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The Importance of Personal Branding for Job Seekers

Written by: Matt Craven
Published on: Oct 22, 2021

job applicant having interview
Photo credit: Africa Studio/Shutterstock

The term personal branding is bandied about on a regular basis, but what does it really mean and how can job seekers harness personal branding as a tool for raising their profile and attracting the right career opportunities?  

What Jeff said 

Personal branding is all about controlling the way people perceive you. Jeff Bezos (the CEO of Amazon) summed it up nicely when he said that “your personal brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.”  

The 4 Ps 

Personal branding is really no different to company branding; companies have a product (or service), a positioning in their market-place, a price point and promotional activity (in marketing terms, this is called the 4 Ps).  

Apply this to yourself and think about your product or service i.e., when you work for an organization, what do you do for them and what do you deliver?; think about your positioning i.e., what is your value proposition and key strengths that you want to build you career around?; think about what you want to get paid; think about how you are going to communicate all this to the job market i.e. the promotion. 

Bringing this all together, it’s really just a question of defining your skills and strengths, deciding how you want to position those skills and strengths and then communicating your worth through your resume, LinkedIn profile, cover letter and interview technique.

Your off and online persona 

Statistically, 70% of employers use social media to screen candidates and 57% are less likely to contact applicants with no online presence. There’s no escaping how important your online persona is! Couple this with what you communicate through your resume and cover letter, and how people perceive you when they meet the real you, and we get your personal brand.

Personal branding is all about managing your own external image and PR; if you are aware of your external image and make a conscious effort to nurture and manage how people view you, you’ll be way ahead of many professionals who are blissfully unaware of how important this is.

The key points 

  • Identify your key skills and areas of expertise
  • Decide what kind of role your skills and expertise are best suited to
  • Define your value proposition i.e., the value you are proposing to offer to a future employer
  • Work out how you are going to position your value proposition, skills and expertise
  • Write your resume, LinkedIn profile and cover letter in a way that promotes these points
  • Develop your interview technique so you can talk freely about yourself
  • Make sure any posts on social media are positive and consistent with your personal brand 

And following on from what Jeff Bezos said, do everything you can to make sure people talk about you in the right way when you are not in the room. 

If you are interested in some 1-2-1 assistance, please reach out to us over here at CVIA Careers on info@cvandinterviewadvisors.co.uk, quoting JCWCFP to receive a 15% discount.

Matt Craven is Managing Director of The CV Interview Advisors