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Maintaining Your Personal Brand While Employed

Just because you’ve found a job doesn’t mean you should completely abandon the hard work you put into building your brand during your job search. Even if you’re happy with your job and planning to stay for a while, it’s still important to continue to build connections and industry knowledge. Here are some easy ways to stay in the loop: - Stay updated on industry news by reading blogs, news sites, and commenting regularly with constructive points. This will build name recognition for you and credibility as an informed source. This will benefit your future career goals, as well as your current employer. - Create a personalized email signature and business cards with all of your updated information, and make sure that any changes are made on these in case your phone number or website happens to change. This will allow people to always get in contact with you, whether they meet you in person or you’re communicating via email. - Maintain your professional network and make sure that your boss and coworkers always see you in a good light. Being personable and working hard are the best ways to do this, in order to always make sure that your boss remembers why he/she hired you. Do you have any other suggestions for people who are interested in maintaining their personal brands throughout their careers?

Company Culture & You

Nobody wants to work for a company where they don’t relate to their coworkers or they feel uninspired at the office. This is why it’s important to find a company where you enjoy the office culture when you’re job hunting. Here are some helpful hints to figure out where you’d fit in: - When you’re interviewing, ask the person (or people) with whom you are speaking about their favorite aspects of working for that company. If you can see yourself enjoying those things too, that might make your decision a little easier. Everyone wants to enjoy going to work, and if you love the idea of an office with a relaxed atmosphere then that might be something to look for. To gain more insight into corporate culture, you can also utilize social media to find people you know who have worked for that company before. - On company websites, they often have a “careers” tab, or something similar, that describes the perks of working there, and might give you a profile of quotes from a few employees. If the company brand is something that appeals to you, it might be a great place for you to apply. It’s always helpful to mention that you’ve done your research in an interview or cover letter, because fitting in with corporate culture is a big part of finding a good fit. - Check out what’s being said about that company on social media. Look at their Facebook page, or take a look at what’s being said about them on Twitter. Don’t hesitate to ask questions on these mediums, there will usually be someone interested in helping you learn more. Observing how they connect with customers or interested applicants might be a good talking point for a future interview. How important is company culture to you?

 

Building Your Brand with a Personal Blog

It seems like everyone is blogging these days, whether it’s for a company blog or on a personal website. Here are a couple reasons why you should consider creating a blog to help build your brand: - Blogging will greatly improve your writing skills. Being a good writer is a skill that many admire, but few are good at. Whether you realize it or not, posting regularly on a blog will help you become a better writer, and will provide potential employers with a great writing sample. Writing about what anything that inspires you could lead you to learn a new skill, or connect with other people who are interested in the same things as you. - Networking with others who are industry experts can be a great way to gain recognition, build connections, and learn more industry expertise. Promoting your blog on social media and commenting on similar blogs can be an effective way to link up with others who share your interests. You never know what benefits might come from it! - Even though you’re thinking of creating a blog related to your career, it’s always important to show your creativity and personal side. If your posts consist of just news stories and related updates, people might not come back. Remember to add commentary and opinion, and ask questions to create engagement and show your readers that you have the ability to come share industry insight and add to the conversation. What have you learned from blogging? Feel free to comment with tips/suggestions for new bloggers.

Why Do Students and Recent Grads Prefer Facebook to LinkedIn?

- Their friends are on Facebook. People who are in college, or graduating and joining the workforce have probably been using Facebook since they were in high school. All of their friends use Facebook, and the information they share on their profile has been accumulating over time. Why would they want to leave a site that all of their friends are on, that documents all of their memories in the form of pictures and wall posts? - They don’t have a lot of work experience, which might make them self conscious about the information that they provide on LinkedIn. Throughout high school and college, and even post-graduation, people work at jobs that they’re not necessarily proud of. If someone worked as a nanny during college and thats their only job history, they might be embarrassed or nervous to put that up as a job title on LinkedIn. LinkedIn can be really intimidating for new graduates, who see older people with 20+ years of experience in the workforce that make them feel inferior. - It lacks the social aspect that is so accesible on Facebook. Facebook allows you unlimited messaging, chat, pictures, and so many free social apps and games that draw people to spend more time on the site. With LinkedIn, messaging is only included in the premium package that costs money. Another disadvantage of LinkedIn is that aside from posting a resume and listing work history, it doesn’t allow people to share personal information that younger people place more importance on when they have less work experience.

3 Ways to Make Your Job Search Easier

1) Take the time to create a really great resume. This may take a while to put together, but it's worth it. If you do not have a lot of job experience, include more descriptive text to the body of the resume. Make sure to include skills that you believe will transfer over to a new position. If you developed excellent customer service skills at your retail job, make sure to include that because it is a relevant and useful skill to have for many other positions.

2) Have a versatile cover letter that makes you stand out as an individual. Make sure that your personal brand is portrayed in your cover letter, and that you think a potential employer could read it and get a good sense of who you are and what you’d bring to the table at their company. If you need help, have some friends and family read over your cover letter and give you feedback. If you’re applying to many different kinds of jobs and you’re looking to save time, create a template for a cover letter that can be adjusted and tweaked to be most relevant to fit into any job description.

3) Find a strategy that works for you, and stick with it. There are many ways to find a job, and some work for certain people better than others. When you first start looking for a job, try out many different options for your search. Whether you prefer social media to reach out to potential employers, or you’re more comfortable with searching through job boards, make sure to stick to what you think will get you the best results. Always make sure that your personal brand stays consistent, and that the information that you provide about yourself is consistent in all platforms. Also make sure that your resume provides the same information that you have online.

The 3 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make on Facebook

1) Posting Inappropriate Content: You’ve probably heard this a thousand times from many different people. Posting an incriminating picture, status update, or wallpost could hurt you or any of your friends that might be involved. Using caution when posting on Facebook is a skill that is highly useful to develop. Whether you realize it or not, companies are on Facebook looking at your profile and anything inappropriate will stand out to them as a red flag and may exclude you from future employment opportunities. 2) Not understanding your security settings: Facebook is constantly changing and updating its format, which makes it difficult to constantly track who can see what on your profile. Luckily, Facebook has added a new feature to the upper right corner of your profile page, which allows you to see your page as someone else would – simply enter the names of some of your friends to see how they view your profile. If you find out that your coworkers can see some racy photos of you, it might be time to change some things around in your privacy settings. 3) Delete anything that you wouldn’t want your grandmother to see: This is a great rule of thumb when it comes to managing your Facebook page. Take a little bit of time each week to go through your Facebook and delete anything that others might find inappropriate. It may seem tedious, but in the long run it’s better than losing a job opportunity because of a few photos that were taken two years ago (or last night!).

Facebook's New Changes

Whether you love or hate the new Facebook changes, we’re here to update you a little bit on what’s going on with your FB profile.

Subscribe: Subscribe is a way to get news from people who you may not be friends with, everyone from politicians to Mark Zuckerberg himself. In order to subscribe, click on someone’s subscribe button at the top of their profile, and you’ll be able to see all of their public updates. This is a great way to keep yourself updated on news from important public figures, and anyone else you might find interesting.

News Feed: Facebook has changed this feature to give you control of what shows up on your news feed, and what doesn’t. To see status updates and other news from specific friends, go to the list section on the left side of the page. There is also a ticker on the upper right side of the page that allows you to see what your friends are doing in real time.

Smart Lists: Facebook has made it easier than ever to create lists: by doing it for you! Smart lists take information from your friends and create lists from the data that you have an in common such as education, work, and location info. If you have a location listed as San Francisco, CA, Facebook will make a smart list for all of your other friends who are also listed within 50 miles of San Francisco, CA. If you want to make lists for yourselves that are more specific, it still allows you to create your own as well. By clicking on any of these individual lists, you can also post messages specifically to those people. For example, you could create a status saying “Does anyone know any great italian restaurants in SoMa?” and post it in the San Francisco list so that only those in that area could see that question. This feature is Facebook’s answer to Google+ circles, and allows people to have more control over who sees what on their Facebook pages.