Why the Constant Talk on Personal Branding?

As you may have noticed, personal branding gets talked about here on The Job Quest. A lot.

In reading Personal Branding: 2000 Years Old, More Important Than Ever Before, the reason why it is such a frequent topic was brought into sharper focus for me.

The author of the post, Jake LaCaze, made many significant points about personal branding, including these: “Promoting yourself through reputation alone is a cookie-cutter way of progressing your career. It’s no longer enough.” and “…personal branding requires you to take a more active approach.”

Jake is absolutely right. Here’s how I responded to his post:

The reason why personal branding is so relevant is not so much what it is, but how it’s carried out. Social media has been a complete game-changer, allowing everyday citizens access to tools for getting their name out there and building up their reputations for the world to see.

As you said: “personal branding requires you to take a more active approach.” With how easy it is to use these tools, their implementation and continued use is not optional. Along with the expectations for a presence that’s fresh and up-to-date, letting it languish actually speaks volumes about a person’s ability (or lack thereof) to commit long-term to a project. If someone pays so little attention to their own personal brand, something that they should be so invested in maintaining, what does that say about the quality they would bring to other work?

If you’re thinking, ‘Well, I’m just not going to have an online presence,’ you should really reconsider that. In last night’s #mbachat hosted by HajjFlemings, an interesting statistic via Susan Guarneri came out: 79% of hiring managers look online to find information about job candidates. With the overwhelming majority of people who make the hiring decisions taking to the Internet to gain more information, are you really in a position to stay offline? No, not anymore.

And lest you think that I was exaggerating in my commentary about the impact of poor personal branding, the other half of the tweet I cited in the previous paragraph read, “70% [of hiring managers] changed their decision after what they saw.”

How seriously are you taking your personal branding for your job search and career management?

Image courtesy of Mykl Roventine: Out & About