E. 10 - Job Search Reset: Your Brand
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[00:00:08] Melissa Vining: If you're a high performer looking to grow and make an impact, but feeling stuck, underappreciated, and burned out at work, you're in the right place. I'm Melissa Vining and this is the Job Search for High Performing Misfits podcast. I help high performers leave draining jobs behind, reclaim their careers and land roles in organizations where they can thrive. Tune in for tips, insights, and inspiration for your journey to fulfilling work that fits you.
[00:00:38] Welcome to the Job Search for High Performing Misfit podcast. I'm your host, Melissa Vining, and I want to welcome you back to episode number three in my Job Search Reset series where we are talking about doing hard things in your job search. So if you missed the first two episodes on figuring out what you want and building your list of target employers, I suggest you go back and listen to those first, because that is going to be your foundation for everything else.
[00:01:08] So once you've done that, you've figured out what you want, you have a list of employers that have what you want, you can move into the next step, which is what we're going to focus on today, and that is developing your core personal brand.
[00:01:22] So what is a personal brand? It is essentially what you want to be known for. And for it to be effective in your job search, it has to be at the intersection of what you can offer and what the employer needs. This is why it's so important that you've done the internal work to clarify what you're great at, what's important to you, and to focus in on specific employers that share similar characteristics. If you haven't done this, there will be no way to identify that intersection between you and the employer.
[00:01:59] So again, as you might expect, it's hard to do those first two steps, and most people never do them. Which means that when they get asked things like, "what's unique about you?" Or "how can you contribute?" Or even, "why should we hire you?" Most of the time their answers are very vague. And that lack of clarity shows up in all aspects of the job search, from the resume to the interviews and everything in between. On the other hand, when you do this effectively, it completely changes how you show up in your job search.
[00:02:38] So the good news is that by the time you get to this point, you've already done a lot of the work that you need in order to build your personal brand. You have those foundational elements. One thing that you'll want to expand on is your understanding of your audience. And by audience, we're talking about employers. So those are the companies themselves and the hiring professionals within those companies.
[00:03:06] At this point, you've already defined your target employers, and you've even built a list of target employers. But now you have to ask yourself, what is most important to those employers? This is going to vary a lot based on the industry and the types of roles that you're looking for. So for example, in manufacturing, they're really worried about being in compliance with regulations and making sure the plants are continuously running. So maybe one of the things that you are known for is your knowledge of state and federal regulations, or maybe one of your big impact areas is that you're really proactive with equipment maintenance, which extends the life of the equipment and also reduces the risk of plant shutdowns.
[00:03:53] You also have to ask yourself, how do they measure success? So for example, in business, they're usually thinking about the bottom line. So you're going to want to think about how do you help the company save money? How do you help the company increase revenue? How do you help make things more efficient, essentially, so you can do the work in less time with fewer resources. Uh, on the other hand, in nonprofits, they might measure success differently. So they might measure it based on the number of people they serve or the specific results that are tied to their mission. So, for example, at the nonprofit that I work for, we want to help people get jobs. So part of our measure of success is how many people get jobs after using our services.
[00:04:44] So you have to think about all of those things in relation to; What is most important to the employer? How do they measure success? Once you have all of that information, you're going to take it and connect the dots. So you've already figured out (1) What you do really well; these are your strengths. (2) What you want to do more of in your next job; these are your interests. (3) And what is most important to the employer; these are their needs. So now what you have to do is find the commonalities between these three things.
[00:05:19] And I want you to take those commonalities, and break them down into somewhere between three and five categories. So I like to call these categories Impact Zones. These are the things you want to be known for, and these are the main things that will make up your personal brand. So this could be anything that fits the intersection of those three things. So for example, it could be customer engagement. It could be process improvement. It could be research and development. Regulatory compliance. Management and leadership. Whatever it is, write down those three to five Impact Zones. This is what you want to focus on in your application materials and in your interactions with employers.
[00:06:08] You can also put this together into a one-line personal brand statement. So I have this formula you can use. You can say, " I help X achieve Y by doing Z." It's that simple.
[00:06:23] X is who. Who is it that you help? Maybe this is focused on the company themselves, or maybe it's focused on the clients or on the team. So " I help biotech startups," for example, or "I help job seekers from underserved communities," or "I help high-performing healthcare teams."
[00:06:44] Then we move on to the what. Y is the what. The outcomes. What do you help them do? This is the thing that they care about most. So in the first example, "I help biotech startups." What do you help them do that they care about? "Accelerate innovation and bring products to market faster." Second example, "I help job seekers from underserved communities." What does that kind of organization care about? "I help them land meaningful, quality jobs." Third example, "I help high-performing healthcare teams deliver exceptional patient care."
[00:07:24] Then you have the final piece of this statement, which is Z, this is the how. This is where you get to highlight your Impact Zones. So it's about what you do best and what you want to be known for. In the first example, you might say, "I help biotech startups accelerate innovation and bring products to market faster by optimizing research processes, ensuring regulatory compliance, and fostering effective cross-functional collaboration." In that second example, you could say, "I help job seekers from underserved communities land meaningful, quality jobs by designing and delivering innovative programming, mentoring my team to help elevate their coaching skills, and building relationships with local employers." In the third example, you could say, "I help high-performing healthcare teams deliver exceptional patient care by collecting and analyzing patient feedback, streamlining workflows, and focusing on continuous process improvement."
[00:08:26] So you can go ahead and put this together with the things that make sense for you. Once you have that personal brand statement, now you want to ask, what should I do with this? Essentially this informs your strategy for all of your application materials. This is what you need to communicate to employers across everything that you do. It's going to be your resume, your LinkedIn, your cover letter, your portfolio (if you have one), and your interviews.
[00:08:55] You're not necessarily going to copy and paste this statement word for word. Although you might, with something like your LinkedIn headline for example, but what you're going to do is use this as the starting point. You're going to focus on the who, the what, and the how, building blocks of this statement, and weave them in everywhere that you can.
[00:09:19] So in the next episode, I'm going to break down how you can use these building blocks of your personal brand to communicate really effectively on your resume, your LinkedIn, your cover letter, and during your interviews. And in order to do that, you have to switch from a "duty" to an "impact" mindset. So go clarify your personal brand, and I will see you back here for the next episode on how to apply it.
[00:09:47] Melissa Vining: If you love this podcast, be sure to hit subscribe, leave me a review, and share it with a friend so we can help more high performing misfits find work they love. See you next time.
