Career advice

How to build your personal brand

Your personal brand can play an important role in your career growth.

Branding is a concept most commonly applied to companies and products, but it’s also something you can apply to yourself. In the era of social media and the online presence, it’s becoming increasingly important to cultivate your personal brand. 

Your personal brand is YOU presented to the public in the way you want to be noticed. It’s your public image. When searching for a job or working to build your career, your brand applies to your cover letter and resume, your social media pages, and your presence on your own website and in any other media where you might appear.

Collectively, these individual pieces fit together to form your brand. If your public presence shows you to be professional, friendly, conscientious, community-oriented, adventurous, intellectually curious, forward-looking, and open-minded, a company will be much more likely to hire you. A personal brand that shows you to be inconsistent, abrasive, close-minded, and mean-spirited will work against you.

A consistent and positive personal brand shows potential employers that you are goal-oriented, focused, and serious about making a positive contribution to the workplace.

What are the essential elements of a personal brand? A 2020 survey of North American hiring managers reportedly found the following:

  • 98% of employers do background research about candidates online.
  • 95% say an “elevator pitch” is important.
  • 90% factor a job candidate’s social media accounts into their hiring decisions
  • 79% have rejected a candidate based on their social media content.
  • 80% say a personal website is important when evaluating a job candidate.

 

Now, here are some steps for building your personal brand.

Audit your existing presence

Before moving forward, you want to address what’s already there. Almost all hiring managers and prospective employers will look you up online. You want them to like what they see. Will they?

Things you do not want them to see include content containing you doing any of the following:

  • Behaving in an illegal or unseemly manner.
  • Expressing anger, violence, or hate.
  • Engaging in nasty arguments.
  • Making mean spirited comments or jokes at the expense of others
  • Complaining about your job or career
  • Being dishonest or looking untrustworthy

You want people to find content that makes you look like a good hire and not like someone arrogant, argumentative, or hard to deal with. That post where you’re calling someone an idiot or appearance shaming someone? Delete it. The picture with the caption “Called in sick to hang at the beach!” Get rid of it. And, honestly, if this is you, you might want to do an audit of your behaviour too.

Scrubbing problematic posts from your social media past may be time-consuming and tedious, but it can save you embarrassment and disappointment in the future.

 Craft your personal mission statement and elevator pitch

Again, mission statements tend to be associated with companies (Coca-Cola’s is “To refresh the world”). But they can be personal too. Craft a mission statement for yourself and design your brand around it. If something you’re about to do is counter to your statement or distracts from it, you should not do it.

A personal mission statement showcases who you are and articulates your values and how you define success. Use a personal mission statement to guide your decisions so that your professional and personal paths align with your life goals.

For example, according to Hubspot, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s personal mission statement is: “If something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favour."

And, DailyWorth founder Amanda Steinberg’s is: “To use my gifts of intelligence, charisma, and serial optimism to cultivate the self-worth and net-worth of women around the world.”

Your personal mission statement will change over time as you grow and change yourself.

And 95% of employers want to see your elevator pitch. This is like your personal mission statement but specifically professional. You should be able to effectively convey your skills, goals, vision, and the value you bring in no more than thirty seconds. Imagine delivering your pitch in an elevator to a CEO, selling your brand in the time it takes to make it from the ground floor to their executive suite. You want to make the biggest and best impression in the shortest amount of time.

Distill the elements above (skills, goals, vision, and the value you bring) down to five bullet points that reflect who you are. Write your pitch as you would say it aloud if you met the CEO of a company you want to work for.

Example:

“I’m a project manager who makes dreams reality from ideation to execution while wasting neither time nor money. I anticipate and solve problems, make stakeholders happy, and bring your projects to life.”

If you don’t get a message of focus, integrity, and positivity from reading your pitch, refine it until you do.

Master your social media

Leverage your social media presence. This means using available social media platforms synergistically to give potential employers a consistent, genuine, and well-focused picture of who you are and what you can contribute to their company.

You don’t have to be using every single platform. If you’re not into creating videos, you’re not required to be all over TikTok. Choose the ones that are right for you and optimize them.

In the professional sphere, the most important platform to consider is LinkedIn. Research findings suggest that at least 70% of employers are looking at your social media presence during the hiring process. Their first stop is going to be LinkedIn. Make your page as strong as possible. Update your skills and experience sections regularly, and post regular content that allows you to engage with others. The more you post, the more you show in people’s feeds and will be recognizable. Posts should be relevant to your job and industry and should be informative and provide valuable information. This can be as simple as sharing an article from a trade publication. Like and comment on other people’s posts, maintain your connections, and grow your network.

Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook can also contribute to your personal brand. Whichever ones you’re using, they should be updated regularly with posts that reflect your unique qualities, relevant interests, and professional expertise. If you have them, use them. If you’re not using them, deactivate them. No Twitter page is better than one that hasn’t been updated in four years.

Showing a flair for professional and eye-catching self-presentation and marketing can help convince a potential employer you are someone they want on their team.

Maintaining a consistent colour scheme, look, or recognizable style across your platforms can also help make your online presence stronger.

Build a personal website

 The best way to make your personal brand a one-stop-shop is to invest in a personal website. A website allows you to introduce yourself, deliver your pitch, present the work you are most proud of, and link to your social media pages. A majority of employers appreciate a job candidate with a website. Make your website the keystone of your brand and connect it to your social media platforms.

It doesn’t have to be expensive. There are affordable web design companies out there. Or, if you have the skills or the time to learn them, build something yourself.

Your website may also have a blog or a content platform if you’re writing articles, or you can use a platform like Medium for this. Whether you decide on a deluxe, designer-assisted hosting package, or a DIY single-page presence, a website makes a big difference to your brand.

Build your SEO

Learn some SEO, or “search engine optimization,” tips to help people find you online. You probably know by now that SEO is used to make things show up in search results, mainly Google search results.

Use your name as your website domain name, if possible. If you have a common name and it’s already taken, try including your middle name, or add a job title to the domain register, like “JohnRaymondSmith.com” or “JohnSmithAccountant.com.” Or add some flair, like “JohnSmithAccountantExtraordinaire.com.”

Install a plugin like Yoast on your website and follow the instructions to build the SEO. Learn to do keyword research and, if you feel like getting granular, find a niche that will help you stand out. Having a blog and posting regular content with the keywords you want to rank for can help. Using your name in your LinkedIn URL can help too.

There are courses available online where you can learn all about SEO.

Follow these tips to enhance your personal brand, and your job search will be that much more rewarding. Not only will you appear more consistent, focused, and professional, but you’ll also benefit from the time spent sorting out your priorities and thinking through how to put your best self forward.

Popular topics / Related topics

The content of our blogs, articles, videos, press releases, and presentations are for informational purposes only.

Any links or references to third party content does not constitute our endorsement or approval of that content.