Personal Branding: The Freedom to Pursue What You Really Want

“In my day, we didn’t have Twitter or LinkedIn or social media networking! We had paper and pencils! And we’d have to perfectly handwrite each resume, and we’d have to walk 20 miles through the snow, each way, just to drop it off! And we didn’t have personal branding! We had one employer! And they had one job open: Cubicle Warmer! And it didn’t matter if you were overqualified, or if your skills didn’t fit it. You TOOK it! And it was a terrible job with terrible pay and it would make you yearn for the sweet release of death, but we LOVED it!”

We’ve probably heard some variation of this story—or told it ourselves at some point in our career-seeking tenure. Whether we’re being facetious or genuinely longing for the days of resume treks through the snow, one thing is true: when it comes to career-seeking know-how, things have changed quite a bit. And it seems all the stuff we used to know about job hunting (i.e., print out resume, snail mail it to employer, leave one copy under pillow for Employment Fairy) is now hopelessly obsolete. (Which means, yes, you should probably go remove all those booby traps you left outside that hiring manager’s office.)

One of the things we keep hearing about is personal branding. This is the process by which you gradually define, build up, maintain, and promote your professional reputation, and establish how you want prospective employers to perceive you. Personal branding is your chance to establish yourself as THE go-to person in your field. Imagine that. The power of branding, a power companies have long since harnessed, is now in your hands! So now, you can go ahead and define yourself as the IBM of IT, the Nike of Nursing, the Microsoft of Manufacturing, the Enron of Engineering…well, okay, maybe not that one.

Now, personal branding can be a bit intimidating. After all, how do you distill everything that is cool about you (e.g., your skills, your passions, your career goals, your favorite Simpsons character to impersonate) into a sound byte or a branding statement? How do you take something as complex as your awesomeness, and turn it into a simple but powerful brand that employers will come to respect and recognize?

It sounds daunting, yes, but here’s something to consider if you live in fear of personal branding: personal branding gives you the freedom to pursue what you really want.

Let’s go back to our opening anecdote for a moment. Obviously, it was an exaggeration (I hope, although I remember being told that printed resumes had to be in pristine condition, untouched by folds, human hands, or air particles), but chances are many of us did follow a very rigid sequence of steps when applying for a job:

1. We searched the classified ads (remember those?) or an online job board to see what was available.
2. We applied to those jobs that, more or less, sounded like something we kinda/maybe/sort of/perhaps could do with enough training and bribing.
3. We interviewed, got the jobs, and were happy enough, even though we didn’t exactly land our dream job (e.g., bestselling author, ESPN anchor, professional mattress tester).

In other words, we essentially went for the best that was available, even if it may not have been the best for us.

Personal branding has changed all that.

Personal branding means you define who you are, what you are good at, what your passions are, and what your goals are. It means that you are defining yourself in terms of who you really are and what you have to offer, rather than defining yourself in terms of an ill-fitting job description you have to squeeze into. It means opening yourself up to opportunities that exist beyond the job boards. It means assuming real power over your identity, not only as a career-seeker, but as a unique individual with formidable talents.

If you define and establish a solid personal brand, and you work the social networks to actively promote that brand, you’re making the whole employment landscape your personal job board. Now, you’re telling the world who you are, what you’re good at, and what kind of position you’d be great for. After all, you’re a respected, recognized guru in your field of expertise—and maybe the first person an employer will think of when he/she has an opening for an expert in your area.

Of course, for you to achieve that level of guru-dom, you have to work your brand by establishing its consistency and effectiveness, and making tweaks here and there to tighten your messaging (just please don’t go New Coke on your personal brand). But once you’ve established your brand and begin to actively promote it, you’ve opened up some real paths toward the jobs you really want. You’ve liberated yourself from the constraints of one-size-fits-all job boards. Rather than waiting for that perfect Director of Awesomeness job post, you’re essentially telling employers, “I’d be a great Director of Awesomeness at your company, and here’s why.” Now doesn’t that sound a lot more promising than applying to that Director of Bleh job posting because it was the only one that sounded even remotely relevant to your skills that day?

Personal branding is not your enemy, and it will not hurt you (assuming you don’t brand yourself as The Unprofessionalizer, Bringing Chaos and Questionable Hygiene Habits to Unsuspecting Workplaces Since 1984). Personal branding will work for you, not against you, once you’ve figured out who you want employers to see you as. And it’ll let you expand your career search into areas of opportunities where you might actually find what you really want to do.

Not to mention, it’ll save you those 20-mile treks through snow.