Building Your Employee (Personal) Brand

/

Knowing who you are as an employee is important. Other people knowing who you are as an employee is EXTREMELY important. I worked for an amazing Marketing Manager early on in my career (shoutout to you Monique Hayward)! Monique taught me a valuable lesson - everything is a marketing problem. Everything including you. If you’re a great employee and no one knows about it, what gives? If you have unique skills for that project that’s posted but no one knows your skills? Well, chances are you’re definitely not going to be thought of for that project. So you’ve got to build your employee (or personal) brand early. Your brand is the culmination of your actions and your behaviors. It’s being what you say you’re about. It’s not good enough to state it, but you’ve got to back it up with action. Here’s how to go about defining your employee brand.

  • Write down 3 words/phrase you would use to describe yourself in the workplace. For me it’s these: Problem Solver, Collaborator & Action Oriented. Three because that’s enough to remember and rattle off in an interview with examples quickly.

  • Go and ask 5-10 people that work with you the closest either in the present or past to identify 3 words they’d use to describe you and why each one of those words.

  • Check the alignment between your words and their words! Are they aligned? Are they way off? If they’re aligned, great! You’ve been backing up your words with actions. Not aligned? You have a choice.

    • Adopt the new words you’ve heard - this is the audience reflecting to you your brand

    • Adopt new behaviors to align with how you want to be described

  • Seek opportunities in your day to day to continually represent your personal brand. If you’re an ideator- next time there’s an chance to pitch an idea, pitch an idea! Are you know for attention to detail? Make sure the next project or update you give is detailed and doesn’t miss a step.

Your brand is your most important asset because it represents you in the rooms you aren’t in. Your number one goal should be for folks to talk about you in a room you’re not in, the same way you’d talk about yourself in the room if you were in there. A brand is consistent - and consistency if your behaviors are key. Eventually over time you’ll move beyond just 3 words and you’ll have an elevator pitch. But for now, start with 3 descriptors.

Take the tip & leave a tip: what’s your personal brand?