Personal Brand Reflection
This week I am delivering a session on personal brand. In my preparation for this presentation, I had read lots and reflected upon what a great personal brand looks like and how it can help someone when they are looking for a job. I was going to do a bulleted list of the best things to do with a personal brand but I wrote the first bullet and said to myself, "this is not working". So, I will just share with you some of my thoughts
A personal brand is just that, personal, talk about and integrate into your personal brand things you like and things you enjoy. I think one of the things I reflected on most during my research was passion and involving something that you’re passionate about in your personal brand. I like (probably more like obsess) about golf. That is something that I am very passionate about and thus part of my personal brand. Secondly, I do think that recruitment is going more towards online presence and less around hard copy resumes. As a Recruiter in my past, I was very interested in someone’s online presence, did they have a personal website, what were they saying on twitter, and how they were integrating their experience and brand in their LinkedIn profile.
Finally, I think the hardest thing for me as both I write this and reflected on this for the past 2 weeks, has been stretching outside my comfort zone and just putting my personal brand out there. I have to put out of my mind what people think about me and just shared. You never know what could come of it, if it’s nothing, OK. However, if you don’t share at all then definitely nothing will happen. So, put yourself out there, build your personal brand if you get anything out of it, at least you had the chance to share who you are and what you’re passionate about and no-one can fault you for that.
I will leave you with the best quote on personal brand that I have found:
“"Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room".
- Jeff Bezos
CEO of Amazon
Thanks for reading and feel free to share with me your thoughts on personal brand!
Cheers,
Paul
