Enhance Your Brand With These Tips

A powerful personal brand can give you a competitive advantage in a job search — it defines who you are as a professional and helps employers understand what you bring to the table. By taking steps to refine and enhance your brand, you can control how potential employers view your skills and experience.

Choose a Focus

A great personal brand is clear, specific and focused around a central message. If your brand feels disjointed or generalized, determine your unique selling point. How does your experience or expertise set you apart from typical candidates? "Mechanical engineer with extensive technical communication experience" is more compelling than "mechanical engineer," while "writer with a strong scientific research background" gives a clearer picture than "writer." Once you choose a focus, ensure that each of your materials contains supporting information.

Create a Visual Identity

Just like a business brand, a personal brand should have a visual component. A consistent style ensures that your materials are recognizable at a glance — a crucial consideration, particularly if you have a common name. Start with the most visible elements, such as your social media profile photos; use the same photo for each one, or choose shots with a similar color profile and style. Then, unify the colors, fonts, text treatments and header styles on your resume, blog, personal website and digital portfolio. For extra visual impact, consider creating a logo for yourself. Incorporate the logo wherever possible: resume headers, blog favicons, portfolio pages and photo watermarks are a great start.

Manage Your Google Presence

For better or for worse, Google is a big contributor to your personal brand. During a job search, it's almost guaranteed that an employer will run a Google search for your name. If a variety of results turn up, the employer may refine the search using your state, job title, university or other key identifiers. Unrelated, negative or outdated search results dilute the power of your brand. Take control of the situation by filling the internet with powerful, keyword-optimized results. Set up a website, preferably using your first and last name as the URL. Use your full name as a keyword in meta tags, image names, alt text, headers and naturally throughout the text. Publish articles that are related to your brand focus, and give website owners permission to use your full name. This strategy helps keep timely, relevant content on the top three pages of search results, increasing your brand visibility.

Engage Other Professionals

Reinforce the power of your personal brand by engaging publicly with other professionals. Attend networking events, and use your brand focus as the answer to the question, "What do you do?" Hand out business cards with your logo and brand elements. Online, use your branded social media accounts to participate in discussions with industry thought leaders. Connecting your materials and visual elements with a confident, knowledgeable message reinforces your brand and creates a lasting impression.

A personal brand gives you a defined, crisp image, both online and in person. With careful attention and molding, a strong brand can help you make valuable connections and make it easier to land a new job.

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