Brand Yourself to Stand Out During a Job Search

                Do You Want to Stand Out?

To succeed in today’s job search you need to stand out.  To help catch the eye of hiring authorities you need a savvy job search plan that is centred on the sale of YOU and your brand, making it easy for employers to understand how your skill offerings connect to their role requirements.

According to Wikipedia: “Brand is the name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s product distinct from those of other sellers”.    In order to brand yourself you need to:

• Think of job searching as marketing.  You are the product.  Your marketing materials are your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile.  Your sales pitch is your interview.  Make yourself available and keep yourself well-informed of current job search strategies – including personal branding!

• Identify your ‘selling features’.  Think about what sets you apart from other job competitors in your industry or occupation. Are you a cost-savings generator, a process improvement specialist, or a team alignment strategist?  Ensure you can support these claims with rich and quantitative results from throughout your career.

• Distinguish yourself.  Now that you understand your value, ensure your brand isn’t like everyone else’s.  Find where your niche is.  For example, major soft drink providers like Coca-Cola and Pepsi offer similar products. How do they differentiate themselves? Well, they narrow their value and position it strongly. They use value propositions (or taglines) that are catchy.  If your personal value is on the generation of cost-savings, dig deeper to figure out HOW you create money savings. Now summarize your offering into a strong tagline.

• Be consistent.  As mentioned, major brands are able to separate themselves from the competition by pinpointing their unique value and then marketing it consistently.  Their branding is hard to overlook. Do the same. Keep your messages constant and similar in all job search materials and throughout all professional communications. Become recognizable as a brand….brand YOU.

Job seekers are expected to know their value and communicate it effectively, especially at the senior professional level.  If you are struggling to capture or communicate your brand in a compelling manner (in your resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, executive biography, during an interview, or while networking) contact me for help.