Building Your Personal Brand
Own your Superpower
Personal Brand is the new buzzword in career development. It is an ongoing process of establishing an image or impression of yourself in the minds of others. It is what people think about you when you are not in the room. In simple words, it is like establishing a trademark of your personality based on the traits you have developed as a part of creating your vision.
Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken — Oscar Wilde
WEST partnered with LinkedIn to host a panel discussion on Building a Personal Brand on Tuesday, December 12th, 2017 at LinkedIn HQ in Sunnyvale, California. You can watch the entire panel discussion here.
Below are a few best practices that were discussed by the panelists.
Turn your passion into a vision
Start off by introspecting yourself and identifying what inspires you. What are you passionate about? What do you get most excited about? Define your passion and then set out to draft a vision statement on what that final goal would be. As you are laying out the vision statement, evaluate if this shapes your understanding of why you are doing what you do. Most importantly, your vision statement will help you eliminate the limits you have in mind as you work towards accomplishing it.
Leverage a Mentor
Mentors are great assets for professionals looking to build a personal brand. They help you find opportunities to stimulate your personal and professional growth as they draw from their own experiences. It is also beneficial to see how they became successful and understand their perspective on professional development. They become your trusted advisor and help guide on instances you may not see yourself. To make this happen, find out if there is a mentoring program in your company. If not, check with your HR/people team if they can sponsor in WEST, a cross-company mentorship program for women in technical roles
Build Your Digital Footprint
There are many platforms these days that help you voice your opinions and thoughts. Blogging on LinkedIn and/or Medium are one such ways to evangelize and advocate about the causes and areas you believe in. It also helps get viewership and traction to your ideologies. Make it personal and more visible — promote yourself!
Build Connections — Find Sponsors
Invest your time and effort in expanding your professional network. Connect with other professionals in the areas that interest you. Alternatively, you could also find a sponsor, a passionate ally, or champion and who will speak for you when you are not there. Be so good at what you do that your sponsor recommends you and promotes you.
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself — George Bernard Shaw
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