Today we buy the value implied by our favorite brands, and Employers do the same! Do you buy generic beer? Clothes? Cars? Not likely.
Personal Branding
Why personal branding is critical for you today:
- Employers are looking for results.
- Results demonstrate Your Qualities, which satisfy Their Value Requirements.
- Employers are not buying generic beer.
- They will buy the intangible Qualities implied by your brand (you are Nike too).
How Do You Create a Brand – without a million dollar budget?
It’s pretty simple actually. Personal Branding is all about making yourself stand out so that people trust you and are interested in you.
To do this you borrow your previous employers Brand (names, slogans, and logos) to create an identity that is memorable and desirable to the people you want to reach.
For your cover letter this means name-dropping which projects you worked on or which clients you sold to. Be specific. Be detailed. Sell the sizzle AND the steak.
For your resume it may mean taking the logos (with permission of course) of the companies you worked for or product you developed and putting them on your resume for extra punch. Nothing will get an employer’s attention faster than a well-known brand’s logo, especially if it’s a competitor or a coveted account for the sales group.
For telephone queries it’s all in how you set the stage. When you are following up your letter, email, resume try standing out from the other 1000 applicants. For example:
Typical:
- “I sent you my resume…”
- “I’m following up the resume I sent…”
- “I understand you may be looking for… “
- “Do you need a …”
Those are the standard opening statements people use when they call me or leave me a voice-mail message.
Try this instead:
You Inc:
Mr. Jones, I was in
New York
when the world-trade towers came down. My company sent me there a few days earlier to close a deal and told me not to come back without it because there’d be no company to come back to…
Mr. Jones, are you getting all the new business you deserve or are you of the opinion there's room for improvement between now and the end of the next quarter?
This is not exactly rocket science. It just takes a little forethought and planning to leave a message or start a conversation that is more likely to get you a quick return call. In case you're looking for more examples, this comes out of both of my books, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters and Career Guide for the High Tech Professional
Next week we’ll tackle branding for your resume. It’s actually pretty easy and terribly effective.
Compliments of David E Perry and Kevin Donlin. For more creative job search tactics, go to the Guerrilla Marketing for job hunters blog and download the free audio CD.
