent job who you really enjoy working with — the kind of person you look forward to seeing and speaking with every morning. Stop for a moment and consider: How do you perceive this person? How does this person make you feel? What do you think about this person?
Now, consider a different person you work with or have worked with in the past … and let’s be honest … who you really don’t enjoy all that much! It’s that one person who seems to cause you problems and tie your stomach in knots every time you have to work with them. How does this person make you feel? What do you think about this person, and how do you perceive him or her?
Can you see how these people have very different personal brands? And their brands have nothing to do with who they think they are. Their brands exist in your mind, based on how you perceive, think, and feel about them. If they haven’t taken the time to define their best possible personal brand, they may be seriously limiting their success by presenting themselves in a way that differs from how they want to be seen.
Taking Control of YOU™
Now apply this thinking to you and your job search. As I said earlier, you, too, already have a personal brand, even if you didn’t think you needed or wanted one. Your job-seeking personal brand may be out there doing its thing, creating perceptions about YOU™ without you even being aware of it. Interviewers may be thinking and feeling about you in ways that aren’t at all how you want to be perceived, just like Alfred Nobel. Most people I’ve met find this idea both intriguing … and a little bit scary. They don’t like the idea that their personal brands may be running amuck — maybe even preventing them from getting the job they want — without knowing what to do about it.
How do you take control of YOU™ during the job search process if your job-seeker personal brand exists in the minds of your potential employers? What can you do to make sure your personal brand is what you want it to be in interviews and beyond? How do you want future employers to perceive, think and feel about you? What steps can you take to make your job-seeker personal brand something that is definable and that you own, and how can you communicate it effectively — before, during, and after a job interview?
These are the questions we will answer as you move through the steps of our job-seeker personal branding system. No matter how successful you feel you’ve been in your job search so far, once you carefully define your job-seeker personal brand and put it to work, you have the opportunity to truly distinguish yourself from other job applicants. And just like Starbucks can command a much higher price tag than a standard cup of coffee at a local café, so can YOU™ create a premium personal brand that commands a better position, higher starting salary, nicer perks, and ultimately, a more satisfying career.
Think of it this way: Your personal brand in the job search process is what you want to stand for in the minds of potential employers. Who is _______™? Insert your name in the blank, and let’s begin.
Chapter 2
Defining Your Personal Brand
I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.
— Lily Tomlin, Actress and comedian
Now you know you can’t touch your personal brand because it exists in the minds of others. So, if you can’t touch your brand, how can you master it in a way that actually helps you get the job of your dreams? It may seem like an incredibly tough challenge, but name brands have been successfully created in the minds of millions of consumers for years and years. You can absolutely take control of your job-seeker personal brand, too. Just like marketing experts have helped consumers choose one brand over another, you can use the same strategies to help potential employers choose you over the next candidate. The key is to do what all successful name brands do as a first step: Define it.
Fact: Every name brand you know and love uses six positioning elements to carefully define that brand. It doesn’t even matter if the branders managing those brands are aware of these elements. Trust me — all six are a vital part of what makes the brand tick, and it’s a tried-and-true
