Personal Branding Guide
Personal Branding Tips (4 min read)
Every single interaction with a hiring team is an opportunity to show off strengths, skills, strong character traits, leadership abilities, problem-solving potential, and the ability to generate return on investment.
All traits that HM's desire.
Personal Brands are part of how you market yourself, and how you want to be understood or represented in the market. They summarize who you are, what matters to you, and what you bring to the table; both personally and professionally.
The four components of a Personal Brand (that we research, and teach) are:
- Your Passions
- Your Skills & Strengths
- Your Value (or the ability to create it)
- Your Personality
Personal branding strategies help keep your marketing story organized and consistent. Consistency is important to how you present yourself, and your own personal narrative, to an audience (or audiences).
The first step towards effectively making that presentation is to create a Personal Branding Statement (PBS). The PBS is a modern-day elevator pitch candidates use to quickly and effectively summarize themselves in an effort to create further interest.
We use the PBS (or elements of it) across multiple materials like resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and networking messages.
Let's take a look at a GOOD vs. BAD PBS example that would be used at the top of a resume.
Now that you understand the concept, we encourage everyone to try writing their own version. At a minimum, a PBS is comprised of 3 sentences.
Here's what you need to do to create your own:
- Create 1 sentence describing what you’re passionate about. What motivates you to perform?
- Create 1-2 sentences describing what you’re really good at. The skills someone would want to hire you for.
- Create 1-2 sentences discussing an example of when you combined Passions/Skills to create value and/or tangible results. We call this the hook, and the intent is to provide evidence to your audience/reader to read further (into a resume) or keep listening (as an interviewer).
As you write...
Don’t overthink the PBS structure; let it work for you and your audience. Your first draft can be very rough, and that's OK.
Additionally, we are typically customizing the PBS to appeal directly to a specific hiring audience (company/job role), be prepared to tweak this structure frequently.
Happy writing!
