5 minute read

Common Job Curses

Personal Branding To Stand Out From The Crowd

Job Seeker's Story

Josh was astonished when he was let go after his company in the medical electronics instrumentation industry was bought out by its top competitor. Because Josh had been #1 in sales for the past five years (out of his six years with the company), he assumed he was vital to company operations and, thus, immune from company layoffs.

Because he never imagined he would be job-hunting any time soon, Josh did not have an up-to-date résumé ready to go. While he struggled with writing one, he started getting “nibbles” of interest from other companies in the industry, as well as related industries. Hoping to capitalize on their interest, Josh hurriedly crafted a reverse-chronological listing of jobs he had held with snippets of job descriptions for each. He even included a couple of accomplishments, including his number-one sales status. After emailing his one-page résumé, Josh sat back and waited for what he was sure would be a flood of interview requests. Curiously, no interviews materialized.

Kevin found himself in a similar job search situation with no interviews. While Kevin was still employed at what he termed a “dead-end job” in the financial information-management industry, he had responded to online job postings with his updated résumé and gotten no interview offers. As a project manager, Kevin assumed his type of job would be in demand and, therefore, had spent little time on preparing his résumé. Kevin did include descriptions of five of his major projects in the past four years, and their ultimate outcomes. (In some cases the projects had died due to change of executive leadership and company priorities.)

Job Seeker's Stumble

Both Josh and Kevin started their résumés with their name and contact information, and then proceeded directly into listing their job history (with sparse descriptions and accomplishments) in reverse order, as well as education and training. Although Josh's and Kevin's résumés were an accurate depiction of their career histories, and did include minimal accomplishments, they did not persuade potential employment reviewers to contact them. In particular, the dry facts of their work history and educational background did nothing to convey their personality. For occupations in Sales and Project Management—where interpersonal, communications, and leadership skills are paramount—Josh and Kevin did not contribute any sense of their personal style, value-added benefits to the employer, and potential cultural fit.

Job Seeker's New Strategy

Because companies typically invest thousands of dollars per hire in the recruiting and interviewing process, they do not seek out “ordinary” candidates who portray themselves on a resume with deadly boring details or with no personality and impact. The reason that extraordinary candidates stand out and get hired is because 1) they demonstrate value (benefits) that the employer absolutely wants, and 2) they showcase a memorable and positive personal brand that is a quality match between the candidate and the company/team.

For best self-marketing results, your message of value (what you can do of benefit to the employer) and your personal brand (how you do what you do) need to be consistent with your authentic self and made crystal clear to the employer. On a résumé, value and personal branding can be woven into every major element. For example, both Josh and Kevin could have started their résumés (after their contact information) with a Header, Tagline, and Summary that provided an overview of their value, brand, career history and accomplishments, and training. That would have meant even a cursory initial reading could have intrigued the employment reviewer enough to want to read more of the body of the résumé.

Josh's Header and Tagline could have read:

Account Executive—Medical Electronics Instrumentation Products

“Sales excellence through pain-free product education”

Kevin's Header and Tagline might have been stated as:

Project Manager—Information Technology

“Collaboration building for flawless projects—on time, every time”>

These Headers and Taglines demonstrate much-needed benefits to the employer ("sales excellence” and “flawless projects”) while also highlighting the way in which Josh and Kevin attained their stellar results (“pain-free product education” and “collaboration building”).

These themes could have been repeated throughout their résumés to reinforce their personal branding and to differentiate them from other candidates. By selectively describing the actions they took to achieve their accomplishments, for example, they could have shown the constancy of their brands. Josh could have mentioned his track record of upselling and cross-selling products (95 percent of every customer-service call and product demo) because of his unique skills in isolating customers’ needs, addressing those needs in the “product-education” process, and making the technical information easy to understand.

Even education and volunteer (community) involvement could serve to convey a common thread of personal branding. In Kevin's case, for example, his leadership as a Boy Scout Troop leader in fund-raising projects could have been cited. His collaboration with the local chamber of commerce and community-service organizations proved essential to year-over-year record-breaking fund-raisers.

What is your theme of uniqueness and differentiation? You have a personal brand, whether you know it or not, and that brand promises delivery of value to a potential employer. Once you are in touch with your personal brand and the value your brand produces, you can use those concepts in your self-marketing documents to ensure you will be the applicant asked in to interview. What's more, by selecting you to interview, the employer will have already pre-qualified you in terms of their company-culture fit. Though it is true that employers need to know you can produce the results they need, they also must know that you will fit into the existing team dynamics and company.

To discover your brand, get honest feedback from others (friends, business colleagues, co-workers, supervisors, vendors and suppliers, customers, and so forth) or take the 360Reach Personal Branding assessment (www.reachcc.com/360register). Look for consistent themes of personal style, strengths, and value you deliver. The following additional resources relate to personal branding discovery and branding communications:

People have brands just as products and companies do. Your brand is your unique combination of skills, strengths, knowledge, and personal style that adds value to others. Rather than appearing just the same as every other job applicant, distinguish your résumé and cover letter with your personal branding message. Showcase your brand as “giving,” positive, and uplifting, and others will be interested in you. It is through that interest that you will gain the attention of the kind of employers who will be the best “quality match” for you.

Job Search Bloopers © 2009 , Career Press, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Additional topics

Job Descriptions and Careers, Career and Job Opportunities, Career Search, and Career Choices and ProfilesJob Search, Job Interview Questions, & Job Interview TipsCommon Job Curses - Dead-end Job Dilemma, Chart Your Career Future With Care, Lack Of Research Fatal To Career Progress