Networking

Craft your personal brand statement

10 minutes

What is personal branding, how do you develop it and where do you use it?

David Ogilvy, the king of advertising defines a brand as “The intangible sum of a product’s attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it’s advertised.” Branding is the defined personality of a product, service, organisation or individual.

While we don’t really love to use marketing terminology to define people, the concepts work really well in career development and can support short and long term career goals. Like a marketing campaign, a longer term career development plan (longer term goal) needs to have a defined outcome or goal, a defined audience and as a result a consistent message.

Selling yourself in just a few sentences requires creativity, intention, and careful editing.

Your personal brand can be aspirational, can include your purpose and over time can ignite your passion. Equally, your personal brand evolves over time as you use and develop knowledge and skills and as your values and beliefs cultivate from your experiences, growing you as a person and defining your professional identity.

Where to you start? To create your personal brand statement, start with these six steps:

Define your audience

Consider what you are selling - Are you in job search mode, building your brand for a longer term career development goal or trying to build your network?

Identify your value and what you want your personal brand to say about you?

Reflect on what do you want your personal brand to say about you? How can you modify your brand to better align with your career goals? Determine the value you bring to a role or industry. Ask yourself what problems you solve and what benefits you offer to an employer, team or potential client.

Your skills, experiences and qualifications

Write down the key pieces you want to communicate to your audience? List your key skills, attributes and experience. Which stand out? Which are likely to matter most to your future boss? How can you combine them in a statement?

Start with a powerful adjective

Using powerful adjectives in your personal brand statement can make it more impactful and memorable. Some compelling adjectives are innovative, dynamic, strategic, results-orientated or influential to name a few.

Craft your statement

Start writing your statement, keeping it concise (usually 2-3 sentences). Focus on combining your strengths, value proposition, and what you aim to achieve in your career. Ensure your statement reflects your true professional self. Use specific examples or keywords relevant to your industry to make your statement stand out.

Practice and refine

Practise your statement on hellomonday coach, trusted peers, family or friends.

Examples:

Impactful career coach whose passion is helping people impacted by change to reach their career goals by equipping my participants with the skills needed to manage their job search.

Influential sales executive with a talent for building strong client relationships and driving revenue growth. Expert in identifying market opportunities and positioning products for success.

Collaborative IT professional specializing in network security solutions. Committed to working closely with teams to develop robust systems that enhance organizational performance and security.

Sources

Rozdeba Brand & Co. (2020, March 17). The Who, What, How & Why of a Brand. Medium. https://medium.com/swlh/the-who-what-how-why-of-a-brand-2d56fafab14

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