Personal Branding: Why Does It Matter?

Just like a corporate brand softens up a consumer for a sales pitch, a personal brand plays the same role in introducing you to potential employers. It can make it easier to sell them on your skills and background, maximizing your chances of landing the perfect job. 

Here are a few ways that personal branding can improve your chances of finding the position of your dreams: 

Separate You From the Competition 

Almost every job comes with a high level of competition. The better the situation, the more impressive the candidates you’ll have to overcome to land the position. Personal branding gives you a head start in this battle. 

By cultivating a personal brand, you hone your professional appeal. The brand accentuates your strengths and highlights the unique combination of traits that make you an excellent hire.  

Curate Your First Impression 

Introductions are hard. Making a strong first impression is crucial to defining the tone of your early discussions with a potential employer. However, it’s hard to control how those first encounters will unfold.  

That’s where a personal brand comes into play. It allows prospective employers to “meet” you before they have any real contact with you. And, with a well-cultivated brand, you control the tone of that initial impression. 

Aim for the Career You Want 

Careers can sometimes unfold in a scattershot fashion. If you don’t have a firm plan in place, you can slide from one position to the next, not making forward progress. You can find yourself in a dead-end situation, without quite remembering how you ended up there. 

A personal brand helps you avoid this fate. It’s a way of keeping your career moving in a particular direction. You show the outside world how you want your professional life to developing, attracting the kinds of employers that suit your goals best. 

Show Some Personality  

One of the hardest parts of the recruitment process is making a personal connection with decision-makers. Building a rapport and developing a quick relationship makes it easier to land a position. However, the hiring process itself is usually rather staid and dry. There isn’t much opportunity to display personality appropriately. 

A well-developed personal brand can solve this problem. It gives you a way to display personality, even without interacting directly with the people making the hiring decision. They already know a little about you going into discussions, so you don’t have to work as hard, forming a connection during the interview process. 

Amp Up Your Networking 

A personal brand doesn’t just help with potential employers. It also allows you to broaden your professional horizons in another way. You can use your brand to improve your networking capacity as well, an excellent avenue to increased opportunity.  

With a personal brand, it’s easier to develop relationships with others in your field. You can form friendships and have other people search you out. Over time, this can open the door to new possibilities that you weren’t even looking for. 

Building a personal brand is one step toward finding the perfect position. However, you still have to find an open job that suits your skills and background. By teaming with a reliable recruiting partner, like SmartTalent, those ideal situations become easier to find. 

Contact SmartTalent today to learn more about what they can do to take your career to the next level.