Personal branding is the new buzzword that you often hear about pertaining to career management. The term has been around since the late 1990s but has really come into play recently with the increasing popularity of various social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to name a few.
Certainly, we can probably name a number of famous people whose name alone denotes a brand of sorts. Martha Stewart, Donald Trump, Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey are ones that come to mind.
Personal branding also comes into play when famous people attach their name to specific products or services. Paul Newman’s line of salad dressings come to mind as do the George Foreman grilling products. I haven’t tried Mr. Newman’s dressings but I have one of the early grills from the former heavyweight boxing champion and really like using it.
When the George Foreman grill first came out, it somehow made sense: he made no secrets of how much he enjoyed eating and therefore it seemed to be reasonable that he would promote a personalized line of grilling products marketed to health-conscious individuals that cooked the food on an angle and allowed fat to drip off into a pan.
The interesting thing about these people and their branding is that they became famous in their chosen field(s) and then developed their brand, not the other way around. So the personal brand was a result of success in their chosen field, not a tactic.
Subsequently, personal branding is something that many people are advocating and you might be wondering if it’s a legitimate tool for you to use or if it’s just another artsy fartsy marketing term used by people wanting to sell you a book or three on the subject. In other words, will using personal branding help you or the person wanting to sell you their book on personal branding?
Well, anyone who puts anything on the Internet under their own name certainly brands themselves, often not for the right reasons. Putting pictures of yourself drunk or in an otherwise embarrassing situation can send the wrong message to people who happen to come across these pictures who might have a hand in your future prospects ie. your current employer, a future employer.
In this case, you may have branded yourself “unemployable” if the pictures get into the wrong hands.
The interesting thing about most of the social networking sites that are so popular these days is that sites themselves – and the profile that you keep – is all about you. These sites basically prove that no one on this planet is as interested in you as much as you are.
On a serious note though, can personal branding help you in your chosen profession and specifically, can it help you get a new job?
To be dead honest, I don’t know the likelihood that personal branding will exist in the future or if it’s just another buzzword that will disappear the same way words like Intranet and Extranet have essentially become moot.
What I do know is that ultimately, companies hire people to fill a need. I’d be more concerned about showing a hiring manager what I can do for them that other potential candidates can’t than getting caught up with anything else. Some things have changed but at the end of the day, companies still hire people for the same reasons as before.
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