Follow these steps to create your own personal brand.
When you think in terms of your own personal brand, it doesn’t mean what you do for a living. As a jobseeker, you will be competing with a lot of other people who do the same thing and maybe have the same background.
To discover your own personal brand, get ready to do lots of writing. Answer these questions in as much detail as possible. As with most discovery processes, the journey is as important as the destination.
- Which values are important to you? Do an Internet search on Values Clarification to find worksheets and quizzes that can help you narrow down the choices. Pick your top 3 most important values.
- What are your passions? What do you love to do? What will you make time to do no matter what?
- What are your strengths? What do you do better than most? What do you do well most of the time? What do you do that people remark about? What do you do that seems effortless to you but others struggle with?
- Identify your personality traits. You can use an assessments such as DISC and Reach360 to gain a wide perspective on your traits.
- Decide who you want to be. What is your vision for your life and career?
- Identify times you’ve been happy or felt valued. What caused or played a part in your happiness?
- Categorize the information you have about yourself so far and see what patterns emerge. How might you or do you use those characteristics in your profession?
- Imagine you are retiring from a long and satisfying career. Describe how you want to be remembered after your retirement. What did you accomplish? What do you want people to know you for?
- Check in with your values and passions. Does your compiled vision fit with what is important to you?
- Let this information sit and “percolate” for a day or two. Return to it and determine your conclusions.
Find more details about discovering your personal brand in The Complete Guide to Building your Personal Brand.
If your personal brand is the part of resume writing that is keeping you stuck, contact me today. We can set up a time to talk about your goals and how to get there, including the brand you’d like to live out.
Related
- Personal Branding: What is your personal brand?
- Personal Branding: Why jobseekers need a personal brand
- Personal Branding: Define your personal brand
Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net).
Great article, definitely agree. For a service provider, your personal brand is your business’ brand. As a service provider I use Hoodoko.com to build my brand, network with other business owners and sell my services according to my availability is very helpful. Their appointment system is great since customers can book you online and there is no going back and forth with dates and times. I would definitely recommend checking out their networking system, it’s like online speed dating for businesses. And it’s free to use, which makes it a lot better.
-E