Regardless of industry, everyone needs to first identify and then communicate a consistent and distinct professional brand. Often, all you need is just a simple phrase or even a couple of words that can effectively communicate who you are and what you do (i.e., your brand). Let’s say you’ve worked for a few years in corporate communications, and you are making a segway into TV production or journalism – your brand may be as a “brand storyteller.” Or perhaps you work in IT or Project Management helping organize processes or correct other people’s problems, so your brand is an “organizer of chaos” or the “fixer.”
Once you have clearly defined the essence of your brand and its core attributes, now you must find (or most likely create) untraditional ways to promote yourself. Your first step is to draft (or hire someone) to develop a professional biography.
A bio is one of the best marketing tools for anyone involved in career exploration or seeking to advance to the next level of career readiness. It allows you to transcend the confines of titles and put the focus on what really matters (the experience itself) and not when it occurred. For example, you may have worked in sales 10 years ago for five years. That information sticks out like a “you really don’t have experience in this field” type of resume. But the bio lets you tell your whole “story” and enables you to pick the characters, roles, and scenes that relate to what you want to do now and moving forward.
Tune in next week for our easy-to-follow plan to create the perfect professional bio to help you get from “here” to “there.”
