Chapter 13
Branding Yourself for Your Dream Career
The Internet is your marketing machine, and the world is your audience. It's no longer enough to build a resume and upload it to job search sites such as Monster.com. In today's job search marketplace, you also need to tap into business and social networking sites that give you the opportunity to market yourself, to create the brand of you.
People are the key to advancing your career — you can't do it on your own. Meeting your peers at industry events will help you understand how other networking professionals overcome obstacles and discover their recipes for career success. Reaching a broader audience through online professional networking on sites such as LinkedIn and Twitter will help you establish more professional connections. Expressing your opinion through your blog, as well as through articles and e-books, will help you establish yourself as a networking professional worthy of a serious look from recruiters and your next employer.
In this chapter, you discover how to build your brand through one-on-one networking and by building a personal brand that will set you apart from others. The topic of branding requires a book unto itself, so check out Branding For Dummies, 2nd Edition by Bill Chiaravalle and Barbara Findlay Schenck, which includes a chapter devoted to personal and one-person business brands. Plus, follow the advice in this chapter as you build your professional reputation in networking.
Many great resources are available for establishing and building a network of networking professionals. The most important resource is you. Building your network involves connecting one-on-one with people, not in using tools to create cool online personas (although those are important as well). Your number one objective is to establish yourself as an interesting professional with unique talents who understands the value in working with other technology professionals.
Meeting People
Building your network begins with meeting other professionals and getting to know them. You can meet people in many ways, such as the following:
Even if you don't know anyone else who will be attending, you'll have an opportunity to meet other people. If you're not the outgoing type, you'll need to pretend to be. Besides, no one else will know whether you're introverted if you pretend for a while that you're an extrovert.
In most cases, it's not good form to introduce yourself and then immediately start talking about yourself, particularly if you tell them you're looking for a job. Instead, it's better to ask people to tell you something about themselves; people will remember you in a much better light if you ask and listen rather than talk their ears off.
If the subject comes back around and someone asks, “So, what do you do?” you can describe current and past positions, and that you are looking to get into networking. You might explain a little about what you're doing to get into the profession, and then ask the other person's opinion on your approach. You might get some good pointers and maybe even offers to introduce you to others at the event.
Develop an elevator pitch — what you would say about yourself to someone while riding an elevator between floors. You have about 1 to 2 minutes to quickly give an overview of what you do as well as your interest in becoming (or your experience as) a networking professional.
Networking with other networkers
Networking (the people-meeting-people type, we mean) is critical. If you're an introvert and don't always feel social, which is a category I fit into, networking is a good opportunity to overcome those feelings. Knowing people in security will help alleviate that “unknown entity” risk that potential employers face and will land you interviews for which you'd otherwise be overlooked. For me and many others I know, networking was the key to landing our first job in the field or a subsequent one. Beyond that, I've found that the community freely gives advice and help with networking problems.
Glen Sorensen, Seattle
If you're currently employed, bring plenty of business cards. If you're between jobs, or if your employer doesn't provide business cards, get some quality ones printed. (Many sites offer free business cards, but you might consider upgrading to a better cardstock or appearance.) In this day of electronic everything, business cards may seem a little old-fashioned, but a lot of people still use them. Business cards are a great way to capture names and contact information easily, so that you can follow-up with relevant and interesting professionals in the future.
The two most important reasons for meeting people? Companies prefer to hire people they know, and networking professionals are usually willing to discuss challenges with others they know.
Business Networking with LinkedIn
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn touts itself as the “world's largest professional network.” With over 200 million users, LinkedIn is a great resource for establishing one's own brand as well as finding other like-minded people. LinkedIn is located at www.linkedin.com.
LinkedIn is your most important tool to establish your brand and a professional network, to be recognized as a thought leader in your area of expertise, and to seek opportunities or advance your career. If you want to learn a lot more about LinkedIn, pick up a copy of LinkedIn For Dummies, 3rd Edition by Joel Elad.
To use LinkedIn, sign up for a free account and build a profile that resembles a resume. You establish connections with people you know (or want to know) for business networking. You can join special interest groups where private discussions take place, and you can search for jobs in any industry and location. You can search for people you might know in the “people you may know” feature. You can also search for people by name, location, or company in the freeform search, where you can conduct keyword searches to find people in specific interest areas such as network security.
LinkedIn is feature-rich: You can express and describe your professional background in many ways. Many consider a LinkedIn profile to be a living resume, which you can update and improve at any time.
In the remainder of this section, various features of LinkedIn are described.
Photo
You can upload a photo of yourself if you want, and most users do. I recommend that you use a recent, high-quality photo. Using a much older photo may capture the beauty of youth, but people who meet you in person may wonder if you are disingenuous. Also, it's best to have a head shot taken by a professional. Wear professional clothing and keep the colors conservative.
Avoid the following mistakes, which can make your first impression less than professional:
You can change your photo any time. If you have a good photo now, use it. Upload a better one later.
LinkedIn also has a background image feature that enables you to upload a landscape-oriented background. It's appropriate to select something business oriented, or just about anything else that is tasteful and reflects well on you personally.
Headline
The LinkedIn headline is the phrase that appears directly below your name on your profile page. Ideas for your headline include title and company (such as Systems Engineer at Newco), mission (for instance, Systems engineer in oil and gas industry), and multiple activities (for example, Systems engineer, ISSA board member, and instructor).
The headline is short, just one or two lines. To those viewing your LinkedIn page, the headline serves as your personal brand statement. Most career coaches advise you to use your headline to define the unique talent and value you deliver.
Below the headline in a smaller type size is the area where you live. Next is a categorization, which you can select to tie into you or your company. For instance, if you're a networking professional in the retail industry, you could select Computer Networking or Retail.
When writing your LinkedIn profile, be sure to use keywords that others are likely to use when seeking someone like you so you'll show up in their searches. Many recruiters and headhunters use premium LinkedIn accounts to search for candidates.
Background
The section of your profile directly below your photo is where you present your background and experience by completing each of the following sections:
Like a functional resume, you can change the order of appearance of the various sections in your LinkedIn profile by simply dragging them up or down.
Connections
Any connections you have will appear in your profile. These are other people you know and have agreed to connect with. When you're connected with someone, you can see more details in their profile, their contact information, and any connections you may have in common. If the connection permits, you can view all of the other person's connections (and they yours). LinkedIn does permit you to conceal your connections from others.
The connection feature is intended to be used with people you know. Before requesting a connection from someone you don't know, understand that the person can refuse to connect with you and state that he or she doesn't know you. If you decide to pursue a connection with someone you don't know, be sure to include a personal note in the connection request that includes the reason you want to connect. If you get several such rejections, LinkedIn will temporarily suspend your ability to request connections from other users.
Recommendations
LinkedIn provides a means for users to write a recommendation for one of their connections. A recommendation is just that — a description of how you know the person and why the person is a good professional. For example: “Over the past 7 years, I have had the pleasure of working with Emily on the university certification program. I have found her to be hard working, punctual, and a lot of fun to work with.”
When you write a recommendation for another person, that person has the choice of whether to include the recommendation in his or her profile. If you didn't have nice things to say about the person, chances are he or she will not approve it. Also, if you got any facts wrong or just said anything that the recipient doesn't care for, he or she can reject it and request that you change it.
Recommendations can function like prewritten references and improve your professional image.
Updates
LinkedIn has a feature where you can write a message, upload an image, or put in a link to an article. You can do a lot of things with updates:
The updates feature of LinkedIn helps you inform your connections about important professional events and issues. However, the feature is also misused — or at least some would say so. For instance, uploading an image of some clever saying (“Managers tell you what to do, Leaders show you how to do it.”) borders on being noise, and uploading a photo of your cat would be considered inappropriate by most. Fortunately, LinkedIn gives you the ability to suppress updates from people who are too chatty about unimportant things. In other words, keep your updates professional and business related!
Groups
LinkedIn provides for the creation of groups, which are communities of LinkedIn members, where they can discuss matters on almost any topic. Groups can be moderated, which means that a group owner or coordinator (one or more of its members) can selectively approve or reject individual postings. Membership can be set to automatically approve or be subject to manual approval.
Groups are a great way to find people that are in your field or work for companies that you're interested in. When you join a group, you have a legitimate opening to connect directly with other group members. Also, many recruiters utilize groups to find qualified candidates. Recruiters will also make career-related posts that might help you identify employment trends in your field.
The contents of LinkedIn groups can be kept private, so that only its members can view its proceedings. A LinkedIn group can be made public, which means that non-LinkedIn members can join the group, and the contents of the group's discussions will be searchable by Internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
Jobs
Many professional recruiters and headhunters use LinkedIn to search for employment candidates. One sign of an effective LinkedIn profile is a periodic contact from a recruiter who asks you if you have any interest in positions he or she is trying to fill. Recruiters find you through keywords in your profile.
Recruiters can purchase a premium subscription to LinkedIn that affords them additional privileges, such as the ability to send messages to LinkedIn users with whom they are not connected.
Using LinkedIn successfully
LinkedIn can be a powerful tool to expand your professional network. You'll be seen as a good LinkedIn citizen if you follow these pointers:
Because your LinkedIn profile is so much like a resume, you'll want to read Chapter 12. Many of the tips in that chapter will apply to your usage of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is my living resume
I've been using LinkedIn for ten years. I realized its value as a public, living resume. My efforts have paid off through numerous opportunities that otherwise would not have materialized.
My LinkedIn profile is bigger than my resume, and includes projects, publications, and over 60 recommendations from coworkers I have worked with over the past thirty years. The richness of my LinkedIn profile has resulted in a steady stream of contacts from recruiters over several years.
Peter H. Gregory, Seattle
Networking through Facebook
Facebook is one of the world's great social networking wonders. From a professional sense, some aspects of Facebook should be left to nonprofessional uses only, while other features can work to your advantage as you develop your personal brand. Facebook can be found at www.facebook.com.
Facebook profile and timeline
A Facebook profile is used to describe yourself in many ways: where you live, where you work, where you went to school, and much more. A Facebook timeline (once called the Facebook wall) is the place where you type updates of various kinds and where you can see your posts, friends' posts to you, and any posts or photos in which you're tagged, or mentioned with a link to your Facebook profile.
You are strongly recommended to keep your Facebook profile private, so that only your friends can see any of your content. Prospective employers search for candidates' Facebook pages to get an idea of their character. Because of the way that some Facebook features work, it's best to keep your Facebook profile concealed from all but those to whom you've accepted as Facebook friends.
Although Facebook is more of a social networking site, recruiters or companies often use it to learn about prospective or current employees. It's okay to have personal and fun info on Facebook, but treat it as if you know that a potential employer will look at it — err on the side of being conservative. Do not put anything on an online networking source that you wouldn't be comfortable having your employer see or read.
Facebook groups
Although there are many other more suitable places than Facebook for like-minded professionals to gather and discuss issues, millions of Facebook users connect with colleagues and professionals in their category through Facebook and Facebook groups.
Avoid mixing your personal and professional posts by taking a few key steps. First, from your Facebook page, click Friends in the left column. From the page that appears, click Create List to create a group of people with whom you can share information and stay in touch in one place.
Next, search for or create a group by clicking Create a Group or Find New Groups under the Groups listing in the left column of Facebook. From there, it's a matter of participating by checking updates and sharing posts with others in the group.
If the topic of a Facebook group includes confidential information, or if the members of a group should not be publicly known, you should set up the Facebook group as a secret group.
Facebook company pages
Facebook profiles are generally for personal use, and Facebook pages are for businesses and brands. You must have a Facebook profile before you can create a Facebook page for your business. Pages are public (unlike profiles) and discoverable through Facebook and browser searches. In addition, Facebook page posts are free but only a minor percentage of them will show up in the news feeds of your page followers. The rest get filtered as a result of Facebook's algorithms unless you develop high levels of interaction with your posts or pay to post the information as a promoted post.
Facebook business pages and fan pages are one and the same.
Tweeting with Twitter
The microblogging sensation Twitter is another great way to build your brand. Twitter's function is simple: You build a profile, you follow other Twitter users, and others follow you, if they find what you have to say interesting and valuable. When a user you follow posts something (called a tweet), it appears in your timeline, along with posts from everyone else they follow. In your timeline, you view the posts made by everyone you follow, and your followers view your posts as well.
You can also send and receive direct messages with people you follow who also follow you.
Posts and direct messages are limited to 140 characters. You'd be wise to keep your posts even shorter because you want to encourage others to retweet or repost your tweets, and they'll need up to 20 characters to add their own message to yours.
To date, over 250 million users are on Twitter.
Setting up your Twitter profile
To set up a Twitter profile, you select a username and password, upload a photo, and provide a brief description of yourself, which is limited to 160 characters, slightly longer than the 140-character tweet limit. You can also have a background photo that will be visible when someone views your profile.
Tweeting
When you have something to say, you tweet it: you post an update, maximum of 140 characters including spaces. Everyone following you will see it in his or her timeline. You can include URLs, which Twitter automatically shortens to take less of your 140-character count, and you can include photos and video (a big draw on Twitter) as well. For all you need to know, check out Getting Started with Twitter in Twitter's help center.
Presenting yourself in 140 characters is difficult, but Twitter users do just that. However, for professional purposes, many tweets also include a URL to an article, which could be your blog post or an article of general interest to other networking professionals.
Using Twitter successfully
Twitter can be a great way to expand your professional network. You'll be successful with Twitter if you follow these pointers:
Starting a Blog
Everyone has an opinion. A blog is a great way to express yours, particularly when something you have to say takes more than 140 characters. All kidding aside, writing a blog can be a great way to publicly express your opinion and solicit feedback. Blogging about networking can be a way of distinguishing yourself from other employment candidates. However, thousands of networking professionals have blog sites, so you may want to consider a blog as table stakes in our profession.
In case you're the last person living under a rock, a blog is a simple website that functions like a journal, with journal entries (short articles) that focus on a single point of view or interest area, with the most recent articles appearing first. A blog can also have pages for static content, such as a page for the blog site owner's biography.
Setting up a blog
Setting up a blog is easy. Go to one of several popular (and free) blogging sites, click the Start a New Blog link, and answer a few questions. First, though, consider the following:
It's best if you keep your blog simple, so that you can maintain it easily. A few weeks or months after that “new blog smell” wears off, you may not be inclined to do much with it. If you keep the blog simple, it won't require much work to maintain it.
A couple of good books on the topic of blogging are Blogging For Dummies, 5th Edition by Amy Lupold Bair and Susannah Gardner and WordPress For Dummies, 6th Edition by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.
Blog services
Several excellent free blog sites are available. Check out the following:
All these sites make it easy to set up a blog. Many blog services offer free and paid versions.
Several high-quality (and often free) blog software packages are available that you can acquire and install on a server. However, information security issues today make keeping your site secure a time-consuming proposition. Why not let a free service take care of all this for you?
Networking blogs
If you're not sure how you want to set up your blog, you might want to check out the following blogs for networking professionals:
Besides seeing good examples, you may find them interesting and informative.
Using and maintaining your blog
After you've set up your blog, all you really need to do is write short or long articles with some regularity. You don't need to pen something as long as War and Peace every week, but you do need to write a blog entry at least once a month, preferably more frequently. Otherwise, your blog will take on a stale, abandoned look, which may be worse than not having one.
As you get accustomed to your blog, consider adding some other features, such as the following:
Figure 13-1: A tag cloud from a blog site.
It's best to keep your blog fairly simple, so that it doesn't have a cluttered, chaotic look and is easier and less time consuming to maintain.
Writing Articles and E-Books
A great way to establish and expand your brand is to write articles for magazines (print or online) and e-books. Articles and e-books help to promote you as an expert in some facet of networking. They also provide you with valuable content you can feature in your Facebook, Twitter, and blog posts while establishing you as a thought leader in your field.
Writing for the reader
You don't need to invent something to write an article or an e-book; all you need is an opinion, a tip, or a story about something in business, information technology, or networking. Here are some ideas for an article or e-book:
When pondering the idea of an article or e-book, think about what benefit your readers will gain. These articles are not about you and how smart you are but about how your message can help others. When you're writing something for your readers, it's about them, not you.
Finding an outlet
If you've written a good article, consider submitting it to print or online magazines or websites for publication. Be sure that the content fits well with the established style and target audience. You might consider asking someone who writes a networking blog if you can submit an article as a guest author.
Or perhaps a publishing outlet will find you. The best way to get your article published is to publish it yourself on your blog. As long as the article uses good keywords so that it can be found in an Internet search, a few people might take notice and either post a link to refer readers to it or ask you if they can put a copy of your article on their website.
Chances are you will not be paid, and it's probably best not to even ask. Getting your article on someone else's website is free advertising for your brand, so don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Similarly, there are several outlets for publishing an e-book that are free or modestly priced. Two such outlets are
If you pursue an e-publication, you can use it as a for-sale item on your website or blog, a gift to encourage blog subscriptions or event attendance, or a means for generating interest from potential clients or media outlets. You can also repurpose the content for use on your blog, on Facebook, or in tweets, always including a link where readers can obtain the complete e-book.
Publishing E-Books For Dummies is a great resource for publishing your own e-books.
You should refrain from writing tales about your workplace or your clients if you're in consulting, even if you change the names of companies and people. You need to avoid the perception that you're disclosing information about your employer or client that should be kept confidential.
Segregating Your Personal and Professional Lives
As you begin developing your professional reputation, you'll want to help others gain a clear and positive idea about who you are, your unique talents and value, and your career focus, work history, and professional interests. In other words, you'll want to rev up your personal branding efforts.
It's easy to buy into the false notion that you can have one brand for your personal life and one business brand for your professional life, but that's not the way personal brands work. Your brand is, quoting from Branding For Dummies, “whatever people believe about who you are and what you stand for, based on what they've personally experienced, what they've heard from others, or what they've seen online. Through personal branding . . . you help them see how you fit into their hierarchy of interests and needs. You enhance how they view you as an asset, a leader, and a star in your field. As a result, you improve how they react when they encounter you or your name and as they decide whether or not to involve you in their lives.”
The Internet's long memory
The Internet has countless stories about companies who considered hiring someone until they found and read their public social networking content. Thousands of people have learned this bitter lesson, and you should not have to follow in their footsteps.
The best approach for preventing the potentially embarrassing consequences of social networking is to change your understanding of how the Internet works. Anytime you post something online through a social networking site or a blog, or as a comment on another site, you should consider that action permanent and irreversible. Even if you can later remove an article, a photo, or a comment, it may still be discoverable by someone at any time in the future.
Similarly, you should consider any and every communication, whether by email, chat, instant message, or photo, as public information and discoverable by others. For example, many recent scandals entailed famous people taking and sending private photographs to others, but that content was later revealed to the entire Internet, much to their embarrassment. Even online apps that promise to immediately delete text and images should not be considered safe.
Be clear about the reputation you want to develop and keep all communications — personal or professional — consistent with that brand image.
Because people are likely to either encounter you in both personal and professional situations or to come across online information that reveals both your personal and professional lives, it's important to keep your presentation in both arenas complementary and segregated. In the same way that you likely act and communicate differently in the rec room than in the conference room, you can act and communicate differently in personal and professional arenas. But you need to stand for the same values and traits in both places.
Your professional brand communications are intentionally accessible to the entire Internet — to anyone who cares to seek information you've published But to the degree possible, your personal social networking should remain separate and restricted to your personal connections. The primary reasons for this follow:
On Facebook, for instance, you probably should be cautious about who you connect to, because you may be sharing intimate details of your life. But you might readily accept connection requests on LinkedIn from professional associates with whom you would not want to share details about your personal life, no matter how interesting.
If you're heavily into personal social networking on Facebook or similar sites, and if you want to use Facebook as a part of your professional brand, you should build a separate Facebook page and keep your professional information and connections restricted to that page. The same is true for Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, your blog, and any other social networking site that you want to use for both personal and professional purposes.
You need to decide what degree of transparency you want in your public profile, for both your professional and personal social networking. Also consider your privacy and personal safety, as well as that of your family members and other significant people in your life.
A great way to see what others might discover about you online is to undertake several detailed searches on yourself. Examples of ways you might search include by
Because most search engines personalize results based on your location and past searches, obtain an unbiased look at your online image by signing out of your Google account, if you have one, or going to the right edge of the Google screen, pulling down the menu, and clicking New Incognito Window to hide your location, IP, address, past search activity, and other identifiers. On Safari, Bing, or Internet Explorer, select Private Browsing. On Firefox, select New Private Window from the File menu. Then study the results, including the results for images linked to your name.
Before you begin your next big job search, it's a good idea to spend a few hours searching for yourself, because any prospective employer is likely to conduct online searches about you as well. When you know what can be discovered about you online, you can take steps to get content altered or removed (or change your social networking privacy settings so that a future employer won't find those beer-binging photos from college). At the very least, you can ramp up efforts to develop strong, well-linked positive content that will push unflattering or off-brand links further down the search results.
You can set up alert notifications with search services such as Google and Giga Alert to periodically email you regarding newly published pages with your specific keywords. These periodic searches can be a good way to discover new information that has been posted about you.
Working with Recruiters
Recruiters come in two flavors: Some are employees of a company looking to fill its own open positions, and others work for search firms that are looking to fill open positions for their corporate clients. In this section, we're looking primarily at the latter.
Think of a recruiter as your business agent, who will go to bat for you and pitch you as an ideal candidate for their corporate clients. In this regard, you need to make sure that your recruiter knows you, your knowledge and skills, and the kind of job you are looking for.
If possible, meet with your recruiter in person. That way, you can better understand the recruiter and he or she can better understand you. Explain your strengths, background, and the kind of job and company you are interested in. Give them confidence that you are a solid candidate with skills and professional integrity. When recruiters present you to one or more of their clients, they are putting their reputation on the line: If a recruiter's corporate client thinks you misrepresented yourself, the recruiter's relationship with that client could be in jeopardy.
A recruiter who is familiar with you and who believes you're a solid performer is more likely to think of you instead of other candidates and is more likely to propose you to more companies.