Your personal brand is what you are known for; your skills, strengths, personality, values, motivators, and interests.
By purposefully defining your personal brand, you can communicate a more powerful message, improve your ability to differentiate yourself and build authenticity and credibility.
The key to a solid personal brand is consistency. Your brand should be consistently represented in all your job search documents, in your interactions with others during the recruitment process, and ultimately on the job.
For this reason, it is helpful to have your brand in mind as you prepare your resume or to at least have in mind the idea of building a personal brand. This way, you can be looking out for stand out strengths and themes.
Setting a personal brand is basically selecting a handful of strengths or qualities you want to be known for (aligned to your target role). You don’t want to dilute your personal brand by having too many. Keep it authentic.
The best tool alongside self-reflection for determining your brand is to ask for feedback. Finding out how others see you is helpful.
For your resume, determine the top three strengths you want to communicate. This can be a combination of values, personality, skills, and motivators. This will help you to focus on presenting a solid and authentic personal brand.
If you’re having trouble thinking of your top three strengths or qualities. Consider these prompt questions:
What is your most significant achievement? Which of your skills and qualities did you use to achieve this outcome?
What do others recognise as your strengths? For what are you regularly praised? With what do your colleagues request your help?
What are you most proud of? Often the answer is not your most significant career achievement. Rather an accomplishment that means something to you personally. What does the answer say about what is important to you? What do you value?
What have been your defining moments? The moments that gave you clarity on the career direction you wanted to take. Why was it significant? What does the answer say about what you’re passionate about?
Open Colleges has a comprehensive guide to personal branding that may also help.
The process of writing your resume will help to identify your strengths.
If you are not sure of your personal brand, don’t worry; writing your resume will help shape or consolidate your brand.
