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Job-Seeker Personal Brand

Positioning Element #1

It’s up to the Audience. It always has been.

— Kate Smith, Singer

If you’re unemployed or in a job that you don’t like, let’s face it: It’s hard not to focus on yourself. All you want is to be gainfully employed with a steady paycheck and fulfilled by productive work.

But the surprising truth about using personal branding in your job search is this:

The best way to land the job you want the most is to focus on your Audience.

After all, potential employers (your Audience) are interested in what you can do for them. How are you going to make their jobs easier? What advantages are you going to bring to their company? Showing them what you can offer the company is how you get the job.

One of the most widespread myths about personal branding is that “personal branding is all about you.” But think about it: If your brand exists in the minds of your Audience, how can it be all about you? It can’t, and it isn’t. So, the more you learn about your Audience, the more connected you will feel to the interviewer, the more you’ll anticipate the needs of the company, and the faster you’ll get the great job you really want.

How do you do that? Well, the key is to get as much information about the company as possible. In fact, one of the recruiters I interviewed said: “You want to stick out in an interview? Be knowledgeable about the company. You wouldn’t believe how many people know virtually nothing about the company they’re interviewing with. It’s a big mistake.”

If you learn about your Audience, you will have a head start on the interview process because you will already know more about the company than the majority of interviewees. A top pet peeve of many an interviewer is the applicant who doesn’t do enough research prior to the interview. For example, one of the human resources pros I spoke with said: “It isn’t enough in an interview to simply say, ‘You have an opening in my field, and I know this is a good company.’ But you’d be surprised how many people do exactly that.” As you can imagine, that isn’t enough. You need to have a very specific reason for wanting a particular position at a particular company. And the only way you can determine if a company is right for you is to learn about that company. Then, you will be prepared to tell your interviewer that reason.

Your interviewers will remember you if you can give them a detailed reason why you want to work there, if you’ve taken the time to read about the company’s background, and if you’ve learned about the company’s recent dealings.

Who is Your Audience?

So, how do you go about getting that information in order to connect with your interviewer? Let’s assume you’re a top-notch marketer. You are the newly-promoted Brand Manager of YOU™. You’re in charge, and it’s your job to see that your brand reaches the top.

If YOU™ were a product, your Audience would be called the “Target Market,” and you would find out all you could about your target through surveys and questionnaires aimed at finding out who they really are. You would want to know provable facts about the people in your Target Market, like their age, sex, income, education, etc. How much do they earn? Do most of them live in the city or in the suburbs? In marketing, these provable facts are called “demographics.” That’s the kind of information you would start with.

An average marketer might stop there, but provable facts are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to learning about the Target Market. Think about it for a moment: If you really want to get to know someone, is it enough only to know his or her age, how much that person earns, or where he or she was born and lives? It wouldn’t really tell you much

about that person, would it? You would only have scratched the surface, and you would need to base all of your assumptions about that person on little more than what you could read in a census form.

That’s why top-notch marketers take the time to go deeper. They want to know much more about their Target Market. They want to get into the heads of the people who are buying their brands and understand their behavior. In marketing, this information is called “psychographics,” which sounds pretty heavy, but basically means personal information that tells you what makes a person tick.

How does this apply to personal branding? Well, in general, your Audience is anyone or any company you want to influence with your personal brand. In your job search process, this includes the people who could hire you for the great new position you’d love to have. Your Audience might simply be the person who interviews you, but you may not know at first who your interviewer will be or even your potential immediate supervisor. So, in the beginning of your job search, your job-seeker personal brand Audience might be the entire company or a group of people within the company, such as the division or department where you’d like to work.

Now, you’re probably thinking: “But how can I know so much about an Audience that I haven’t even met yet? I don’t know anyone at most of the companies where I will be applying for a job. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I don’t even know which companies I’m interested in yet!”

Yes, it’s true that when you’re looking for a new job, learning about your Audience may seem challenging at first, and even choosing companies to target can be confusing. But learning about your Audience before you land the job is definitely doable, and all it takes is some smart investigating, which can actually be fun if you let it. With a little bit of sleuthing, you can find out which companies are the best fit for YOU™. In fact, you may be surprised how much you can learn about a company and its people with just a little bit of ingenuity and effort.

Getting Ready to Get Ready

When you’re at the very beginning of your job search, you’re in more of a company search than anything else. There are literally thousands of companies out there, so choosing the right ones to target may feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. But as the determined Brand Manager of YOU™, it’s your task to decide which companies should receive your resume — the ones that will truly turn into an Audience for your job-seeker personal brand.

How do you do that? Start by asking yourself some questions about the “type” of companies you would be interested in. What is most important to you?

•Location?

•Size of the company?

•Culture of the company?

•Learning and training opportunities?

•Opportunities for advancement?

•Whether the company gives back to the community?

You might even rate these elements from 1 to 6 — with 1 as your highest priority and 6 as your lowest priority. Once you’ve decided what aspects of a company matter most to you, it will be easier to dive deeper and find out more about the companies that fit the bill. You’ll then learn what you need to know to determine if a company is truly a good fit for you.

If you don’t know which companies in your field are out there, do an Internet search and begin to gather names. Then, you can look through their websites and see how they measure up on your rating scale. As you begin to see which companies have the qualities and opportunities you’re looking for, you can narrow down your choices.

Become a Creative Detective

Once you’ve selected your top companies, it will be time to get out your detective’s magnifying glass. At this point, the Audience for your jobseeker personal brand is the entire company you’re targeting. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re expected to learn about every single person in a big company. Not only is that impossible, but it’s not even necessary to get the job you want.

Instead, you can think of the entire company as an “individual” with its own set of facts and attitudes. As a great marketing sleuth, you can take what you learn about a company and begin to piece together a profile of how it operates, just as you would if you were learning about one particular person. You’ll discover if the company has a relaxed, more casual atmosphere or a more structured, buttoned-down way of functioning.You will find out if the company finds innovation important or if it values adhering strictly to policy— that type of thing. Here are some of the ways you can dig deeper to find out more about your companies of interest:

Talk, Talk, Talk. Take the time to ask your friends and other people you meet if they know anyone who currently works for, or formerly worked for, your target companies — your potential Audience. If the employee is someone your contact knows well, you could even call or e-mail that person to ask them a few questions about the company.

Meet and Greet. If you get an opportunity to attend an event where you’d have the chance to meet people who work at one of the companies you’ve targeted — by all means, take it! Of course, in that kind of situation, it’s important to keep up a professional image — even if it’s a casual event — because you’ll be meeting people face-to-face for the first time.

Search the Internet. Thanks to the worldwide web, it’s easier than ever to find out a lot about potential employers. The number of online directories has quadrupled in the past ten years. While reviewing the company’s website is the absolute best first place to start, it still only scratches the surface of what you can discover about a company online. With just a few research skills, you can mine an enormous amount of great information that you can use to put together a more detailed profile of your target companies.

Try typing the following into your search engine to discover more about a company:

[Company name] [your desired division or department]

[Company name] annual report

[Company name] press release

[Company name] event

[Company name] brochure

[Company name] newsletter

[Company name] e-zine

[Company name] charity

[Company name] values

[Company name] culture

Through these searches, you should be able to find out a great deal of information, including:

•How does the company present itself in the media?

•What is the tone and style of the various documents the company publishes?

•When you read the company’s annual reports, brochures, newsletters, and e-zines, what facts and attitudes do these documents reveal about the company?

You’ll be amazed at the amount of information you can gather about potential employers this way. What other aspects of a company are you interested in? Use your search engine, and see what comes up.

The Old Stand-Bys. You can look up companies on a number of traditional lists such as Standard & Poor’s, Dun & Bradstreet, Dow Jones, Moody’s Investors Service, and Polk’s. While not all countries will be represented, many international companies are included. If searching these lists online requires that you pay a fee, check your local library to see if you can use the printed versions of these publications there for free.

Information from these lists and the company’s website can help you uncover the following:

•Is the company on the stock exchange, or is it private? Family-owned?

•Does the company do business locally or internationally?

•How long has the company been in business? Has it changed owners more than once?

•What other companies are its biggest competitors?

•Has the company grown in recent years, or is its industry suffering?

•What trends taking place in the world today might have an impact on the company’s business?

Articles About the Company. Search for articles about the company on the Internet, too. You will no doubt find dozens of online articles, or even hundreds if it’s a large company. If you find references to printed publications with articles, go to your library to look them up. There, you’ll find answers to questions such as:

•Has the company been in the news lately? If so, why? What are others saying and writing about the company?

•Where does the company as a whole place its focus?

•Has it merged or set up partnerships with any other companies?

•Has it introduced new products or services?

•Has it hired new executives?

•What charities has the company supported, and what do these charities say about the company’s character and values?

•Is the company actively involved with the charity or simply making contributions?

•What is the primary focus of the charities — humanitarian, environmental, local, international, educational, or other?

Articles By or Regarding Key People. Try another Internet search for articles by or about some of the company’s top executives. These will give you a good feeling for the company and what it’s all about. You may even find articles that reference a key individual before he or she joined the company. If this person could be your immediate boss or the head of your potential division, knowing this background will tell you a lot about the kind of people the company values. You might even be able to find direct quotes from some executives to give you an inside look into facts about this person and what kind of behaviors they like or dislike. No matter whether this person is likely to be your interviewer or not, by understanding more about a company’s execs, you will develop a more in-depth profile of the company and its important players.

Articles will also give you a good idea of the kind of experience the company is looking for. If you can find out the background of some of a company’s current employees, you might start to see patterns in the types of people the company likes to hire. This kind of probing is definitely worth your time. If you look long and hard enough, you might even find an article mentioning someone who holds or who held the very same position you want!

The LinkedIn Advantage

Social networking sites like LinkedIn.com are another great source of company information. You may even discover companies of interest that you didn’t know about. For example, LinkedIn hosts hundreds of

interest groups, and if you search for groups in your areas of interest, you should be able to find others in your targeted industry who are working for great companies.

You can search for specific companies, a city you’re interested in, or a particular industry. Make sure to search for old friends and classmates as well to find out where they’re working. You might end up with a direct connection at a great company that you didn’t even realize you had!

When you search for one of your targeted companies on LinkedIn, you’ll find lists of those companies’ employees who maintain LinkedIn profiles. Look for people working in the division you’re interested in, for example, and read their information. You will find out more than you ever thought possible. These profiles often even include testimonials, so you can get a sense of the kind of people the company tends to hire.

When you review the profiles, look for trends rather than just specifics about individuals. Does a particular company’s employees have things in common that could help you create a company profile? For example:

•Are the profiles similar in tone — such as all very buttoned-down or all quite casual?

•In what age group do the people listed tend to fall?

•How many years of experience or what level of education do most of the employees mention in their profiles?

•What is most often mentioned in the testimonials of the company’s employees? Do they tend to focus more on creative input … loyalty … integrity?

When you have a list of the company’s employees who have LinkedIn profiles, you will probably be amazed to discover how connected we all truly are to one another. Remember that old Kevin Bacon game that showed how everyone in Hollywood was only six degrees separated from him? LinkedIn works off that same idea — that everyone is only six degrees away from linking with everyone else. In other words, if you set up a profile on LinkedIn and invite others you know into your network, you will begin to create more and more connections. LinkedIn can search your address book in Microsoft Outlook or your e-mail list from many different servers and tell you automatically who on your list already has a profile on the site. You may even find out that you already know someone at one of your targeted companies! But even if you don’t, you may still be able to establish a connection with someone.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say someone in your network knows someone in one of your targeted companies, and you see the number “2” by the employee’s name on LinkedIn. This means that the employee you want to meet is only one connection away from you — someone in your own network knows that person directly. LinkedIn then allows you to ask that friend in your network to introduce you to the employee by sending an e-mail to that employee through the LinkedIn system — and you’re off to the races!

If you see a “3” next to the name of the person you want to meet, it means you’re two connections away from that person. So, you would need to request two introductions in order to meet him or her. That means you could ask the friend in your network to set up an introduction with the other person connected to the employee. Then, hopefully, that person would be willing to set up an introduction for you directly with the employee in question. That’s a fair amount of work, of course, so you’d want to make sure that the connection will really be beneficial to you.

If you’re only one connection away from an important company employee (a “2”), it should be easy enough to get an introduction, and it’s well worth the effort. So, don’t be shy about making these connections. If someone is unwilling to help you out with information about the company, that’s fine, but you may also meet a great ally who could even help you get a job that’s better than you had hoped for.

Culture is Key

As you sift through all of the information on LinkedIn (and elsewhere), see what it tells you about the company’s “culture.” Every company has a culture, and it’s usually driven by its top leaders. So, reading LinkedIn profiles of a company’s top executives can be really helpful, too, giving you a good sense of the company’s values based on how its leaders are presented.

As an applicant, fitting in with the company’s culture is key. First of all, if you don’t fit in, you’ll have a harder time getting a job. Second, if there isn’t a cultural “fit” once you do get the job, you’ll probably be unhappy there.

The Right Questions

What questions should you ask someone who works at one of your targeted companies when you have the chance to speak with them? The best suggestion: Simply ask for advice! Be honest, and let that person know you’re interested in working for the company. Ask them what they would recommend as first steps. You may be surprised by how much someone is willing to help you just because you’ve asked that one simple question.

Here are a few other questions to ask if you get the chance to talk to someone who is already part of an organization you’re interested in:

•What key characteristics does the company look for in an employee?

•What do you think are the top five skills the company values most?

•What do you like the most about working there? What do you like the least?

•What’s the length of the typical work day?

•Is it a training-focused company? If so, does it send employees to outside training programs, or does it hold regular in-house trainings?

•What are three words that best describe the culture of the company?

•How does the company treat its employees in general?

•Does the company hold a lot of events for its employees? If so, what kind?

•On a scale from 1-10, how open to new ideas is the company? Can you share some examples of why you would give it that score?

•Would you say that the company is more team-oriented or individual-centric? Can you share with me a few examples of why you think that?

The answers will give you great clues as to what to emphasize in your resume and interview. If you find out the company values integrity and collaboration skills, you can prepare examples to share in an interview about situations from the past where you’ve shown integrity and collaborated well.

Of course (and this does happen), in the process of collecting answers to your questions, you may find out you no longer want to apply to a particular company. This is a good thing! Scratch that company off of your list, and focus your well-honed energies toward a job in a different company that’s a better fit for your talents and priorities.

Once you know about your target companies, you can use the same ideas to find out about the division or department where you want to work. Most of the time, there’s a wealth of information out there about the particular area you’re interested in.

T

Find Out About the Interviewer

Sometimes, you may be told who your interviewer will be, and sometimes not. If you’re only given a title, simply ask for the person’s name. Otherwise, you can do an Internet search for the company name and the interviewer’s title to see if a name shows up. No matter how you manage to get the name of your interviewer — which is a bit of a golden key — type the name into a search engine like Google.com. Also, look for him or her on LinkedIn.com, Facebook.com, Myspace.com, and other social networking sites. Knowledge is power! So, the more you know, the better prepared you will be for the interview. You may not want to mention any of the information you have discovered in your search, especially if it’s something personal like the name of the interviewer’s children, but the information you find may tell you a fair amount about the interviewer’s personality.

The more information you can find out about your interviewer — within reason, of course — the more confidence and understanding you will bring to your interviews.

Your Job-Seeker Personal Brand Positioning Statement

You’re now ready to begin completing your Job-Seeker Personal Brand Positioning Statement.

To help you with your own statement, let’s look at some examples. I have included the Job-Seeker Personal Brand Positioning Statements of two people who have different backgrounds and job search objectives. As we work through the chapters, we’ll follow along and see how these two people have completed each section of their own Job-Seeker Personal Brand Positioning Statements. These examples will hopefully give you lots of ideas and will help you understand how your own Positioning Statement all fits together into a cohesive whole. We’ll even show you how our two job seekers went about their own Audience research and what methods they used to find out about their main target company. Let’s start with Jamie.

Case Study – Jamie Nelson

For three years, Jamie worked on the multimedia team at Axion, a hightech company that began struggling about a year after he was hired. When the company was bought out by another firm, Jamie was laid off. Axion was Jamie’s first job out of college, and he had hoped to build a career there. So, at 25 years of age, Jamie was frustrated to find himself on the job market again. But once he began to investigate companies and target his search more carefully, he started to feel more excited about the possibilities. He decided to try and use this job change as an opportunity to get an entry-level position in management. He had dabbled in management at Axion but never held a manager title; nonetheless, Jamie felt he was up for the challenge.

A search of the Internet for “DVD design expansion” and “DVD design services” led Jamie to an article and a press release about a company that was expanding its DVD department into the 3D area. He felt it would be a good fit for him because of the company’s plans for expansion and because Jamie had solid education and experience in this area.

While PreLife hadn’t yet placed an ad for any jobs related to the new 3D department, one of Jamie’s connections on LinkedIn.com gave him an introduction to someone who works in a related department. That person was able to offer Jamie some helpful information about the company’s culture. Jamie found press releases about recent hires and looked those employees up on LinkedIn.com and Facebook.com, too. As a result, he found out the following information about the company:

Jamie’s new contact at the company was able to give him some inside information about the company’s culture and about some of the challenges PreLife was facing.

Based on the information Jamie found, he sent an unsolicited cover letter and resume to PreLife and was excited to get a call a week later from HR, asking him to come in and interview for the new position of Assistant Manager of the 3D DVD department. While on the phone, he asked who he’d be interviewing with and found out that he’d be meeting with his potential boss — the Manager of the new 3D DVD department, Tom Brunnell. Jamie typed Tom’s name into Google.com and also looked Tom up on LinkedIn.com.

Case Study – Marcia Jenkins

At 32 years of age, Marcia had been working as an Accounting Manager for a large multinational corporation in the fast-moving consumer goods industry. Her goal was to be promoted to Accounting Director, but she had already been passed over twice for the director job. Given her company’s “up or out” policy — where you either keep moving up or you have to move on — she felt the writing was on the wall: Clearly, she would eventually have to find a new position outside the company. While she enjoyed the culture of her current employer, she didn’t feel her contributions were valued enough. She was frustrated and wanted to find a company that would truly appreciate what she had to offer. Marcia felt she was ready for an Accounting Director position — one that would excite and challenge her.

Marcia had already had one interview with her target Audience, another large multinational that manufactured a wide range of food products and had divisions on three continents. The corporation was healthy, its stock price was doing well, and she discovered through speaking to colleagues that the company offered its employees more perks than her current firm. While attending a charity cocktail party, Marcia found out about an opening as Accounting Director in the Snacks Division at this target company. Marcia had to follow up twice with the HR department after submitting her resume, but she finally got an interview. In her first interview, she met with a representative from Human Resources, and that meeting went well. Marcia created this Job-Seeker Personal Brand Positioning Statement as she was preparing for her second interview with Bina Tilak, the Vice President of Finance for the Snacks Division.

During her first interview, Marcia liked the fact that everyone she saw in the office was dressed in professional business attire. Just like her current employer, the atmosphere was fairly “buttoned-down,” which was just what Marcia liked. Employees appeared really motivated and driven — working hard — as they walked through the office when Marcia was there for her first interview.

The HR rep that Marcia met in her first interview was up front with Marcia about the fact that, about a year ago, the corporation had actually promoted someone from within the company to the position of Accounting Director – Snacks Division. However, that person hadn’t worked out as the company had hoped. So, they began looking outside the company to fill the position. During this same first interview, Marcia found out from the HR rep that Bina Tilak is “known for her attention to detail and desire to be kept up-to-date on a regular basis as to what’s going on in the Division.” Marcia got a strong sense that the former Accounting Director who had been promoted from within failed to keep Bina up-to-date on what was happening.

Now, you’re ready to complete the Audience portion of your own Job-Seeker Personal Brand Positioning Statement. If you have more than one target company, you will want to do separate Audience definitions for each target.