Career Growth Strategy – Building a Personal Brand

We keep hearing people talk about the importance of building a personal brand but it’s become even more important these days given the job market. Creating a powerful personal brand can be a potent career growth strategy for professionals in mid-senior management positions.

Number of available opportunities reduces as one moves up the corporate ladder. The dynamics of the search process are also very different. Senior positions are generally not advertised on job portals. Most of them are available only through the network. Very often hiring managers identify the right people in the industry and pursue them to take up the position. Here are some tips that could help you create a personal brand and attract the best opportunities:

Blog:

Writing a thoughtful blog about your industry and area of work is probably the most powerful way to create a personal brand. It’s the best platform to exhibit your understanding, experience and passion for whatever you do. Setting up a blog is fairly easy. If you don’t want to get into the hassle of buying a domain and hosting it yourself, just go to blogger.com or wordpress.com and create your account.

The greatest challenge is to be able to write regularly. Start with writing once a week and then increase the frequency as you move forward. It’s like a public resume – make sure it is professional and well written. It can open up a plethora of opportunities for you like consulting, speaking or writing opportunities.

Events/Speaking opportunities:

You must go out and attend industry events and conferences. This will help you stay abreast with the latest in your industry. It helps you build the right network. Knowing the right people in the industry can do wonders for your career growth.

You must also take up speaking opportunities at these events. Anyone can do it with practice. This will position you as a thought leader in your space and give tremendous visibility within and outside your organization.

LinkedIn

A vast majority of hiring managers search for names of candidates before speaking to them. You must use this to your advantage. You must always monitor top results when your name is searched and make sure it isn’t anything you wouldn’t want recruiters to view. You professional blog and LinkedIn page would often come up in the first few results. Make sure you fill in your details on LinkedIn  and also ask your colleagues  customers, partners, managers, etc to write recommendations for you.

Would it not be great if someone searches for your name and sees a couple of recommendations? In addition, participate in conversations on LinkedIn Answers. It exhibits your experience & understanding and increases your visibility. More and more recruiters are using tools like LinkedIn to reach out to passive job seekers. Make sure you are visible enough when they make the searches

This list isn’t exhaustive. What do you think helps build a personal brand?