Five years into his first career, Business grad Maxwell Nee decided to chase after his ‘Plan A’. He left the world of corporate banking and now helps coaches scale their businesses. He shares three tips for building your personal brand.
A mentor once shared this simple idea with me: you are who Google says you are.
To build a personal brand that really serves you and helps you develop your career as a young professional, you need to think about the long game!
Why?
Because we live in an extremely transparent digital age. If your friends can Google your name and find pictures or quotes that contradict your image as an ambitious young professional, so can employers. You are who Google says you are.
You see, your personal brand is a double-edged sword. It can be your biggest asset, or it can be your biggest headache. The thing to remember about your personal brand is that you are building one whether you are being intentional about it or not. Every time you leave a room, what people say and think about you is your personal brand.
If your next potential boss asks Google, Facebook, Instagram or a colleague for an opinion of you, whatever they discover automatically becomes your personal brand!
So, the question is, “How can you build a personal brand that differentiates you as a young professional as opposed to a university student?”.
Be 100% responsible for who Google says you are
Try Googling yourself and reflect on what you find: images, social media, any videos you might have uploaded to YouTube when you were in high school.
Tip: YouTube videos rank very quickly and highly on Google. Make sure to also YouTube search your name to see what you find. You might find a few old videos worth messaging your old buddies about to ask them to take down.
People remember their experience of you more than your words
When I was transitioning from a university student to young professional, I forced myself to meet and have coffee with as many professionals as possible! By the time I secured my dream corporate job, I had met and interacted with everyone on the floor I would be working on.
I made sure to conduct myself in a professional manner when meeting potential future employers. I didn’t know this at the time, but I was giving a lot of people a really great professional experience of ‘me’. I used LinkedIn to contact people and invite them to catch up.
Your personal brand doesn’t have to be all business
When people talk about you, they won’t always focus on how great you are at your job. Often, it’s the non-work-related topics that stick in people’s minds the most.
People remember and are curious to learn more about the person who volunteers a lot or the person who is passionate about a particular sport and coaches a younger team on the weekend.