Personal branding for students: Set yourself for career success

1. Lesson 1: Why take this course?: Picture the following scenario. You're in an interview for your dream job. You spent a lot of time preparing, but you're still a bit nervous. This is understandable, but you're ready to go for it. After some pleasant trees, the interviewer starts to ask more challenging questions. How would you describe yourself in four or five words? You value? Can you bring to our organization? How are you different than other applicants? Stop. Think. How would you answer these questions? It's not so easy, is it? What you answer and how you answer these questions will determine your interview success. This is where your personal brand and this course come into play. My name is Darren Coleman, and I've delivered this personal branding masterclass students around the globe. This course will help you realize you to have a personal brand, which is a valuable career assets. In this applies if you are seeking employment now, but also as you progress through different stages of your career. This course will help you appreciate why you need to define and then manage your personal brand. Far too many students jumped to managing their personal brand through their cover letter, CV or LinkedIn profile without laying the foundations of their personal brand. This course will prevent you from making the same mistake. During this course, you'll learn how to build your personal brand in a structured way by using the personal branding Canvas. The personal branding Canvas is a practical career development tool I've used extensively with students around the globe to help them build their personal brand. Each step of the personal brand Canvas is supported by practical plug-and-play tools and templates that will give you hands-on experience in building your personal brand. Straight away. After attending this course, you'll know how to deliver your personal brand in a consistent way. This is important because it's easier for prospective employers to recall your brand. If you has a consistent theme. This course will help you feel more assured and at ease during interviews. Because you will have developed a way of thinking about your personal brand you can fall on if your mind goes blank during an interview. Don't worry, we've all been there. Finally, taking this course will help you feel more confident and comfortable with your personal brand. You've taken the time to reflect on who you are in an open and honest way and what type of organization you'd like to work at. So these are the reasons why you should take this course. Should we get started? 2. 2 Course scenario: Picture the following scenario. You're in an interview for your dream job. You've spent a lot of time preparing, but you're still a bit nervous. This is understandable, but you're ready to go for it. You wait for the interview to start. After some initial pleasantries, the interviewer start asking more challenging questions. How would you describe yourself in four or five words? Stop. Think for a few seconds. How would you answer this question? You may mumble out some random words including ambitious and hope they move on. No such luck. You said you're ambitious. Can you provide me with an example to illustrate this point? You proceed to provide a general story which shows you a mildly ambitious at best. What value can you deliver to our organization is the next interview question you're asked. Again, stop. Think for a few seconds. How would you answer this question? You apply where if I have a master's degree in marketing, then sit back and feel quite pleased with yourself. But the interviewer doesn't look impressed. You start to feel dejected. You have a Marketing masters. Great, but what value will deliver tomorrow organization? You struggled to think about any relevant value that you can get from your qualification. How are you different from the other applicants? Is the final question. Again, stop. Think for a few seconds. How would you answer this question? Your eyes wander around the room desperately searching for inspiration. You think if your fellow marketing students struggled to see how your different, your mind goes blank out there. These are relatively routine interview questions that many students find a little bit difficult to answer. Don't worry. This course will help you answer these questions effectively and in a way that sits comfortably with your personal brand. Next, let's look at this course is learning objectives. 3. 3 Learning objectives: This course has six learning objectives. First, this course will help you realize that you too have a personal brand which has the potential to become a valuable career assets. This applies if you're seeking employment now, but also as you progress through your career. Secondly, this course will help you appreciate why you need to define and then manage your personal brand. Far too many students jumped and managing their personal brand through their cover letter, CV or LinkedIn profile without laying the foundations of their personal brand. This course will prevent you from making the same mistake. Thirdly, during this course, you'll learn how to build your personal brand in a structured way by using the personal branding Canvas. The personal branding Canvas is a practical career development tool. I've used extensively with students around the globe to help them build their personal brand. Each step or the personal brand Canvas is supported by practical plug-and-play tools and templates. These tools and templates will give you hands-on experience of building your personal brand straightaway. For. You'll also learn how to deliver a consistent personal brand. This is important because it's easier for prospective employees to recall your brand if it has a consistent feel. This course will focus on an interview scenario. But the practical plug-and-play tools and templates can be used in other scenarios. These could be careers fairs or assessment centers, e.g. Five. This course will help you feel more assured and the age during interviews because you have developed a way of thinking about your personal brand that you can fall back on if you mind goes blank. Don't worry, we've all been there. Finally, taking this course will help you feel more confident and comfortable with your personal brand. Because you have taken the time to reflect on who you are in open on his terms of what kind of organization you would like to work out. These are the learning objectives. Now let's look at what a personal brand is. 4. 4 What is a personal brand?: We've just looked at the course learning objectives. Now let's clarify what a personal brand is. To help us clarify what a personal brand is, it's important we're clear on what a personal brand is. Not. A personal brand is not your cover letter. It's not your CV, it's not your LinkedIn profile is not what you wear, it's not your body language and it's not how you communicate. These are just some of the ways that you can manage your personal brand and bring it to life. This is a common misunderstanding many students have. Think about it. You're not going to land your dream job because you have an amazing CV. Show, it will help. But employers will be looking for something deeper. This is where your personal brand comes into play. So what is a personal brand? A personal brand is a unique, intangible assets every person possesses, which has the potential to make them distinctive. There are some important words in this definition. Unique. Each personal brand is individual and VAT is where the real value lies. Intangible. Strictly speaking, you can't feel, taste, touch, or hear your personal brand because it relates to intangible assets such as your brand values, brand promise, and your brand positioning. Assets. Your personal brand has the potential to deliver relevant value to people that you interact with. Don't forget that it makes it a valuable assets distinctive. The goal of building a personal brand is to help you stand out from the crowd. Now that we're clear on what a personal brand is and is not, Let's look at the different types of brands exist. This will help you place personal brands in the context of other brands. 5. 5 Different types of brands: We've just looked at what a personal brand is and is not. Now let's look at the different types of brands that exist. This will help you place personal brands in the context of other types of brands. You may be more familiar with. Everyone has a personal brand, but it's highly likely you may not have thought about yourself as having a personal brand at this point. Let me illustrate this point by considering brands as goods, services, places, countries and people. Volkswagen is a car brand. Coca-cola is drinks brand, both goods brands. Hsbc is a financial services brand. Harvard University is an educational services brand. Disney World is a place brand. Brazil is a national brand and brings images of football, sambar and copacabana beach to mind. Easily, is a national brand famed for its design. This is why Made in Italy is so valuable. Now let's look at personal brands. Richard Branson is synonymous with the Virgin brand. Mohammad Ali was famous for boxing and his stance on black rights. I'm sure you can think of other examples. But the point is brands can be goods, services, countries, places, or people. You don't need to be famous to build a personal brand. That's what this course will help you do. By now, it should be clear that we all have personal brands. Brands can be goods, services, places, countries, and people. Forget you to have a personal brand. Next, let's look at why build a personal brand. 6. 6 Why build a personal brand?: We've just explored the different types of brands, including goods, services, countries, places, and people. The goal was to help you understand people also have brands, personal brands. Now let's look at why you should build your personal brand. Your personal brand has the potential to increase trust amongst potential employers. Your personal brand more gate potential employers or feel for who you are, the value deliver, and how you are different applicants. Secondly, personal brands reduce, perceive risks amongst your potential employers. If you have a great blog and social media footprint, this more help potential employers learn more about your background. Familiarity breeds confidence and trust, which ultimately reduces perception of risks that may be associated with you and your personal brand. Third, a well-established personal brand can minimize the time potential employers spend searching for a possible applicant. Powerful personal brands build memory structures that connect a brand with context. In this instance, the brand is you and the context is an employer looking for a new recruit. For personal brands convey relevant value through the benefits they deliver. E.g. you may speak Mandarin, which means that you can translate on business trips to China. This benefit has the potential to be relevant to a company that does business, wants to do business in China. Five, positioning your personal brand can make you distinctive from other candidates, e.g. you may be a specialist in health law who can explain this potentially complex area of law simply, as we'll see later in the course, and value lies in positioning your brand around how you do what you do, not what you do. Six, financial rewards are important for some people. A powerful personal brand can help you negotiate a better salary and overall package. You may have values that align with the recruiting organization. You can deliver relevant value. Or you've positioned your brand in a way that makes you distinct from other applicants going for the same job. Collectively, this will strengthen your arm when negotiating your salary and overall package. There are numerous reasons why you should build a personal brand. It's important that you think about why you want to have a personal brands before you start building your personal brand. Now it's time for me to share my top tips that will help you understand your personal brand. 7. 7 Understanding your personal brand: We've just looked at why you should build your personal brand. Now I'd like to share my top tips that will help you understand your personal brand. Your personal brand isn't your cover letter, CV, or your LinkedIn profile. These are simply some other ways you can bring your personal brands alive. If you focus on these types of things, you'll occupy your time with the trappings and not the substance of your personal brand. The real value of your personal brand lies in the intangible assets, such as your brand values, the value deliver, and your brand positioning. Be honest and comfortable with yourself. Then seek out employers and or career paths that are a good fit for you. Life's too short to be unhappy. Your personal brand will evolve and develop as you progress through your career. Don't worry. This is natural and to be expected. But it is important. You are clear on which parts of your personal brand you are prepared to compromise on. Those that you're not prepared to move on. Your personal brand values should come to mind here. Use your personal brand in lots of ways and scenarios. This course focuses on using your personal brand in an interview scenario. But you could use your personal brand or careers event when presenting ideas or simply when attending a meeting with colleagues. The point is your personal brand provides a guiding principle you can use to build a memory associated with you in someone's mind. And you'll meet people in all sorts of scenarios. The ideas this core shares are relevant to students who may be want to become freelancers or solo printers. Simply change the context of the target company to target customer as you work your way through the personal branding Canvas. These are my top tips for understanding your personal brand. Now let's take a look at the personal branding Canvas. This is a practical career development tool I've used extensively with students around the globe to help them build their personal brands. 8. 8 Introducing the {ersonal Branding Cavas A Personal Career Development Tool: The first section of this course helped you understand your personal brand. We establish what a personal brand is and why you need to build one. Focusing on an interview scenario. Now let's look at the personal branding Canvas. There's a copy of the personal branding Canvas in the additional resources, so please keep it to hand during this course. The personal branding Canvas is a practical career development tool I've used extensively with students around the globe. It helps them define and manage their personal brand. So how does it work? You need to start in the top left-hand corner with the green rectangle. This represents you as indicated by the graduating students icon. Next, we have the blue, orange, and turquoise block arrows presented in this order. These are the heart of your personal brand and are surrounded with a dotted line to show they are collectively part of one entity, your personal brand. The blue arrow block is your personal brand values. This is represented by a magnet, because a magnet can attract or push away. Your values have the potential to do this with prospective employers. The orange arrow block represents your personal brand promise. This is the value you promised to deliver through your personal brand benefits, hence, the shaking hands icon. The turquoise arrow block is your personal brand positioning. This is the space you want to occupy in your target employees mind. Hence, why ahead icon is used. The red rectangle represents the company or organization you would like to work for, hence the office block or possibly a factory. Before you move to the next stage of managing your personal brand, you need to ask yourself three questions. First, are your personal brand values aligned with your target employer or target employing organization. If you have values are being caring, sensitive, and compassionate than a career in medicine or health care may be for you. If you're driven, competitive, and financially orientate it in investment banking may be a better fit. Second, can you deliver relevant value to your target employer? If you speak Mandarin, which means that you can interpret for the CEO on business trips. This may be useful if the recruiting company does business in China, wants to do business in China. Third, how are you different other applicants? This relates to your brand positioning in the minds of your target employer. At this stage of the personal branding Canvas, you should have a good understanding of your personal brand and which potential employers it is relevant to. Now you can move to the next stage and think about managing your personal brand through behavior. Communication's a multi-sensory design tools. Behavior, which is represented by the person icon, relates to your body language. Communications is represented by the two arrows and could include the language you use in your cover letter, CV, or on your LinkedIn profile, or indeed your tone of voice. Multi-sensory design tools relate to the use of the five senses, taste, touch, sound, scent, and site. Hence the Pentagon icon. Let me explain how the personal branding Canvas works with a simple example. Behavior. If one of your personal brand values is to be compassionate, you're volunteering experience at a local retirement home could highlight this. Communications. Parts of your personal brand promise may outline how you can work effectively with team spying, diverse cultures. Communicating this experience by irrelevant university group work projects could prove you can deliver this benefits. Multi-sensory design tools. You may want to position your personal brand around business knowledge of a specific country. If so, why not have a Soundcloud link on your blog or LinkedIn profile to relevant music streams which reinforce your country-specific positioning. The point is that you need to clearly define your personal brand values, brand promise, and brand positioning in the context of your target employer or target employing organization. And then manage your personal brand through your behavior, communications or multi-sensory design tools. This ensures your personal brand is relevant to your target employers and is delivered in a consistent way. You'll notice there is a gray column to the right hand side of the canvas. This is a space for you to note down thoughts as you progress through the Canvas. So that's the personal branding Canvas. The personal branding Canvas is a practical career development tool. You can use it to guide and structure your approach to building and fine tuning your personal brand as you progress through your career. Next, I'd like to share my top tips for using the personal branding Canvas. 9. 9 Personal Branding Canvas Top Tips: These are my top tips that will help you get the most from the personal branding Canvas. Don't rush. Take your time to work through the personal branding Canvas in the way I've described. Expect to go back-and-forth. You won't have a perfect personal brand after using the canvas once. E.g. when you move from your personal brand values, promise, and positioning to the behavior, communications and multi-sensory design elements. You'll be able to reflect on your personal brand in more holistic and concrete terms. This may cause you to go back and fine tune your values. E.g. don't worry about this. This is time well-spent. Test run your personal brand with constructive friends or colleagues. This would entail asking them to listen to you, explain your personal brand, then see if what you say is a fair reflection of how they perceive you. Their comments will help you reflect and then refine your personal brand if needs be. These are my top tips for using the personal branding Canvas. Now let's look at how you can define your personal brand, starting with your personal brand values. 10. 10 Personal Brand Values: The previous section of the course introduce the personal branding Canvas. This is a practical career development tool that will help you define and manage your personal brand in a structured way. Now, let's look at your personal brand values, which is indicated by the magnet icon on the personal branding Canvas. How would you describe yourself in four or five words? This is a common interview question. With this question, the interviewer is trying to explore how aligned your values are with their organization's values. This is important because your values influence your beliefs and your beliefs influence your behavior. The aggregate of behavior is organizational culture. By exploring your personal brand values, the interviewer is actually assessing your cultural fits. Your personal brand values make your personal brand magnetic. Just like a magnet, your personal brand values can attract or push people and organisations away. This may sound harsh, but don't forget, an interview is a two-way process. You may not be a good fit for the organization, and the organization may not be a good fit for you. This is why it's important. You are honest with yourself when defining your personal brand values. To answer the question, how would you describe yourself in four or five words? You may say, I'm diligent, humble, hard-working, an ambitious, a frequent follow-up interview question could be you said you're diligent. That's great. Can you provide an example of when you were diligent, please? Now you need to prove that personal brand value is actually a part of who you are. To answer this question, you could recount a time when you were checking some data analysis your team completed for some coursework. New spotted a mistake. This shows you are diligent. If you want to impress the interviewer, you could outline how you notice the mistake and didn't make a big deal about it. This shows your humble another of your personal brand values. How do you define great personal brand values? Great personal brand values, a unique, specific, active, and deliberate, unique, tried to have values that are different so you stand out from the crowd. I was in a graduate interview for a pharmaceutical brand recently, wanting to view. He said they were inquisitive. After the interview, the recruiting manager said that's the first time ever heard that value and I loved it because they felt it's important. Scientists were inquisitive. Specific, makes sure your personal brand values are not vague. So you're clear in your own mind what that value means and how you can bring it to life. Professional is a widely used and very generic personal brand value. This could mean different things to different people. Reframing professional in a more specific way, such as being dedicated, e.g. would be better. Active. Your personal brand value should focus on the core is not perfect. So they indicate the behaviors they encourage. Instead of saying teamwork, you could say your collaborative. Remember values influence beliefs and beliefs influence behavior. If you have a value of being collaborative, you believe in working with other people. Which means you'll be good at teamwork by focusing on the cause and not the effect. You're getting to the heart of things. Deliberate. You want your personal brand values to be related but not to overlap. E.g. you may say you are vibrant and firm. It could be argued these are very similar. By saying similar words, you are restricting the scope of your personal brand. Connect with the interview as organization at the values level. In this sense, you may find it useful to think of your personal brand values as brothers and sisters minus any identical twins. It can take some time to define your brand values. But don't worry, it's time well-spent. The additional resources contain some examples of possible personal brand values. They should spark your imagination and provide some inspiration. Personal brand values make your personal brand magnetic. They can draw employers in or push them away. Don't forget, an interview is a two-way process. The organization you're interviewing for has to be right for you. Now let's move on to the next stage of building your personal brand. Your personal brand promise. 11. 11 Personal Brand Promise: We've just looked at why you have personal brand values and how you can define them. Assuming you feel your personal brand values align with your target employer's values, it's time to turn to your personal brand promise. This is represented by a handshake icon on the personal branding Canvas. What value can you deliver to our organization is a common interview question. This is when you call on your personal brand promise. Your personal brand promise outlines the value you promised to deliver to prospective employers or whoever you are talking to. Value is delivered through the benefits are not features associated with your personal brand. Let me use the example of a British garden to explain my point. Look at this picture. What do you see? Yes, it's a garden, but it's a sunny garden. If you've been to the UK, you'll realize that we're not blessed with the best sunny weather. This makes having a south-facing garden quite valuable. Most estate agents will sell the feature of a south-facing garden, but not the benefits or benefits it delivers. E.g. it's a south-facing garden, which means that you get more sun. Second, I have wonderful barbecues with your friends. Or it's a south-facing garden, which means that you get more sun so can grow beautiful roses. Or it's a south-facing garden, which means that you get more sun so you can send kids outside when they're driving you crazy. At this stage, it's important to note three points. First, to extract it, benefits are benefits from a feature. You simply need to say feature, which means that benefit, e.g. as a south-facing garden, which means that you get more sun so you can have wonderful barbecues with your friends. Second, there's no value in the feature of a south-facing garden with some, the value lies in the benefits associated with the feature. Wonderful barbecues with your friends on sunny days, e.g. third, one feature has the potential to deliver multiple benefits. In this example, the benefits are barbecues with your friends, growing roses, or sending the kids outside when they're driving you crazy. Depending on who the estate agent is selling the house to, they may focus on one, some all or none of these benefits. So what do south-facing gardens have to do with your personal brand promise? When the interviewer asks you, what value can you bring to our organization? Don't focus on a feature. Outline the benefit that originates from that feature. This is where the value you promised to deliver lies. E.g. I. Speak Mandarin, which means that I can help you enter the Chinese market and interpret for you whilst on business trips. Then need to decide if one, some all or none of the benefits you can deliver are relevant to your possible employer during the interview scenario. To create your personal brand promise, you need to list all of the features associated with your personal brand. Next, extract the benefits are benefits from each feature by saying which means that the summary of these benefits is the value you promised to deliver. In other words, your personal brand promise. The additional resources contain a practical plug-and-play template that will help you craft your brand promise. So please check it out. Your brand promise captures the value you promised to deliver to employers via the benefits, not features associated with your personal brand. Let's move on to the next stage of building your personal brand. This relates to your personal brand positioning. 12. 12 Personal Brand Positioning: We've just looked at how you can define your personal brand promise. Your personal brand promise captures the value you'll deliver via the benefits, not features associated with your personal brand. Assuming you feel your personal brand values connect with your target employer and you can deliver relevant value to your target employer. It's time to move on to your personal brand positioning. Brand positioning is represented by the turquoise block arrow, and the head icon in the personal branding Canvas. How are you different to other people who are applying for this job is an interview question. You're likely to be asked. To answer this question, you need to call on your personal brand positioning. Demonstrating how you are different other applicants can be a tricky question to answer. On one hand, you want to share how you are different of applicants, but only other. You want to show dignity and grace when comparing yourself to other applicants. To address this challenge, you can use the following template. I suspect most other applicants are particularly X. Put a negative. But I'm why? Because proof and then finish it off with and that's why I like to think I'm different. E.g. I suspect most other applicants are particularly technical, but I'm technical and practical because for projects at my previous company, I was responsible for senior management technical updates, which needed to use straightforward business language. I'd like to think that's why I'm different. So there are three points to note in this template. One saying other applicants or technical does not mean you're being rude. It's not a bad thing to be technical, as in this example. Two, by saying You are technical and practical. You are saying you can do what other applicants can do, and how you are different because of how you do what you do. In a subtle and polite way. You are gently dismissing what other applicants may feel as a point of difference, as a point of parity for you. Three, highlighting projects at your previous company provides proof. Virus story. Illustrating your point via stories is always a good thing to do. Three elements can help you define your personal brand. Your personal brand values, promise, and positioning. Before we move on to managing your personal brand, I'd like to share some top tips on defining your personal brand. 13. 13 Defining your personal brand Top Tips: Here are my top tips for defining your personal brand. Make sure your personal brand values are unique, specific, active, and deliberate. This will help you craft great personal brand values. Research you will target employer's values. This will save you time and possibly interview heartache. Use the feature which means that benefit template to identify the value you promised to deliver. Position your personal brand in terms of how you do, what you do, not what you do. It's far harder for other applicants to copy this. Again, don't forget to use the template in the additional resource to help you with this. Be flexible during your interview. This section of the course has shared three sample interview questions, expect variants of these. The idea is that you have some tools that you can use for common interview questions. If your mind goes blank as it has for all of us in the past. These are my top tips for defining your personal brand, which are focused on your personal brand values, promise, and positioning. Now let's look at how you can manage your personal brand through your behavior communications and by using multisensory design. 14. 14 Behaviour: The previous section of the course helped you define your personal brand by focusing on your personal brand values, promise and positioning. Your personal brand values, promise and positioning are intangible. I can't see, feel, hear, taste or touch them. They're just words. People need proof, especially your interviewer. You need to make the more tangible and concrete so the interviewer can get a handle on them and your personal brand. This is why you need to use your behavior, communications, other multi-sensory design tools to manage your personal brand values, promise, and positioning. Behavior relates to your body language. Examples include facial expressions, gestures, eye contact and haptics, such as the way you shake someone's hand or bow in certain cultures. I'm sure you can think of other examples, but this should give you a good start. So how can you manage your personal brand through behavior? Let's assume you have a value of being friendly, open, approachable, and accessible body language, and a big smile gives a clue that you are friendly. Part of your brand promise could relate to being solutions orientated. Sharing examples of how you solve problems gives me a clue that this is part of the value deliver. If you want to position your brand is being an expert in Japanese business culture. Understanding cultural sensitivities when you speak to elders would support this positioning. These are just some of the examples that you can use to manage your personal brand through your behavior. Based on your behavior, your target employer can then start to get a feel for whether you are more specifically your personal brand is relevant to their organization. Because your behavior will give them an insight into your personal brand, values, promise, and positioning. You behaviour. Provide your interview with clues to your personal brand, which helps them assess how relevant your personal brand is to their organization. Let's look at the next personal brand management tool that you can use. Communications. 15. 15 Communications: We've just looked at how you can use behavior to manage your personal brand. This related to your body language. Now let's look at how you can use communication to manage your personal brand. Communication relates to what, how, and where you communicate. Let's look at what you communicate. If parts of your personal brand promise relates to providing advice on Chinese business culture, you could have a blog on this topic. This indicates you understand the intricacies of Chinese business culture. In terms of how you communicate. If one of your values is being straightforward, you need to speak in a simple, direct, no-nonsense way. You'd also use short, simple sentences. Regarding way you communicate. If you want to position your personal brand as being a circular economy, experts for the fashion industry, you should attend or speaker relevant conferences, webinars, and contribute to relevant LinkedIn groups relating to the circular economy and fashion. This will reinforce the association you want to create. Alternatively, if you want to position your personal brand as being young and funky and vibrant for the advertising industry, possibly as an advertising exec, you need to be on TikTok as this will fit and support your brand positioning. What, how, and where you communicate will help potential employers get a feel for your personal brand in more tangible terms. Let's look at the next brand management tool. Multi-sensory design tools. 16. 16 Multisensory Design Tools: The previous parts of this course looked at how communication can help you manage your personal brand. This related to what, where, and how you communicate. Now let's look at how you can use multi-sensory design tools to manage your personal brand. This entails using sight, taste, touch, sound, and sense. It's represented by the Pentagon on the personal branding Canvas. Using certain multi-sensory design tools is more suited to certain careers, e.g. the creative industries. But let's take a closer look at each one to see how they could help you manage your personal brand in a distinctive way. Site. Let's assume being creative is one of your values. I would expect your cover letter, blog or LinkedIn profile to screen creativity with a refreshing and funky design taste. Let's assume having a deep understanding of Arabic culture is a part of your brand promise. To reinforce this, you bring Arabic coffee or dates to share with other applicants at an assessment center. This could also show you a thoughtful and considerate, not bad brand values to have touch. You could print your business cards on recycled card to reinforce your E co-related positioning credentials or simply connect on LinkedIn as you want to reduce your carbon footprint. Sound, one of your personal brand values could be that you're underground so that you appeal to transporting agencies. You could have a live stream on your blog to underground DJs to reinforce this personal brand value. Sent. Sent is the only sense which has a direct link to the emotional receptors in your brain. This makes it particularly powerful and so needs to be treated with care. You may choose a certain sense associated with your country or region to reinforce your brand positioning. But for the purposes of an interview, I would advise against this as it may be overpowering. You can use behavior, communications and multisensory tools to manage your personal brand. Next, I'd like to share some top tips or managing your personal brand. 17. 17 Managing Your Personal Brand Top Tips: Here are my top tips for managing your personal brand. Define them, manage your personal brand. This entails defining your personal brand values, promise, and positioning, and then managing the behavior communications, and multi-sensory design tools. Taking this two-step approach will provide you with a relevant Foundation and guiding principle for managing your personal brand in a consistent way. Align social media channels with your personal brand. If your brand is funky and creative, you need to be on TikTok and Instagram, but less so LinkedIn. In time that may change. But for now, linkedin doesn't tend to be associated with being funky and creative. Communicate your story. Years ago, a workshop participant outlined how she was denied important health care as a child. Because the medical system in our country did not favor people from less privileged backgrounds. That provided the inspiration for her to study law with a focus on health care. Can you imagine listening to that story in an interview? Her motivation and commitment would be inspiring. Try to be multisensory with care. Multisensory tools will enable you to build a distinctive brand. Just make sure you use them at the right time and place. These are my top tips for managing your personal brand. Now let's look at how you can bring your personal brands or life in a consistent way. 18. 18 Delivering a Consistent Personal Brand Worked Example: In this course, we've covered understanding, defining, and managing your personal brand. Now let's look at a worked example to show you how everything fits together so you can create a consistent personal brand. This entails using the practical plug-and-play templates in the additional resources which I'm sharing now. Please note this is a summary of this person's personal brand. They have other personal brand values and parts of their brand promise which have been excluded. In the first column we have the personal brand values, brand promise, and brand positioning. In the first row we have the personal brand management tools, behavior, communications, and multisensory tools. We can see this person has a personal brand value of being caring. They bring this to life by looking after everyone in groups, behavior, ensuring everyone in a group is heard communications. I'm accounting for learning disability on their websites with text to speech capability design. You can see how this plays out for the other value of being focused in addition to their personal brand promise and personal brand positioning. At this stage, I'd suggest you stop this content for a minute and have a good look at the rest of the table for this person's personal brand. Now ask yourself, what type of feeling does this personal brand generates? It's a caring and focused individual that has specific skills with regards to Mandarin and Chinese business culture. That personal brand has a consistent feel. This is possible because they've taken the time to define their personal brand, which then provides a guiding principle for how they manage their personal brand through behavior, communications and by using multisensory design tools. Defining them, managing your personal brand is time well-spent. It will provide you with a solid foundation for building a consistent personal brand. Time for me to share my top tips on delivering a consistent personal brand. 19. 19 Delivering a Consistent Personal Brand Worked Example Top Tips: These are my top tips that will help you deliver a consistent personal brand. Be structured. Use the your personal brand on a page plug-and-play template to guide your thinking it's time well-spent. Be prepared to refine your personal brand. As you think about how you will manage it. Don't worry, this is fine. It's best to be honest with yourself at this stage, start where you feel comfortable. You don't need to start in the top left-hand corner of the table and work across and all down. If you find, it's easier to think about how you will manage your brand promise instead of your brand values. That's fine. You can then work back to the other parts. Every bulks doesn't need any inputs. If you can't think of a way to use multi-sensory designed to bring a certain value. It's alive, That's fine. Leave it. It's likely you'll be able to use your behavior and or communications to bring that value to life. Expect, brand management overlap, e.g. when you meet someone that entails behavior, your body language and communications, your tone of voice, don't agonize over this. The key point is to capture your thinking in the plug-and-play templates. Test drive your personal brand management. Once you've completed the table, cover the first column and ask a constructive friend or your careers advisor to guess the words you've used for your personal brand values, promise, and positioning. They should be able to provide words similar to the ones that you've used. If not, you need to have enough. Think about how you've managed your personal brand. These are my top tips for delivering a consistent personal brand. Let's sum up the course by revisiting the scenario outlined earlier on, completing some action planning and revisiting the course objectives. 20. 20 Practical Scenario Revisted: The course opened with an interview scenario that didn't go so well. Let's revisit the scenario to see how you can use your personal brand in practice to improve things. You're in an interview for your dream job. You spend a lot of time preparing, but you're still a bit nervous, understandable, but you ready to go for it? After some pleasant trees and quite general questions, the interviewer starts to ask more challenging questions. How would you describe yourself in four or five words? You pause for a few seconds to show that you are thinking carefully. Then you say, I describe myself as sincere, thoughtful, ambitious, meticulous, and dedicated. You mentioned your meticulous. That's interesting. Can you provide me with an example to illustrate this point? I had a work placements and IT consultancy. Before every client debrief, I always went back to the client brief to cross check. I have covered every requirements stated in the original brief. I also doubled sometimes triple check spelling, punctuation, and grammar to make sure that it's 100% right. Great. Let's move on to the next question. What value can you deliver to our organization? I have a master's degree in business cybersecurity, which means that I can minimize your clients exposure to cybersecurity risks and attacks. All applicants have a masters in cybersecurity for business. How are you different to other applicants is the next question. I suspect most other applicants are particularly technical, but I'm technical and practical because for projects at my previous company, I was responsible for senior management technical updates, which needed to use straightforward business language. And I'd like to think that's why I'm different. Can you see the improvement in comparison to how we started? I'm not saying you will always be asked these questions or even ask these questions in exactly the same way? No. But they're very common interview questions that you should be able to answer in a way that fits your personal brand. The goal is for you to have a practical tool and a suite of templates that you can use to improve your interview performance. Action planning will help you improve your interview performance. Let's do that now. 21. 21 Action planning: To focus your mind on immediate activities, are they encourage you to do some action planning, a practical plug-and-play template that will help you with your action planning is included in the additional resources. Let's look at that now. It's a good idea to put timescales on your action plan within a week, a month, and six months of possible examples. You can change these timescales to fit the goal and your priorities are personal preference. The most important thing is to be honest with yourself and to be realistic. I've provided a worked example structured around the goal situation, an action. A goal could be to clarify your target employers, companies within a week. You could do this during a meeting scheduled with your careers advisor. The specific action would be for you to create a list of target employers, companies, and possibly even contact from LinkedIn. You can follow the same process for within a month, within six months, so that you have a clear action plan for building your personal brand. It's a good idea to share your action plan with your careers advisor or a friend who has also taken this course. This will really help you commit to your action planning. Next, let's revisit the course learning objectives to show they've been achieved. 22. 22 Learning objectives revisited: We've just looked at how you can carry out some action planning. Now let's revisit the course learning objectives to check being achieved. The ideas and insights shared during this course will have helped you realize that you too, have a personal brand which has the potential to become a valuable career assets. This applies if you're seeking employment now. But also as you progress through your career. By now, you should appreciate why you need to define and then manage your personal brand. Too many students jumped and managing their personal brand through their cover letter, CV or LinkedIn profile without laying the foundations of their brand. This course will prevent you from making the same mistake. You should know how to use the personal branding Canvas and its supporting practical plug-and-play tools and templates to build your personal brand in a structured way. This course has helped you learn how to deliver a consistent personal brand. This is important because it's easier for prospective employees to recall your brand if it has a consistent feel, this aids memory recall. Please remember this course focused on an interview scenario. But the practical plug-and-play tools and templates can be used in other situations, including careers fairs or assessment centers, e.g. the content we've covered should help you feel more assured under age during interviews. Because you've developed a way of thinking about your personal brands, you can fall back on if your mind goes blank, join, interview. Finally, by now you should feel more confident and comfortable with your personal brand. Because you'll have taken the time to reflect on who you are in an open and honest way, what kind of organization you're genuinely liked to work out. These are the learning objectives. Hopefully you can see how they're being achieved. 23. 23 Interested in learning more?: If you'd like to obtain more advice and support on how you can build your personal brand. Feel free to contact me or a member of the wavelength marketing team on the email address that's being presented. Now. We can help you organize customized workshops in-person or live online, customized versions of this workshop. Consultations, debriefs, coaching or mentoring. Finally, I'd like to say many thanks for taking this course. I appreciate your time and the commitment that you've made. I hope you found that useful and that it will help you build your personal brand. Please keep in touch. Bye for now.