The magic of personal branding

Personal branding can help you sell yourself better to employers, but most importantly, it can provide you with a place to express yourself. Build a great portfolio and people who agree with your ideas, your missions, and your interests will start to reach out to you with opportunities, rather than the other way around.

The four ingredients to a good personal brand

1. Product - The portfolio has to be good - plain and simple. The website must be designed well. There can’t be any typos. Images should be optimized so that the page load time stays low. The website needs to be responsive. Bonus points if your website is unique!
2. Authenticity - It is essential to be willing to communicate authentically and be vulnerable. The world is full of people puffing their chests, taking themselves too seriously, or trying to be like someone they aren’t. Remember at the end of the day, your audience, recruiters, are people too. If they’re on your website, you know that they are already at least somewhat interested in you from your resume. When they’re on your website, they’re looking for examples of your work but also to learn more about your personality - make sure some of it shows in your website.
3. Work - As I said above, if a recruiter is on your website, that means that you passed the initial sniff test. They glanced at your resume and thought that you may be a good candidate so they are looking at your website to gather more information. It’s important that on your website, you have good work examples to show them.
4. Confidence - Building a personal website can be somewhat intimidating. You’re putting yourself and your work out into the world for people to judge. That can scare any rational person - who wants to subject themselves to more judgment? If you feel unconfident about your work, your experience, or your ability to build a good looking and unique website that’s fine. Start small, but start today. Don’t let your fear prevent you from shining light on all the hard work you have done.

Finding your voice and defining your personal brand

Before we even talk about setting up your personal website, we need to talk about your personal brand and how you want to communicate yourself to the world.

The internet is a noisy place - everyone is sharing, and it can be hard to stand out. We have give brand elements that you need to think about in order to create a brand that stands out.

Target audience

Always remember your target audience - recruiters. Depending on what track you’re in, these can be graphic design recruiters, PM recruiters, etc. Recruiters want to see work that is good, a website that is unique, and a personality that they think would match their company’s culture.

Mission

• I would argue this is the most important part of your website because it communicates why you do what you do. A personal mission statement gives your brand a sense of purpose. It needs to be ambitious and states a driving force behind your long-term goals.
• Your mission could be about preserving our planet, educating people making their lives easier so they have more family time, facilitating access to financial resources for small business owners - whatever!
• Your mission should be specific enough to show that you have a general direction in mind for your career but it shouldn’t be so specific that it narrows you to working on a limited number of projects.

Positioning

• What makes you different from the 200 other people applying to a job? What do you do better than anyone else? What is your unique selling position, USP for short.
• Write down what you have studied at school, the cultures you have experienced, the languages you speak, the companies you have worked for, the projects you have created, the awards you have received. All of these are potential differentiators you can use to craft your own unique positioning.

Values

It can be hard to define your personal values, because they can seem ambiguous until they are violated and you need to defend them. The most efficient way to find your personal values is to think back on times of conflict where someone said or did something that made you react in a negative way. Make a list of things that come to mind - these are your core values.

Personality

Are you laid back and casual? Assertive and decisive? Do you see yourself as a team leader or a collaborator? Make sure whatever you are, it shows via your website.

These next two weeks we'll be working to define your personal brand! It may sound like a lot upfront but we'll be tackling it step by step.

Crafting your story

If you remember, during the first week of the Fellowship all of us wrote personal propositions and biographies. Now is the time when those are going to become helpful again.

Dig those out and keep them in safe place. Those will be important to include in your personal website.

If you want to change or update what you wrote, feel free to. Here are the basic formats so that you remember.

Proposition

[your name] provides [target audience] with [unique value proposition] to [mission].

Biography

Go back to your values and your experience and write a 2-3 sentence biography, making sure that things stay close to your proposition.

Remember - your proposition and biography are usually always works-in-progress. They're probably going to be different then they were at the beginning of the program and they'll most certainly be different in a year from now.

Spend some time today moving the ball forward on getting a job! Because people are in different places, the best thing to do today differs depending on where you are in your search.

• Spend more time searching for positions
• Spend more time reaching out to contacts and networking
• Spend time preparing for an upcoming interview
• Schedule more time with Andy or Allison to prepare for an interview