What is Personal Branding?
Personal branding is the process of defining and marketing yourself as a professional.
And whether you like it or not, you are doing it.
When done right, personal branding is how you shape the perception others have of you in a competitive job market. In essence, your personal brand is your reputation, both online and offline.
Why should you care?
A powerful personal brand can make you stand out and open doors to career opportunities.
A lack of personal brand can disqualify you from high-value positions.
Personal Branding is Important
The importance of personal branding cannot be overstated. Research confirms that a strong personal brand leads to greater career satisfaction, especially when it enhances perceived employability (source).
And in today’s job market, it’s more than just helpful – it’s essential to stand out in a crowd.
Reality Check: Your Last Official Title Matters Most
Of course, just because you want a personal brand doesn’t mean you can build one easily…
This doesn’t mean you can’t build one either. We just need to make sure you go into it both eyes open.
In the professional world, your last official title can matters more than anything else. It can make or break first impressions. As a recent graduate, you likely don’t have an impressive title yet, so your personal brand must – first and foremost – focus on mitigating this gap.
Here’s how to do it:
- Emulate the Aesthetic of Professionals in Your Field
Dress, communicate, and present yourself like someone already holding the job you want. - Use Industry-Specific Language
Familiarize yourself with the key terms, phrases, and jargon used in your target industry to sound like an insider. - Pack Your Online Presence with Credibility Markers
Fill your profiles with specific phrases, links, samples, certifications, portfolios, and relevant connections to make up for the lack of an official title.
In this context, you also need to think about who is viewing your personal brand, and when…
Think About the End Goal
Your personal brand serves multiple audiences, each with unique expectations.
Your online trail will be seen by potential employers, your network, and hiring managers – in a variety of circumstances and different contexts. Knowing which one you are currently focusing on will help you build a stronger impression.
Cold Audiences
Cold audiences are first time, random encounters with people who don’t know you personally – potential employers, industry professionals, or recruiters who might come across your online profile for some unknown reason.
What Cold Audiences Want to See:
- Headline and Summary: Cold audiences scan your profile for key details like your headline, current position, education, and a concise summary. They’re trying to figure out if you’re worth their time in a few seconds.
- Professional Image: They will judge the professionalism of your profile photo, layout, and general tone.
- Relevant Keywords: Industry professionals will scan for the right keywords that suggest you know the field and have skills aligned with their needs.
What They Don’t Want to See:
- Overly Casual Content: If your profile looks too casual or is cluttered with personal, non-professional information, it signals immaturity or a lack of focus.
- Incomplete or Outdated Profiles: An unfinished or outdated profile suggests you aren’t paying attention to your career development or don’t care enough to present yourself well.
Warm Audiences
Your warm audiences include people who already know you, such as classmates, professors, or colleagues from internships. These people use your personal brand to track your career progress and understand what you’ve been doing since graduation.
What Warm Audiences Want to See:
- Career Progress and Growth: Warm audiences expect to see updates about your academic and professional milestones, such as completing your degree, new certifications, or internship experience. (Hint: as long as you are not directly competing with them, people in your network want to see you get ahead, as it gives them a powerful contact.)
- Authentic Engagement: People who know you expect your online presence to reflect who you are as a person and professional. They want to see you sharing genuine insights and engaging with others.
- Connection to the Field: They’ll want to see that you’re staying involved in your industry by sharing relevant articles, attending events, or networking with others in the field.
What They Don’t Want to See:
- No Updates: If your profile hasn’t changed since you graduated, it gives the impression that you’re not advancing or staying active in your field.
- Lack of Interaction: Ignoring your network’s posts and updates can make you seem disconnected or uninterested in building professional relationships.
Hiring Managers & HR
Hiring managers and HR professionals will often use your online profile to verify the information on your resume.
Of course, it’s not an official verification. It’s a short-hand hack…
In this context, your personal brand becomes a tool for them to quickly assess whether you’re worth their continued attention. In other words, your online presence is your chance to back up your resume with concrete details about your skills, education, and potential fit within the target company.
What Hiring Managers & HR See:
- Consistency with Your Resume: Hiring managers expect to see your LinkedIn profile match your resume – dates, job titles, education, and accomplishments should be consistent.
- Demonstration of Skills: They’ll want to see evidence that you possess the skills you claim to have. This might be through endorsements, projects, or even content you’ve shared about your industry.
- Cultural Fit: Beyond skills, they’re trying to gauge if you’d be a good fit for the company’s culture. How you present yourself online should align with the values of the organizations you’re applying to.
What They Don’t Want to See:
- Mismatched Information: Any discrepancies between your resume and your online profile will raise red flags.
- Unprofessional Behavior: Inappropriate content, controversial opinions, or even poorly handled discussions can severely hurt your chances. It’s critical to maintain a clean, professional image. (See the social media sanitization section in Launch Your Career for details.)
Now that you understand the different cohorts you are dealing with, let’s get to actually building of your personal brand…
Steps for Starting Your Personal Brand
1. Personal S.W.O.T. Analysis
Identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as they relate to your industry. Know where you excel (e.g., coding, communication) and what needs improvement (e.g., leadership). This helps you craft a focused personal brand. Example: If your strength is data analysis, highlight that across your profiles with concrete examples from class projects or internships.
2. Personal Branding Statement
Write a clear, concise statement that summarizes your unique value. Example: “Data-driven marketing graduate with expertise in social media strategy and analytics.” Keep it simple but specific, and make sure it’s front and center on LinkedIn or your personal website.
(Pro tip: learn about the positioning statement to make your summaries count.)
3. Evidence of Skill
Don’t just say you have skills – show them. Include tangible examples like portfolio projects, code repositories (GitHub for developers), or published work. Example: Link to your marketing blog where you analyze social media trends, or showcase a class project that demonstrates your data visualization skills.
Especially for early career professionals, this evidence of skill is extremely important and worth the investment.
4. Demonstrations of Character
Your online presence should reveal your authenticity and professionalism. Engage thoughtfully on industry posts, share insights, and show your enthusiasm for learning. Example: Comment on industry leaders’ posts with thoughtful takeaways or ask insightful questions that reflect your curiosity and passion.
5. Demonstrations of Activity
Keep profiles up to date. List your latest roles, certifications, and projects. Regularly post about events you attended, articles you’ve read, or personal achievements. Example: Share that you’ve completed a Google Analytics certification and how you applied those skills in a class project.
These don’t need to all be credentials with pedigree. Although pedigree helps, activity is more important.
6. Professional Storytelling
For an effective personal brand, you need a cohesive career narrative that explains why you’re in your field and where you’re headed. Learn to connect your experiences into a viable story.
This is a very big subject we won’t go deeper into here, the point is: at its core, your personal brand is your narration of your career story, and the more compelling elements you use – as long as you follow an archetypal formula – the more powerful your brand becomes. Remember: people say they hire you for your skills, but deep down inside, they really hire you for your career narrative.
7. Alignment with Target Employers
Your brand is not for fun. It has a purpose: to match the companies you want to work for.
For instance, if you’re aiming for a tech startup, show you’re agile and entrepreneurial – post about new tech trends, share coding challenges, and highlight projects where you worked cross-functionally. Or for corporate roles, emphasize professionalism, reliability, and strong organizational skills by sharing polished presentations or formal reports you’ve worked on.
Qualities to Demonstrate Through Your Personal Brand
First and foremost, appearance matters… A lot!
Your physical as well as emotional appearance should align with the industry you’re targeting. This means, you need to attend not just how you look, but also the words you use and the actions you take – these shape how others perceive your personal brand (source). Professional behavior online is critical to maintaining a positive brand image.
According to research, there are a number of qualities you need to demonstrate. These are:
- Self-motivation
- Strong work ethic
- Verbal communication skills
- Problem-solving abilities
- Self-discipline
- Social skills
- Critical thinking
- A degree, especially a graduate degree
- Critical reasoning
- Leadership
Of course, beyond these qualities, the Five Core Skills and Seven High-Value Disciplines are critical if you want to build a career that is in demand and growing.
Be Bold, But Be Careful
Your personal brand can elevate you, no question about it…
But if you’re not careful, your online presence can also completely destroy your career. Research clearly shows that unprofessional content on social media can lead to lost opportunities (source). And if you want to tap into anecdotal experience or country club whispers (take your pick), we can tell you countless stories about how an up and coming star became unemployable due to a single photo or video…
Remember: The upside of a well-crafted personal brand is clearly positive, but the downside is terminal – you can completely lose your career. Which is why, you need to approach building your personal brand with a safety first attitude, learn to compartmentalize your digital life, and aggressively sanitize your digital presence. (See the social media sanitization section in Launch Your Career for details.)
One final recommendation:
Stay Away from Politics
Unless you’re in a political field, it’s smart to avoid engaging in political discourse early in your career. Once you’ve built a solid track record, you’ll have more freedom, but until then, keep things neutral.
Conclusion
Building a strong personal brand out of college is essential for long-term career success.
And in today’s cut throat hiring scene, it may just be necessary even for short term career success!
You have to take an active role in defining your personal brand, period. Otherwise, your employers will do all the defining for you – leading to your ultimate commodification… Not a pleasant state to be in.
Start by clearly defining your value, target your brand at the right audiences, and always maintain a spotless online presence.
It takes time and consistency, but a well-crafted personal brand can pay off in dividends for years to come.