Imagine Yourself as an Object or Image – What Would You Be?

April 1, 2008 at 11:19 am | In Personal Branding, Positioning | 8 Comments

An interesting way to understand who you are or just to describe yourself to others is to attach your personal brand to an object or image. Choose wisely, as your selection should embody exactly who you are, in terms of personality, values and qualities.

Personal Branding - Bridge

If I could be anything, it would be a bridge. A bridge connects two places together, which are typically separated by water. A bridge is strong and sturdy. A bridge supports cars, trucks and other vehicles, and allows boats to freely pass.

3 key words

  • Connection – One of the major personal branding themes is networking. By bridging two parties together, an opportunity is created. In order to do this, you need something to speak to (blog, website, profile, resume, etc). A connection can also be an association that someone makes when they hear your name, see your picture or a video you’ve generated. A connection can be as simple as a handshake and as complex as a social graph (think Facebook).
  • Support - A personal brand is only as strong as the network that supports it. By building friendships and professional contacts, you are in fact creating a support matrix that your brand stands ontop of. If that matrix were to collapse like a bridge, you would be taken down with it.
  • Strong - A strong personal brand never backs down, despite the obstacles and resistance. Be confident with who you are and have some pride. A bridge cannot support vehicles without strength (concrete, etc) and if you give up hope, you will fall much further than if you stand tall and never give up. Every successful brand makes mistakes and has failed at some point, in order to learn how to succeed. Only the strong will survive.

Why I chose a bridge

My dream is to become the bridge that applicants cross to land the jobs they deserve. Therefore, the bridge symbolizes my personal brand and the connection that the bridge makes allows for high potential individuals to be employed at the job of best-fit. By connecting people in this manner, I would be mutually helping them, and by being the “connector” I would be positioning my brand as well.

Your Turn

What object or image would you choose for your personal brand?

New Tool Reveals Job Trends for Your Search Terms

April 1, 2008 at 2:03 am | In Personal Branding, Recruitment, news | 1 Comment

Simply Hired is a vertical job search aggregator that takes your search terms and gives you results that are pooled from various job banks on the internet. Their philosophy is to be the central hub for job listings online and today they announced a new tool that measures job trends over time. From July 2006 to January 2008, you can view trends related to any keyword of interest, such as “marketing” or “finance.” You get to choose which graphs you want the data shown in, such as a line or bar graph. My favorite part is that you can compare trends from different keywords. As you will notice below, the main business functions are decreasing in job opportunities (economic recession), but social media jobs are abundant and growing, and IT jobs have increased 3% from last year (not pictured).

Job Trends Personal Branding

This graph displays the percentage of jobs that contain your search terms. Since July 2006, the following has occurred:

With Employment Trends, you can compare the frequency of job titles, companies, skills and industries in the US employment market. This marketing, finance, accounting, hr, social media trend data is derived from millions of jobs indexed by Simply Hired.

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.