Build your personal brand when job hunting

You can use your personal brand to market yourself when looking for a job.

A personal brand is a summary of who you are – your skills, strengths, passions and experiences.

Your personal brand is easy to find online, on your:

• LinkedIn profile
• professional website
• other public social media accounts.

Hiring managers and recruiters use those sites to get an idea of your personality and talents.

So identify your personal brand and weave it through your publicly-available information to stand out in a crowd of job seekers.

Use your personal brand to define who you are, showcase your talents and introduce yourself.

To find yours, ask yourself the following:

• who you are, and what makes you special
• your unique service, and what you do that nobody else does
• who your audience is, and who you do it for
• what your best qualities are, and what you’re known for
• what you’ve achieved, and what your track record proves.

Then add some of your personality and bring your answers together to form a statement like:

I'm an award-winning restaurant chef who specialises in Italian cuisine. Recently, my skills were recognised when I was asked to work as a consultant for a new fine dining restaurant. My desire is to continue offering my clients a great dining experience.

Start by searching for your name online. This will show you all the online places where you need to add personal brand. Your changes:

• will make you more memorable for employers
• will make it easier to identify your account
• can include visual things like using the same photo on different websites.

Think about the offline places where you could use your personal brand too.

You can include it:

• on your CV and cover letter
• on your business card
• in job interviews
• when talking to a recruiter
• in your "elevator pitch" at networking events.

• Network into a job with the perfect elevator pitch

• Interview preparation, tests and questions
• The beginner’s guide to job-hunting ebook 
• Free job hunter’s ebook
• Sign up to our e-newsletter for job hunting tips delivered straight to your inbox

Sources

• Dummies, ‘How to Create a Personal Brand for Your Job Search’, accessed July 2019, (www.dummies.com).
• HubSpot, ‘Personal Branding: The Ultimate A to Z Guide’, accessed July 2019, (www.hubspot.com).
• Idealist Careers, ‘Personal Branding 101’, accessed July 2019, (www.idealistcareers.org).
• Job-Hunt, ‘Guide to Understanding and Building Your Personal Brand’, accessed July 2019, (www.job-hunt.org).
• ZipRecruiter, ‘How a Personal Brand Can Help Your Job Hunt’, accessed July 2019, (www.ziprecruiter.com).