Building Your Personal Brand in Medtech
I’ve been thinking a lot about personal branding.
It’s important for career development and just being able to connect with others in the industry to share ideas. However, unlike other industries, those of us in medtech are often limited in what we can share about the projects we’ve contributed to. It’s hard to establish yourself as an expert when you can’t really show off your “portfolio” the way you’d like to.
I recently sat in on a session about career development in marketing with authors Mark Schaefer and Dorie Clark. Dorie shared some great tips about developing your personal brand even when you can’t talk in detail about your projects.
3 Key Personal Brand Components in Medtech
In Dorie’s framework, there are 3 key components to personal branding:
In medtech, you’ll typically be limited in what you can do for #1 when it comes to sharing content publicly. You should take the opportunities when they come up, but you’ll likely be limited to certain talking points.
That said, there are likely a ton of opportunities to write for your internal newsletter. We’ve helped put together many departmental messages where the major limiting factor was the number of participants.?
Yeah, it’s extra work, and you’re already busy. But, if you’re trying to build your brand, this is a great place to start.?
Social proof (#2) might come in the form of awards, working on high-profile projects, guest lecturing, etc. Again, not something that happens every day, but something that you can work toward. Definitely volunteer for those opportunities when they come up.
In medtech, where you can really shine is by building your network (#3). If you work for a well-known company or have a really interesting role, people will want to talk to you.
If you can, I definitely recommend going to industry events. I’ve personally made a lot of great connections there that I may not have otherwise. You can (and should) also be using LinkedIn, both to make initial connections and continue to foster connections that you make at events. It’s made a big difference for me personally and professionally.
Just last week I had the chance to meet up with the folks at the Musculoskeletal New Ventures Conference. As cool as it was to get opportunities for group photos, the actual time spent with people in the industry was even better.
Shifting Your Brand in New Phases of Your Career
Eventually, you’ll move into different roles and phases of your career. Maybe you’ll have more seniority or take on more of a consultative/advisory role where you have a bit more freedom to talk about what you do.
Take Steve Bell, for example. He started out at Ethicon / J&J, then moved on to more prominent roles at startups and other companies, then worked for CMR Surgical. Currently, he occupies more of an advisory role at different companies.?
In his current role, Steve is able to produce a lot more content than he had previously, and really has a strong point of view on robotic surgical devices. He had already done the work of building his network and social proof over the years, so he has a built-in audience for his content that knows and trusts him (even when they don’t always agree with his opinions).
All of that to say, you might not be able to put equal effort toward all of the things you need to build your personal brand. But you should still work toward the things you can right now so that you position yourself well as your career evolves.