Personal Branding a Must For Your Job Search

Wikipedia defines personal branding as the process whereby people and their careers are marked as brands.

As social networking becomes an even larger part of our online world. Establishing a personal brand is almost a must these days. Why do you need a "Personal Brand" as a job seeker? Simple, to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

If you have a Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace or any other social networking profile, you have a personal brand. The question is not only what does your brand say about you but how can you use it as a job seeker to land your next job?

Tom Peters wrote an article that appeared in Fast Company last year titled "A brand called you" Tom states:

"Regardless of age, regardless of position, regardless of the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You."

As a job seeker, this should open your mind to think about branding yourself for your job search. You are the Chief Marketing Officer for your brand and you should take this function seriously.

So how do you get started? Take advice from experts out there that have given this a lot of thought. Dan Schawbel in his recent book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success takes you through all the steps necessary to establish a good Personal Brand. This book is a good, easy to read account of what Dan experienced in his journey of establishing his own personal brand. His is an empowering story and a model to use in building your brand.

Dan outlines some basic elements of what should be included in your personal brand.

Personal Brand Elements:

* Personal Appearance - Including clothing, hygiene and attractiveness.

* Personality - Your values, goals, identity and behavior.

* Competencies - These are cognitive, business, communication and technical skills that enable you to perform your job responsibilities.

* The Differentiator - Offering a unique value proposition or benefit to your target audience.

Put these elements together in your own voice and your brand will start to come together.

Search Google for personal branding resources. There are a lot of articles, blogs and conversation around personal branding and it's role in your career. Gone are the days when a cover letter and resume were all you needed to communicate to an employer your background and experience.

Recruiters are faced with a very large pool of talent in this economy and are looking for professionals that do stand out and define their value to an organization. Those who embrace, create and nurture a personal brand will be the candidates that float to the top of any recruiter's talent pool.

Final tip: Clean up your social networking profiles! Recruiter's do look at them and for better or worse consider what they find in qualifying you for a position. Online impressions are everything!

John Walker, Co-Founder, Talent Evolution, LLC, http://www.talentevolution.com John is a job search expert with over 15 years of experience in human resources, corporate recruiting, recruitment advertising, career development and coaching. His focus is directed to the online job search process by using social networking and social media technology. He makes the often confusing elements of the online job search understandable by providing an "insider" perspective of common recruitment and hiring process for job seekers.