Why Am I Special: Insight Into Personal Branding

Among career transition professionals, one of the catch phrases that is being bantered about these days is “personal branding.” Popular wisdom dictates that you must not only have a strong personal brand, but also must have the ability to project that brand 24/7! No wonder many people are walking around thinking….”whaaaat????”

One way of understanding personal branding is that it is an invisible tagline that follows you wherever you go. Just think about it. You are the “go-to guy when deals fall apart” or you are the “one who takes care of all the details and makes everything run like magic” or maybe even “the one who always delivers”….any of these resonate with you? Can you think of what your tagline would be and more importantly, is that how you want to be known???

Personal branding is where your inner perceptions of yourself and the perceptions of others around you intersect. To put it simply, it is walking your talk on a consistent basis. Getting to the very essence of your personal brand begins with a single question: Why am I special? What unique combination of skills, personality traits and abilities do I bring to the table that no one else does?

Why am I special?
• I have a set of behavioral traits that affect not only the way I communicate with others, but also my focus in my dealings with others.
• I am motivated by things that are important to me, that others may not care about at all!
• I have a temperament that exhibits how I flow energy, how I take in information, how I prefer to make decisions and the basic day-to-day lifestyle that I prefer.
• I have a unique set of talents / strengths that can bring great value to my work and life if they are properly channeled and developed.

Add to this your personal background, family culture, the companies you have worked for, and the “world view” that you alone have developed.

Wading through all of this information can be a bit daunting…but you can do an exercise that’s easy and kind of fun to get some sort of idea of how your personal brand evolves. Just take a few minutes, and go back to various points in your life—what were you doing at that time and “who” were you? For example, I can go back over my own life:

• When I was in 5th grade, my friends and I loved to write and perform plays (one of my masterpieces was entitled “Bookworms Don’t Have to Bite!”) and I was the girl who was always up for a fun idea.
• In high school, I absolutely adored chemistry and math, so I was the smart girl whose homework all the football players copied.
• Later, I was a wife and mother…and I was the woman you could always count on to “help out” and the woman whose yard was where all the kids played.
• Fast forward to today, and I’m pretty sure that I’m the woman who will always tell you the truth.

We show who we are in every area of our lives, whether in an intentional way or not. Personal branding is simply becoming aware and intentional about what your appearance, actions, attitudes and values say about you. You cannot be someone you are not…you can only be the most powerful version of yourself possible.

Being the most powerful and authentic version of yourself is important in your personal life, but it is doubly important during a career transition. A potential employer is “introduced” to you through your resume, that introduction can lead to a “first meeting” in the form of an interview and so on through the whole hiring process. The employer is looking for signs that you will likely make a significant contribution to the future of the company as well as its ROI. Showing up in an intentional manner helps the company understand who you are and what you bring to the table.