Your Guide to Creating a Personal Brand That Will Make You Stand Out

Your Guide to Creating a Personal Brand That Will Make You Stand OutWhen youre on the job hunt, you have one fantastic thing working for you. Not your lucky interview shoes. Not even your resume (though a great one is a necessary part of any job search). Its you. Your personal brand is a tool in your arsenal that can really help you stand out from a crowd of similar resumes, and get to the next steps. If youre not sure what your brand is or what it should be, lets walk through what it means to have a brand, and how to build it. googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display(div-gpt-ad-1467144145037-0) ) Why Do You Need a Brand?Think about what branding is, and does. It tells a story about a product, usually about its quality and reliability. Every commercial, every ad, every websitetheyre all trying to tell a story. You need this car because its reliable and energy efficient. You need this soda because it means youll create happy memories with friends and family while sipping cold drinks. You need to get your news at this site because it is fast and accurate. Whatever that company wants you to think about their product, they try to convey via branding.You can apply that same thinking to your own life and career. What do you want people to think of when they think of you? It should be a clear, to-the-point message. Claire is an innovative problem-solver. Manny is a results-focused manager who leads his gruppe to exceed sale goals. Terry prioritizes efficient tafelgeschirr and top-notch customer experience. Having that kind of elevator pitch about yourself ready to go not only gives you a punchy line to use with recruiters and interviewers, but also gives you a center point around which you can build your resume, cover letter, interview prep, etc. It takes the pressure off of the hiring manager to figure out just who you are, and lets them concentrate on how you would fit in, and what experience and skills you bring to the table.How to Identify Your BrandIts ok ay if you dont know yet what you want your brand/narrative to be. If you havent really thought about it before, its not likely youll instantly hit an a-ha moment that sums up your professional essence into a catchy one-liner. Start by asking yourself some key questionsWhat is the best quality you offer, or service you provide, when it comes to your career? Do you have a stellar customer service record? Do you have an eagle eye for detail? Are you great at bringing different kinds of people together to get a project or task done? Could you sell anything to just about anyone? Think about your fruchtwein sellable quality as a professional and as a potential employee.What do you value most in a job/company? Personal values are important (you wouldnt want to take a job that violates your personal beliefs), but here we should be focusing on what you value in your career. For example, if helping others is important to you, then thats a core value, and you may want to focus on teamwork or c ustomer service in your personal branding. Other examples of core values might be innovation, creativity, strong reputation, global focus, environmental responsibility, or work-life balance.What are you passionate about? What drives you? Why did you choose this field in the first place? Why do you want to continue and grow in it? Figuring out what motivates you and pushes you forward can help you really zero in on what your personal brand can be.What are your talents? What have you been recognized for, in the past? What do you think are your natural strengths? What can you do better than other people? Again, for this exercise focus on work-related talents, or general life talents that could be applied to your job. If youre a stellar trombonist, thats great, but how does that apply to your career in retail sales? If at all possible, connect your talents to specific outcomes or accomplishments at work.What are your goals? This can help you departure to focus your brand, aligning your current story with where you want to be. Be as specific as possible in naming your goalsones like, I want to be making double my salary in ten years or I want to be CEO are not helpful. A more effective approach here would be thinking about the next five years or so, and the milestones youll need to hit.Once you have all that information gathered (just notes, nothing too complicated), you can start identifying the most important parts, and distilling them down to just a sentence or two. I am a highly organized people person. I am a creative thinker with a passion for helping others. I am a whiz at finding new ways of doing things to make my job more efficient. I am good at team-building, and want to take my leadership skills to the next level.Finding your personal brand story isnt the end result here, thoughnow you have to put it into action.5 Steps to Build Your BrandHere comes the hard work partor at least the more time-consuming part. These are the things you should be doing to b olster your brand, and make sure youre getting the message out there.1. Build your social media profile.If all of your current social media accounts are personal ones, where you post pictures of your most recent vacation, talk about what youre watching on TV, or posted stuff throughout your, uh, younger and more carefree days, its time for an upgrade. Switch personal Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts to private settings, to be enjoyed only by you and your personal friends and family. Companies and hiring managers dont hesitate to do online searches these days, and the last thing you want them turning up at the top of the search page is that unfortunate photo of you from your old Cancun spring break. Sure, it may have been years ago now, but a margarita funnel doesnt exactly say professionalism. Shutting those away from public consumption definitely helps in projecting only the best (and least controversial) image of yourself. Make sure you do basic searches for your name on a few different search engines to binnensee what comes upand what kind of damage control youll need to do.If youre starting new accounts for your brand, keep it simpleuse a variation on your name. Search for people in your field, professional associations, or blogs and sites in your field, and add them so that your new feeds are chock full of useful information. When you post content, make sure youre posting things that are engaging, on topic, and focused. You dont need to post every day just for the sake of posting, but try to get in the habit of posting at least a few days a week. The point is to engage and raise your profile, not lurk.2. Create a personal website.Existing social networks are great, because theyre easy to use and have built-in pools of people and content so that you can get up and running right away. But you should also take the step of building your own personal website, which you can use as a kind of living resume/geschftsleben card/snapshot. You dont need to be a graphic design expertand if the late 90s/early 00s taught us anything, its that people left to their own devices will end up using weird gifs and blinding color combinations. Lucky for us now, there are lots of great tools that let you build a custom site from a series of options.On your site, you have total freedom. You can host your resume (with even greater detail), write a blog, post-how-to videos, post a portfolio of your work, link to your social media profileswhatever you want to include. Make sure you emphasize the top points you came up with during your what is my brand? exploratory phase. If you include the link to this site on your resume or in your cover letter, its a chance to let the reader get to know you better.And dont forget to keep things consistent the messaging from your social media profiles should be the same high points you hit in your website. The clearer and more cohesive your message is, the more memorable itll be.3. Get a business card.Seems like a thr owback, doesnt it? But sometimes theres no replacement for the good old-fashioned act of handing someone a card with all of your contact info on itespecially in situations where you dont have time to spell out your personal URL. Plus, youll have extras to put in those fishbowls at restaurants and potentially win a free lunch (bonus).4. Build your network.What good is a brand if no one knows about it? Start making connections (or at least more of them). Find people in your field you find interesting, and follow them. Engage in conversations online about your field. Post interesting articles you find, or talk about ideas you have for your field. Look up old colleagues who are still in your field, and re-open that connection.5. Keep engaging.Theres no point where youll be able to say, Theres my brand, its done. Im just gonna sit here and wait for opportunities to roll in. Maintaining your brand is going to be a crucial part of the process. For one thing, you dont want your brand to sta rt looking outdated. For another, its your own reputation youre holding here, so you want to at least keep an eye on your social media profiles to make sure youre not missing anything, or ignoring attempts by others to engage you.Finding and building your brand is one of the best investments you can make in your career. It helps you figure out what your best qualities are as a job applicant, and can help you make the best decisions for your career overall. If you make these maintenance tasks part of your daily and weekly routines, youll be living your brand without even realizing it, and will be your own best brand advocate.

No, My Kids Time With Their Dad is Not a Break For Me

No, My Kids Time With Their Dad is Not a Break For Me Oh, so youre the one who gets a break This is what my single friends tell me, with sparkling eyes and well-meaning earnestness, when I send my kids to their dads for the weekend. They smile and laugh like were in on some fun secret. They mean it and they mean it in the kindest way. They say it in the coffee shop, in the office, in the bookstore. Again and again and again, happily chirping about my break.There was a time when I would have laughed politely and nodded my head, uncomfortable. That time isnt now. Instead, Im honest and I say, Nope.No, bedrngnis really.No, its not a break.No, parenting doesnt stop when my kids arent home.Sometimes, when I respond this way, my friends look uncomfortable. There was a time when I would have felt guilty for this. But now, I realize that instead I should expect better of my friends I should expect people not to chirp hurtful things. So maybe my frank answer will make folks think a little more about how their language might be hurtful to asingle mother who is the primary parent for her children that it might be hurtful to suggest that my kids are so taxing that I need a break from them.I dont. Not really. In fact, I wish they were here.I am always a mother. I am always the lead parent, too the one scheduling doctor and dentist appointments, keeping everyones schedule, picking up and dropping off, making sure that homework is done and school events are attended and fun is had. Im the one my daughter trusts to adjust her palate expander every day, carefully edging it one millimeter wider. Im the one who cheers loudly as my kids race in track meets and who celebrates quietly when my son has the best discus throw of his season. I rush-order ballet tights and shoes when my daughters suddenly dont fit any longer just before a big performance. Its I, alone, who drives my daughter to voice lessons and ballet rehearsals I, alone, who urges my son to shower after grueling workouts.I am a single parent without a reliable co-parent. Indeed, that was one of the many reasons my marriage didnt work. And when my kids arent at home, I think about them constantly. I worry. And I do my best to ensure they are cared for by the parte who didnt even know where my daughters elementary school was in the final year before we separated.Its time we stop treating parenthood like a job. Parenting is part of my life. Its something I chose to do, like so many other people have for millennia. In 2019, we dont accept anyone suggesting that fathers babysit their kids. Why should we accept the language used to speak to single parents that suggests the required, unwanted time away from their kids is some sort of a treat?Consider thisI am a mother, no matter where my kids are. I am a mother who worries that my daughter will forget to take her medicine and reminds her, even when she isnt home. I am a mother who worries my kids wont be provided fruits, vegetables and other heal thy foods while theyre away (because theres a history of this) so I stock up for when they return. I am a mother who hopes my son is sleeping enough, but not so late that it disrupts his rhythm for school mornings. I am a mother who worries that my daughter, who is prone to dehydration, isnt drinking enough and doesnt have what she needs to stay hydrated. I arrive to pick her up armed with fluids and she is grateful.I am a mother always. No matter where my kids are.(Cue the trolls to talk about how fathers can handle all the things mothers can. To them, I say Sure, some can. But not all parents are cut from the same proverbial cloth. Read the words I wrote, not the ones you want to read. And dont assume that because you are a dad / know a dad / have a dad that you know my life and my situation.)Dont misunderstand I dont want to stop my children from seeing their father. But I dont appreciate the insinuating that parenting stops at the drop-off point. Because it doesnt.No, my kids b eing away isnt a break. If anything, its a disruption from our normal, day-to-day life. The house is silent. The pull to cook vanishes. The things my kids and I share from talking about our days to the funny things our cat does are absent. The cadence of my very life is upset when my kids arent here. And sure, that cadence will eventually change when my kids are older and go to college and onto their adult lives and Im an empty-nester for real. But that time isnt now. Right now, I am in the active phase of parenting guiding my teen andmy tween through middle school and hopefully into a fruitful adulthood.Its a big job. And I love it.So dear friends, acquaintances, colleagues and passersby, I know you mean well. Really, I do. But youre mistaken. This isnt a break for me its a hard week. Im worried, Im off-kilter, Im having a hard time. I might look okay I might look no different from any other day. But theres an ache you cannot see.So before you congratulate me on my days off, tak e a breath and rethink your words. Hearing you say something like, oh, bummer I bet you miss them would feel a lot better right now. It would recognize the bond my children and I have. And it would acknowledge that raising my kids isnt a chore Im forced to deal with on the contrary, its an important part of my life. One I cherish.And to you, the other single parents out there the ones who are struggling as your kids spend time away from home Perhaps you, too, are feeling like your guts have been ripped from your chest. Perhaps you are parenting via text and hoping your kids are adequately cared for. I get it. Im with you. You can talk to me. I know youre struggling with your life disrupted, and I know its hard. But it will be over before you know it, and theyll be back again. I swear. Sarah Walker Canon--This story originally appeared onSheKnows.

#8216;I#8217;m Like, Deep#8217; Is This Annoying Speech Habit Actually a Talent Marker

8216I8217m Like, Deep8217 Is This Annoying Speech Habit Actually a Talent Marker (A episode to Im LikeNot Getting the Job?) Initially I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had heard in a long time Research has shown that people who compulsively inject like, you know or Im like into whatever is left of their sentences are deep thinkers.(Thats a paraphrase of what a very bright, like-addicted Swedish graphics-design student said to me in zu sichbei extraordinarily fluent English, but a paraphrase thats accurate and precise enough, despite the biased, invidious spin Ive given it.)It was a claim vague enough to skirt the questions as to whether like-aholics are deeper than other thinkers, simply leid less deep, whether the habit and the depth merely coexist or are correlated, and the question of exactly what kind of depth they havealthough it seemed clear she was suggesting that like-aholics ar e especially deep.I figure that if, indeed, like-aholics are generally deep or deeper than average, if not deeper than everyone else, they should be encouraged to abandon any attempt to suppress that addiction during interviews for jobs that require deep thought and that recruiters, employers and HR managers should green-light them.Millennial Perspectives on LikeWhat was just as stunning as her report of such a claim was the shocking reversal of her gratitude to me, just a week earlier, when we first met, for having gently pointed out that she was clocking about 50 likes per MINUTE in my 2 likes per minute personal-limit zone.It was such an epiphany for her that she actually tallied her likes in real time, achieving the count shown here in the photo I took over the course of just several minutesdespite her extreme efforts to monitor and suppress the habit. Amazingly, within 24 hours, she had apparently vanquished the beast and eliminated like from all conversation with me.A key moti vation for her taking this all very seriously was that she had just had a pre-graduation interview with a Japanese design company, for a fairly high-powered computer design job and is smart enough to appreciate the dangers of allowing that habit to contaminate her interactions with English-speaking HR personnel, clients and supervisors.Thats why I was startled when she reversed herself a week later, citing the objections of her like-aholic her of friends who felt offended by the suggestion that theres anything wrong with using like not only as thought-cement, but also as the bricks. She cemented her stone walling with the argument that since all language is communication and like is language, eliminating it amounts to eliminating communicationas though like facilitates rather than impedes communication of everything except ones peer expectations and age.She also suggested a kind of when in Rome, speak as the Romans do approachi.e., to adapt ones language to the situation and audienc e, assuming that switching language styles in real time is as easy as changing TV channels, as opposed to the view that it is not easy to contain, switch and restrict speech patterns that become deeply habitual and peer-group reinforced, like authorized tics.If she is right about that, then like-aholics need not fear lapsing into like-talk in a critical job interview, even when under pressure or nervous. Otherwise, their job opportunities may evaporate as the gattling-gun rattled-off fusillade of likes tics off the interviewer(s) and their names from the candidate list.Countering this group-mind view is that of Kevin Kim, a 25-year-old Los Angeles freelance web designer, I met in Kyoto, who argued that if like-aholism were really a core cultural value, it would appear equally frequently in written communicationsa view that perhaps reflects a web designers perception that if something is core, its on the Web and as text.Despite the limited validity of self-reporting regarding the abi lity to compartmentalize and contain the like-tic, the Millennials I asked about their ability to shut off that flow in professional contexts said that they believe they can do it (although with some uncertainty about whether they could do so under pressure or when otherwise anxious).In Defense of the Like-TicBefore searching for the alleged evidence for her claim, I decided to assume and defend it and try to explain how it could be true. I resolved that, if that failed, I would try to account for why anyone would imagine why it would be true or why such evidence would be taken at face value.So, consequences and control of the like-tic aside, lets take on the question of what could justify the like-tic and explain how, in particular, like-aholism could possibly correlate with or demonstrate a capacity for deep(er) thinking (rather than merely (un)peacefully coexist with it. Thats the intriguing question. Tackling it independently of extant research on the question, and playing devil s advocate, I propose the followingLike as a marker for a capacity for deep analogical thinking Like is the one stimmt genau that best encapsulates the point of the Miller Analogies Test (M.A.T.), commonly used to assess and estimate likelihood of success in M.A. And Ph.D. programs, especially those in which analogical thinking, modeling and abstracting from details in order to find a common pattern between two or more things is a critical skill. For example, jealousy is to envy as hoarding is to__.Among the hypothetical multiple-choice answers giving, hating, keeping and stealing, the lattermoststealing would be the best answer, since jealousy is resentment of someone who wants what you have, while envy is resentment of someone who has what you want. (No, jealous and envious are NOT synonyms in fact, they are in a clear sense opposites.)If like and Im like are markers of a mind predisposed to deep analogical thinking, we should not be surprised to hear an ostensibly ditzy Frank Zap pa Valley girl who says, Im like so into shopping in like Laguna Beach malls and Prada boutiques, go on to say something like You know, if the Big Bang is like a rock dropped into an isotropic 3-dimensional pond, the analogy suggests there could have been more than one Big Rock dropped into, creating or exploding into the matrix of space-time, thereby precluding the existence of any unique center for the universe, while also suggesting the existence of companion, as yet unobserved Big Bangs.(Note Despite my complete and lifetime abhorrence and avoidance of like and Im like, my pre-grad school M.A.T. score, which, given the tests scale expressed as a percentile, cannot be equal to or greater than 100, was good enough for me to consider getting it tattooed on my forehead, which I didnt for fear that it might have been mistaken for my IQ.)Like as a mentally liberating substitute for electroshock therapy Electroshock (electroconvulsive) therapy is reputedly effective in scrambling rigid , unhealthy patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving, in effect breaking bad habits, obsessive emotions or mind sets by jolting them apart, thereby allowing altogether new and better ones.If the effect of jolting barrages of likes on my brain is any indicator, it may be suggested that by fragmenting, interrupting and preventing concentration and focus in the brains of listeners and speakers alike, the relentless injection of like, Im like and you know into a conversation can prevent the formation of any obsessive focusindeed, of any focus whatsoever, and thereby liberate the brains involved from the constraints of channeled thought.Like as evangelium inhibitor and creative-critical thinking catalyst/liberator Dogmatic thinking is the deadly antithesis of free, creative thought. To say that Im like or something else is like or simply like. is to express and elicit the feeling that what is being expressed and whoever is expressing it are not rigid and dogmatic, that they are merely analogous to something, without being identical to it.Such apparent tentativeness, frequentlyand often rightly perceived as diffidence, is not only endearing to peer groups with a low tolerance for know-it-all superiority and intellectual pretension/achievement, but is also conducive to allowing for critiques of and alternatives to the alleged similarities encapsulated in like and Im like.On this interpretation, Im like. and like should, when repeatedly inserted into discourse, lead to something much more substantial and insightful than the next likewhether ones own or in ones audience response.As of this writing, I have failed to find any formal research correlating the use of quotatives (a grammatical marker preceding something quoted or approximately quoted), such as like and Im like with deep, analytical, creative or otherwise exceptional thinking.But to be on the safe side and allow for the possibility that there are other arguments and indeed strong evidence for the cognitive benefits of like-aholic communication, Im going to get on that bandwagon right now and ask Recruiter.com to modify the like button at the top of this article..and make it like, like.