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?

Why I Quit My Six Figure Job (Without A New One)

Maybe this isn’t a great way to start off my blog but it’s the truth. About 3 months ago, I decided I wanted a big change in my life. I wanted to quit my job and I wanted to move to Washington DC. That was about as far as my plan went, in that order.

Quitting a job is never easy. It’s definitely not easy when you don’t really have a clue as to what you want to do next. Nonetheless, I did it anyway. I still don’t have a job yet and it’s been about a month since I quit. So let’s go over what questions I asked myself to get to my decision to quit.

Questions I asked myself

• Does this job give me the opportunity to build skills/experiences that align to my 10 year goal?

• Does this job/organization align with my personal values?

• Am I getting a good ROI on my 3 hour commute every day?

• Have I gained the skills I was originally seeking when I took this job in the first place?

• Does this job give me access to the people who hold roles that I want to be in one day?

• Am I continually learning the things I want to learn from people I want to learn from?

• Am I happy at work 60% of the time?

Each one of the above questions required me to take a deep look at myself and my situation. You’ll see the questions are a mix of short term and long term focus. You may be wondering - “How do I know what I want to do in 10 years?” “How do I figure out my personal values?” “How do you define what skills you want from a job?”. I promise, I’ll answer all of the above and more in future blog posts.

I want to answer the last question today “Am I happy at work 60% of the time?” 60% might seem low or arbitrary, but this is equivalent to 3 out of 5 days a week. Basically, most days am I looking forward to work and/or coming home in a good mood. Not every day is going to be perfect and this is my way of acknowledging this. I also don’t measure this weekly but I do take stock over the month and halfway through a year.

Ultimately, my answers to those questions led me to the conclusion that it was time for me to leave. I was in a good financial situation already and my company offered a separation package. Those things certainly helped. However, what helped more was my network and my own confidence in my abilities. A friend stepped up to let me stay with them, and I swallowed my pride and decided to stay with my mom for a bit after my east coast move. It beats paying rent.

But at the end of the day, I’ve been thinking a lot about my skills and what I bring to the table. I’ve methodically built my career and amassed different skills for this moment. Now it’s a matter of picking, what do I want go deep in? Where do I want to work? What skills do I really want to build on. Luckily, I’ve shared those tips and more with others. Time to refresh myself on them!