Importance of personal branding in job searching

When a job advertisement is posted, many candidates apply for the post. After scrutiny, some candidates are finally called for the final interview. So, successful job searching is all about differentiation. Your personal branding makes this happen. So, personal branding is a great differentiator in the job search. Personal branding helps people distinguish themselves from others with similar interests, skills, or qualities. It is noticed that sometimes, many skilled or experienced candidates are skirted by the employers.

Basically, employers seek the person who has the values as follows꞉

 ● Being Accountable

● Making a Difference

● Focusing on Solution

● Delivering Quality

● Being Completely Honest

● Keeping Promises

● Being Reliable

● Being Positive

It means that in addition to relevant skills, employers seek employees who have the personal values, characteristics and personality traits that spell success. Good personal values are the foundation for a good employee.

Employers always get to know us and make judgment that we are honest, competent, trendy, productive, humble, expert in our field or industry, smart worker, reliable, loyal etc.  

"How can we make ourselves stand out when there are so many other candidates pursuing the same job?"

The answer is personal branding which makes us unique.

Branding is more than just a slick personal website and some fancy business cards. It is also a huge mental game. Personal branding refers to the way other people see us as a representative of an idea or activity. When we will have a personal brand, people will recognize and care about our name, what we are working on, what we offer, and what we are about. It is basically selling our personality to someone. We should have a clear identifiable personality so that people can easily feel our personally, even if they have never met us. If we do not actively imitate anyone else, it will happen naturally.

Today's era is an era of social media. We should embrace this age of social media and let everyone into our life. We can easily build relationships with as many people as possible. LinkedIn and Facebook are very common and popular media to connect people and through this, we can find a buddy for sharing views as well as exchanging knowledge. Jobseeker should also be proactive when creating a personal brand on search engines. Now and then many employers use LinkedIn search to find out potential candidates. When applying for jobs, candidates should make sure their social media is a positive reflection of their personality and experiences. Nothing is steady, everything is changing. Whatever is our field, we should be innovative and we need to change the direction to a new one. We all have the talent to make a personal brand, but some of us can render it and some fail due to lack of compact will.

In this globalization age, personal branding is as important as organizational branding. Principally, organizational branding comes from personal branding.

Muttakin Hasan is the Head of HR & Admin at Mundipharma (Bangladesh) Pvt. Ltd.