Personal branding ― how to be more successful

Over the past 14 years of mentoring students, the number one question I have been asked has been in relation to how to position oneself when going for job interviews.

The general misconception is that it would be a human resources management (HRM) exercise, which it is from the potential employer’s perspective.
But from the candidate’s point of view, a job interview or assessment center exposure is a clear matter of marketing and personal branding. Most business students have been exposed to some basic brand management theory but how do you apply it for career progression?

Big five dimensions of personality

The starting point is to reflect on one’s own personality. Research has established five core personality traits, going back to the classics in the field such as Fiske (1949), Norman (1967), Smith (1967), Goldberg (1981), and McCrae and Costa (1987). The broad categories of the “big five” personality traits have the following attributes:

― Agreeableness: affection, altruism, kindness and trust.

― Conscientiousness: goal-orientation, impulse control and thoughtfulness.

― Extraversion: assertiveness, emotional expressiveness, excitability, sociability and talkativeness.

― Neuroticism: anxiety, emotional stability, irritability, moodiness and sadness.

― Openness: imagination and insight; range of interests.

So what is your DNA? It is important to reflect on one’s mantra first since this is the quintessential starting point for one’s own positioning strategy.

There is nothing more embarrassing than a mismatch between somebody’s appearance/behavior and their personality.

An example is an introverted person trying too hard to be outgoing with fancy clothes and talkative behavior but the mismatch will soon become obvious and it would have been better to streamline the introvert orientation with a more modest appearance and behavior.

Artificial positioning strategies do not work, so it has to be “real.”

Linking personality to brand

Assuming who you think you are now is also who you want to be in the future and also how you want to come across (of course, there can be a discrepancy between self-image and how others perceive us, so fine-tuning may be required), the next stage is to link your personality to your own brand.

Naturally, such a positioning strategy is also related to one’s gender, age and cultural background. Brand management theory (following American branding gurus Keller or Aaker) dictates that brand building tools need to be used to create brand knowledge.

Brand knowledge is the sum of what others know about us and how they feel about us, which also means that we need to determine what and how much we want to disclose about our background, values and ideas. Next we need to design a communication strategy that generates precisely that knowledge.

Tools that can be used to create and communicate our brand are both our appearance (e.g. the way we dress, our hairstyle, the way we move) and behavior (e.g. what we say, products and services we consume, gestures).

The former is relatively easy to control, whereas our behavior is a function of many controllable and also non-controllable (perhaps subconscious) factors.

At the workplace for example, one should refrain from engaging in religious or political discussions, although sometimes one gets drawn into delicate debates. However, we need to take a stand on professional issues, where we can also showcase our educational background as well as our expertise and experience.

Nowadays, communication occurs at many levels, including face-to-face, but also social media (Facebook, Twitter). The problem for many youngsters is the blurry line between their personal and professional brands since with the Internet and the two can no longer easily be separated.

What people read about you online is not differentiated between your personal activities such as parties and sports and your professional activities such as business and educational achievements.

In Google searches, they appear on the same page. This also means that we need to manage our brand online and also offline, and of course the brand images we portray need to correspond online and offline.

Personal brand equity

When your personality is successfully linked to your own brand, then brand equity is generated.

Going back to the brand management literature, when brand building tools are used effectively to create brand knowledge, then we should get positive outcomes such as loyalty with our friends, colleagues and business contacts; better chances for a good job or promotion, and quite possibly higher earning power.

As for consumer brands like Coca Cola and McDonald’s, the key is to create a unique, likeable, favorable but also credible and sustainable brand image that our immediate environment can relate to.

Actively-managed personal brands can lead to true competitive advantages at work, in politics and in personal lives.

A clear personal brand generates a point-of-difference in relation to others (hence the competitive advantage), but also establishes common ground (so called points-of-parity) with other successful individuals and organizations that we relate to.

A brand is ultimately a promise, which means that we need to ensure we can fulfill our promise to our stakeholders long-term. <The Korea Times/Chris Baumann>