What is a Career Brand? Insights from 10 Career Thought Leaders

What's in Your Career Branding Stack?

Your career brand is built on the shoulders of personal branding. The difference is that it is specific to the workplace and your professional career. Career branding is useful for career advancement and job search.

In many cases, personal branding and career branding overlap and often describe similar characteristics, attitudes, and values.

What is a Career Brand?

A career brand is a reflection of who you are, your behaviors, attitudes and values, your online presence, and how others perceive you in the workplace and in your industry.

Ideally, your career brand will help you navigate to the intersection of your strengths and what you love to do. Being out of alignment with this equation will result in stress and missed opportunities.

Just because you are good at something does not relegate you to a life sentence of boring repetition. With the intentional shaping of your career brand, you can demonstrate your value and aspirations for growth in other areas of your work environment.  

Effective career branding will enable you to be top of mind for promotions, job opportunities and high-profile projects in the eyes of corporate decision makers and influencers. Without a visible career brand, people will not know your value on a team or see you as a viable candidate in the job market. You may be passed over for promotion.

This article is third in the series on branding stacks. I started out with the personal branding stack, and then published the resume branding stack. I also included the personal brand principle a resourceful strategy for career branding—profiled in Activate Your Agile Career.

With some modifications of the earlier definitions, I offer a definition of the career branding stack.

What is a Career Branding Stack?

Definition: A career branding stack is a combination of tech tools, marketing efforts, platforms, and practices used to design, build, and manage your career so you are known for your talents and contributions in the workplace. Your combination of elements in the stack elevates your brand within your industry and organization. Branding make you visible to hiring managers, recruiters, coworkers, decision-makers and key influencers. 

Career Thought Leaders Offer Their Insights

Your career brand is defined by you and recognized by others. Here are a collection of ideas to help you shape and package your career brand. Ideas were gathered via direct input and curation from LinkedIn posts and interviews.

1 You Gotta Believe

Sonal Bahl I will SuperCharge your Career | Former HR Director | International Career Coach | INSEAD MBA | Podcaster & Youtuber | Quadrilingual

Sonal's diagram is a suggestion for how to organize your career brand. Hint: Go for the intersection.

Everyone knows broccoli is good for them. But knowing isn't the same as believing. Those that stand out with a career brand in the interview are the ones that believe with all their heart and soul that they are the right match with the position/company and career choice. You need to be able to articulate that value.

2 Perception is Reality

Diana YK Chan, MBA LinkedIn Top Voice??Virtual Keynote Speaker??Executive Career & Confidence Coach ?? Expert in Personal Branding, Networking, LinkedIn, Interviews, Public Speaking | I help you own your greatness to get hired & earn more

When you are clear on where you are heading and what you want to be known for, you want to establish your personal brand and messages around that domain expertise to attract relevant opportunities.

In an interview with Sonal Bahl on Sonal's SuperCharge Fridays on LinkedIn, Diana offered the following framework regarding how to get clear on your messages and how to stand out in the career space:

5 Ps of branding, Product, Potential, Perception, Positioning, and Packaging. 

Perception, how other people view you, is a big part of this process. Her strategy is to distribute a perception and reputation survey to better understand how people experience your brand, attitudes, and contribution. She suggests reaching out to 25 people with this survey and make certain the group is as diverse as possible. 

3 Know Your Niche

Austin Belcak I Teach People How To Land Amazing Jobs Without Applying Online // Need Help With Your Job Search? Head To ?? CultivatedCulture.com/Coaching

(Curated from Austin's LinkedIn post) When building a personal brand to advance your career, LinkedIn is absolutely critical. Build a stellar LinkedIn presence and an amazing LinkedIn profile like a career expert.

Determine Your Area Of Focus

Every brand needs a clear focus — and your focus should be based on your goals. If your goals are career-oriented, then your personal brand should focus on the professional field you want to advance in.

Strive to carve out a particular niche by being as specific as possible. For example, instead of focusing on ‘Marketing,’ you could focus on ‘Product Marketing for Startups.’ Or, instead of focusing on ‘Sales,’ you could focus on ‘B2B Tech Sales.’ Doing so will make your brand more authoritative.

4 Help Hiring Managers Get to Know You

Katelyn Richards I help top talent use LinkedIn to build their personal brand, get noticed & land dream opportunities? | Career Coach & Personal Brand Strategist | Jobscan "Top 25 Job Search Expert" | Join the Career Crafters Community??

Stand Out from the Crowd with video messaging! 

Resumes are amazing tools for showing off your skills, achievements & results – but capturing your full story & personality? Well, not so much.

So how do you supplement your resume and give employers a 360 degree experience of you & your brand? Video messaging! Mein3 is a video creation platform that lets you record and share a short introductory video profile with recruiters, hiring managers, or networking connections right on your resume, on your social media channels, or directly in an email or message. 

As with any non-traditional job search strategy, you do need to be thoughtful about who you choose to share your video with. Not everyone will appreciate the out-of-the-box technique – ultimately, the right company will appreciate you for YOU and will appreciate the additional mode of getting to know you and your value.

5 Branding Survey Tool + LinkedIn for the Showcase

Erin Kennedy “Top Exec’s Secret Weapon” | Rewriting executive resumes to place candidates in 6- & 7-figure roles quickly | Forbes & Jobscan's Top Followed Career Site | Career Storytelling | Life Changer | Coaching & Coffee ?

The main career branding tool I use with clients is LinkedIn. It really helps them create a digital footprint and, if used correctly, will position them as a thought leader in their field. 

First, start at the beginning. If you are unsure of what you are professionally known for consider 360Reach. It sends out anonymous questionnaires to friends and colleagues about you and how they perceive you. It sheds a great deal of insight on your professional reputation.

Next, LinkedIn is a fantastic way to strengthen your career brand and showcase your expertise in your field. You can:

• Write an article about what you do or something about your industry.
• Then write mini posts about each component. 
• Post these thoughts on LinkedIn. 
• Engage with commenters. 

Utilize the Featured section of LinkedIn by adding photos of your work/work environment, certificates, examples of work, articles you’ve written, etc. It becomes a portfolio of your professional accomplishments, contributions, and accolades.

6 The Smartphone is Your 'Aways On' Collaborator

Rob Kim Educator - career and inclusion | I help create systems and programs to motivate people to learn | I talk about networking, facilitation & personal branding | LinkedIn Top Voice 2022

Tech tool:

I’m going to be Captain Obvious, but the best tech tool for your career-branding is your smartphone—it is always on you. Your smartphone:

???? ready to capture images

?? serve as inspiration when you are writing your resume later

?? provide stories for your interview practice

?? digital evidence to turn into a Instagram post or story

???? ready to capture ideas

?? spend 10 minutes writing an accomplishment statement for your resume

?? jot down explicit reflections to use for interviews

?? record a video of yourself and share to your social feeds

???? ready to serve inspiration

?? curate your LinkedIn feed to learn resume tips from experts

?? gain motivation from other voices to understand your own brand

??share your learning on social feeds to inspire others

All of the above contributes to your story and to your brand.

Like an iPhone ?? and branding—focus on benefits not features of your career.

7 Connect Your Brand Story Themes to Capture Attention

Debra Feldman, Confidential Job Search Agent I find unadvertised opportunities matching an executive client’s needs, diagnose/remove employers’ roadblocks, and connect with hiring authorities to build referral networks for lifetime career success.

The success sequence:

• Develop success stories. Outstanding success stories beginning with your earliest memories. 
• Draw a thread connecting your history of accomplishments and describe a theme that represents your main strengths and contributions throughout your career in every capacity, all employers, and different roles. 
• Create positioning vis a vis job market expectations and needs to determine the focus for an accelerated job search and landing a new opportunity that matches your values, satisfies your interests and addresses your preferences and needs.

8 Use Your LinkedIn Header as Your Personal Billboard

Brenda Meller Helping You Get a Bigger Slice of LinkedIn | 1to1 Coaching & Team Training | Online Masterclasses w Group Coaching (see ABOUT section) | Author | Speaker | I ?? Love Pie ??

Excerpt from Brenda Meller's "50 Ways for Sales Leaders to Improve Your LinkedIn Profile." The following tip is for anyone wanting to be more visible online and in the workplace, not only for sales!

Think about the last time you drove by a highway billboard that said "THIS SPACE AVAILABLE." Look at your profile right now. Do you have the default image?

If so... YOU ARE WASTING AN OPPORTUNITY. (sorry: I'm a "tough love" kind of LinkedIn coach).

Change the default image NOW on LinkedIn to something INTERESTING that aligns with your professional brand or your company brand.

You can simply upload an image to your LinkedIn header by finding a picture from your marketing department or a stock image website (I recommend Pexels or Unsplash).

Be sure you check the alignment by viewing your profile from the desktop version of LinkedIn as well as the mobile view. You may find something that works well on desktop has important elements (YOUR LOGO, for example...) that are hidden a bit on mobile. I use Canva to create headers.

9 Creating Your Career Brand May Lead to Entrepreneurship

Lakrisha Davis I built a 6-figure brand on LinkedIn in 8 months. Now, I help Black Creators launch profitable brands on LinkedIn!| Award-winning Career Coach turned LinkedIn Business Coach| Career & LinkedIn Trainer ↘Get started↘

Lakrisha shares tips for branding your business, yet there are a several tactics to support your career brand. I have extracted a few of them for you. I have watched her LinkedIn presence change the game and know you will learn something from a few of her techniques. She is a branding wizard.

In her words...

Nearly 5 years ago when I was let go from my employer, I logged onto LinkedIn to start searching for a new job. I stumbled on my first LinkedIn influencer’s post, and was so intrigued that I stopped job searching and started posting content on LinkedIn instead.

Since then, I’ve gone from unemployed to a full-time entrepreneur:

• 0 to ~ over a million in sales
• 0 to ~ over 50M views

There are a few things that I’ve learned about building a 6-figure business on LinkedIn, and I want to share them with you.

• Invest in quality brand visuals (website, graphics, the whole 9). People judge, and appearance does matter.
• Optimize your profile for leads and sales. Have a clear positioning statement in your headline w/ a call-to-action, center your About section around your offer & results, and feature your links on your profile.
• There’s a lot of competition on LinkedIn; find a way to stand out. Think about HOW you do what you do differently, your WHY for doing what you do, and your personal story for how you’ve come to do what you do. Promote this.
• Boost your profile visibility by engaging 2-3 posts daily. Also, reply to your comments and shares, and respond to personal messages.

10 In the Middle of a Job Search and Seeing Career Branding in Action

Phil Davis Recruiting Leader / Career Coach / 2022 Top Job Search Expert to Follow on LinkedIn / Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, Employer Branding / Opera Singer ?? / I Help You Tune Into Career Results @ FulPhillment? ??

Phil is a career coach, recruiter, AND he is searching for full-time employment. So he knows a lot about career branding. From his recent LinkedIn post:

Yep! Your personal branding matters. Why?

Because people are able to see who YOU ARE and the work that YOU DO. ??

[from Phil's recent connection on LinkedIn]: "I told the Executive Director that your energy and engagement from what I see on LinkedIn is exactly what we need." This message was from a company leader who views my career coaching business as time well invested and spent after my 2020 COVID layoff.

They feel my energy, personality, and passion for people will be ideal at their organization. [all part of a career brand]

Branding insights from this experience:

• Words matter. 
• Actions matter.
• Branding matters. 
• Integrity matters. 
• How we make others feel matter.
• WE ALL MATTER, friends!

Add to the Branding Stack Series

The branding stack articles are part of an ongoing series. If you have more to add, please email me at [email protected].

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