This post is part of the Professional Independence Project series.
While Jordan Belfort made the sentence "Sell me this pen" quite famous, for young professionals today the real question is "Sell me yourself." All those job interviews you had, all those cover letters you've written, the time you spent polishing your CV, and the number of networking events you attended have one single common aspect: They help you sell yourself better.
It's that simple, yet very powerful. Selling yourself is becoming the prime focus of young professional in an employment ecosystem that values not only applicant's credentials, but also social clout. The people you know, the posts you share, the videos you watch, and the pages you like are as defining as where you studied in terms of professional persona.
The issue is that social and professional life are separated by a tiny blurry line that is quickly dissipated thanks to the phenomenal penetration of social media and mobile connectivity. The very reason you're reading this article is because you realize how important your personal brand is, and how crucial it is in determining where you will intern, work, or who you will meet.
Now some people will see personal branding as a luxury, something you can only afford after making it to the prime league. The truth is, personal branding is what usually will make you or break you right after college, if not before. Trendy employers everyone wants to work for are making it clearer by the day that your personal brand is as important as your CV.
Look at Google, Twitter, Facebook, or Starbucks. They already publicly state that their considerations in various employment stages are not only affected by your credentials, but by your potential. Remember, credentials vs potential. This is a distinction you have to thoroughly understand. Your credentials, for a lack of better words, have an expiry date on them. Your skills and knowledge will be obsolete in few decades, or few years.
The world is changing, and while you might be great at managing a sales team from the 90s, today is a totally different world where your skills are nothing but outdated memories. Potential, on the other hand, is timeless. A visionary, someone with a sense of business, or someone with an affinity for problem solving will be on his A game whether it is working for a 1978 advertising company or for Apple.
Your personal brand comes into play here: how do you tell everyone, your employers included, that you have what it takes to excel and innovate in your job? How do you advertise the soft skills that cannot be expressed in a set of lines in CV hardcopy?
Easy, you talk the talk, and walk the walk. If you want to be seen as a promising prospect, you have to act like one. You have to breathe, smell, dream and live your brand. If you want to come across as an authority in your industry, as a business visionary, a genius artist or a powerful decision maker, you have to simulate those traits in your life no matter what. Start with fine tuning your social media presence. Share relevant posts, like pages that relate to your field of expertise, produce content, write blogs, design posters and art pieces. Your Facebook profile is much like your CV and your Linkedin page, don't be fooled into thinking that it is off-limit for people. Your personal life is your professional life, and vice versa.
The people you hang out with and the events you attend will be as valuable in building your personal brand. They say you are the average of the people you hang out with, and that's for a reason. If you're into consulting, connect with consultants or consultancy enthusiasts, go grab coffee or lunch with them, go to their seminars, start reading their books and magazines, and try yourself at writing about the topic. That way, you align yourself and your brand to be what you want it to be.
Famous, successful and wealthy people can afford to hire a PR team to manage their personal brand for them, to update their Facebook pages and answer their fans, but if you're a young professional, chances are you can't afford such a privilege yet. Be your own PR, know what is worth saying, doing and sharing, and what's not. First impressions last, and in the age of Internet, impressions last forever.
Don't waste your time trying to figure out how to become the next Bill Gates, try first to become the best you can, and that will ultimately lead to long term success. Personal branding allows you to be know for you who you can be, and that can be whoever you decide. You want to be seen as an industry expert, an academic, a business visionary, a stocks guru or the next steve jobs, then start acting like it.
The great thing about personal branding for young professionals is that, unlike other things in life, you get to decide to be whatever you like. You may be born a certain way, your family may have treated you in a certain manner and your environment might have been shaped in a specific frame, but YOU, yes YOU, you get to be the judge of your destiny and your image. The choice is yours.
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The leaves are changing, the kids are back in school, and that familiar chill is in the air. You think it's the perfect time to look for a job, and it is! But are your job search fears preventing you from making that leap?
It's not uncommon to feel lost when embarking on your job search journey. After all, school teaches us everything except how to get a job. What should you put on your resume? What questions should you ask in an interview? How can you stand out in the hiring process when there's so much competition?
Are you feeling spooked yet?
Believe it or not, there's no need to be afraid of the job search process! You can land your dream job with the right tools and strategy. You can find a job that won't give you nightmares. Here are three spooky secrets every job seeker should know as they look for a job this fall.
1. An Effective Job Search Starts With An Interview Bucket List
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Despite your fears, you've decided to take the plunge and look for a new job. You might be asking yourself, "Where do I start?" The answer is simple: start by creating an interview bucket list.
An interview bucket list is a list of 10-20 companies you'd love to work for. Are you passionate about a company's products or services? Do you feel connected to its mission? Can you relate to its values and beliefs as an organization? If you answer "yes" to any of these questions, that company probably belongs on your interview bucket list.
Once you create an interview bucket list, you'll be able to conduct a targeted job search, one with direction and a foundation upon which everything else will be built. An interview bucket list helps you focus your job search and networking strategies on the right opportunities, making it easier to get your foot in the door at one of your dream companies.
2. Your Job Application Needs To Disrupt Hiring Managers
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In order to stand out in the hiring process, you need to disrupt recruiters and hiring managers. You accomplish this by doing two things: optimizing your resume and writing a disruptive cover letter.
A well-optimized resume includes keywords from the job description. This ensures your resume gets past the ATS and into the hands of the hiring manager. Once it's in front of the hiring manager, it needs to grab and keep their attention. Quantifying your work experience—adding numbers to your bullet points—will make you stand out from other applicants. Hiring managers will want to know more about you and your accomplishments, and that's how you land a phone interview.
Before that, though, a hiring manager will read your cover letter. To disrupt them, you need to write a disruptive cover letter (obviously!). A disruptive cover letter gives you the opportunity to tell a story about why you feel connected to the company you're applying for. It's that storytelling aspect that will stand out to hiring managers and compel them to pick up the phone and give you a call.
3. Employers Hire You Based On 3 Things
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You can't get hired unless you know what employers are assessing you on in the interview process. While your skills and expertise matter, companies actually hire for three things: personality, aptitude, and experience (in that order).
Most job seekers don't realize how important it is to demonstrate their personality, aptitude, and experience in an interview. You could have the right experience for a job, but if the hiring manager doesn't think your personality is a good fit for the company culture, you probably won't get a job offer.
Make sure you demonstrate your soft skills and learn how to answer behavioral interview questions to prove you're the best candidate for the job you're applying for, not just the most qualified.
Want To Learn More Job Search Secrets?
As you look for a job this fall, it might be helpful to know some more spooky secrets so you can get over your job search fears and finally take control of your career.
We know the job search process can be scary. However, it's important to get clear on what you want to do next and focus on conducting a strategic job search, or what we refer to at Work It DAILY as job shopping. This is the only way to effectively market yourself to employers. If they can't see exactly where and how you add value, then that's going to decrease your chances of landing the job.
The competition is fierce, and there are a lot of factors that are out of your control. But the one factor you can control is your job search strategy, the tools and tactics you use to land a job.
If you want to learn the secrets to conducting a strategic job search, sign up for our Job Search Bootcamp, a two-hour, on-demand video workshop that comes with a free workbook.
In this video workshop, you'll learn:
- How to use backchanneling to get directly to hiring managers.
- The secret to using a connection story to stand out against the competition.
- How social media can be your secret weapon to get job interviews.
- The resume format that is getting job seekers more job interviews.
- And, a lot more hacks for job search success!
Let us show you the secrets to getting a new, better-paying job you actually love. Sign up for our Job Search Bootcamp today.
Are you ready to land the job of your dreams (and leave the job of your nightmares)?
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