Sick of getting snubbed? Tired of waiting by the phone for the call that never comes? Over getting beat out time and time again by another job candidate? Related: 3 Effective Ways To Quickly Brand Yourself Online If you mean business (and we know you do!), you need to start polishing up your personal brand - and your strategy for promoting it to employers.
How To Get Employers To Take Your Brand Seriously
If you want employers to take your brand seriously, YOU need to start taking your brand seriously. Here are three things you need to do in order to WOW employers with your impressive brand:1. Give yourself an awesome personal branding statement.
What is it about you, your skills, your knowledge, or your product that you want people to know about? What do you want to come to mind when people think of you? A personal branding statement briefly summarizes who you are and why you’re valuable. It should be clear cut and to the point - it should NOT be a novel. Your personal branding statement should be something you can easily use to introduce yourself to someone at a networking event. The message should always be consistent, even if you need to rephrase it in conversation. Read more: 3 Steps To An Outstanding Personal Branding Statement According to this article on Forbes, your personal branding statement should briefly answer the following questions:- What makes you great?
- What makes you unique?
- What makes you compelling?
2. Get yourself a personal website.
Did you know that 80% of employers Google job candidates before inviting them in for an interview? Makes sense, right? You wouldn’t buy an expensive product without seeing what’s out there about it online, would you? Probably not in this day and age, when conducting “background” checks on people and things is as easy as tapping your phone. So, what if there’s nothing out there about you? Well, first off, there’s always something out there about you - whether you like it or not. If you want to maintain a little control over what people see when they Google you, you will have to make the extra effort and optimize your online brand. Read more: Are You Doing Enough To Promote Your Brand? Maintaining and optimizing your social media channels is a popular way to do this, however, it’s not enough if you want employers to take you seriously. They want to know that you go the extra mile - they want to know that you put the extra effort in. That’s how you beat out the other job candidates. If you have a certain product or skill you’d like to showcase professionally, you should consider getting a personal website. “There’s nothing like having your own website with custom domain that says you care about your career and, excuse the cliché, go the extra mile,” says Charles Pooley, founder and CEO of Workfolio, an award-winning website platform. “It’s widely known that the typical resume gets viewed for six seconds. Workfolio websites get viewed on average for almost three minutes. That’s a lot of time to get your message across and stand out. Most marketers dream of a three minute attention span. Also, many websites get viewed more than social profiles, according to Pooley. His website gets about three times the visits that his social profiles do.3. Make yourself blog at least once per week on industry-specific topics.
You’ve got a personal website - great! So, how can you use it to your advantage? One word: blog. Blogging is a great way to prove that you’re an expert in your field (or, at the very least, prove that you’re making an effort to establish yourself as an expert in your field). It shows that you’re active in the industry - that you’re keeping up with industry trends and news, and commenting on them. Employers LOVE seeing this. Read more: How To Get Hired By Starting A Blog In addition to blogging on your own website, make an effort to guest post on sites related to your industry. And to take it a step further, try to curate content (share content written by others) a few times a week on your social channels. What are some other things you can do to stand out to employers? Is there a specific thing about your job search strategy that helped you beat the ‘other guy’ during interviews? Tweet me @AriellaCoombs!This post was originally published on an earlier date.Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Workfolio. Photo Credit: Shutterstock
