Rebranding is usually seen as a tactic used by companies with the goal of changing their brand identity. But rebranding is also a strategy you can use to improve your career development.
Maybe you are looking to change your career, or you just want to work on your reputation in your field of expertise. Either way, one of the smartest career moves you could make is to invest in your personal brand.
Working on your personal brand allows you to make yourself (and your skills) more appealing to new employers, or help you get promoted at your current job. It’s a strategy that will allow you to take your career to the next level.
Rebranding isn’t rocket science. However, if you don’t get it right, you will struggle to be seen differently. In this article, we’re going to take a look at five easy ways to rebrand yourself.
Identify Your Professional and Personal Goals
You can’t hit your target if you don’t have a target in mind. In other words, unless you know what your professional goals are, you can’t expect to be able to position yourself in a way to progress with your career.
As Warren Buffet once said, “the more you learn, the more you earn.”
Therefore, before you do anything else, it’s really important that you identify exactly what you want. What are you looking to achieve? What type of field do you want to work in? What would be a good salary for you?
Once you’ve identified your professional goals, you’ll need to identify some personal goals, too. Maybe you want more work-life balance and more time with your family? This is definitely something to consider while thinking about your career development.
Write down your professional and personal goals and define the steps that will get you there. This will all go a long way in helping you rebrand.
Work On Your Soft Skills and Hard Skills
There are two types of skills that will help you get the job you want or to get ahead in your career: hard skills and soft skills.
You need both! Hard skills are technical skills that might include knowledge of a specific task, such as, database management, data mining, or Adobe Software suite. Review your professional goals, identify what hard skills you need to learn – and learn them!
Soft skills are related to personality traits and the way you interact with other people. Depending on the career change you’re looking for, they might include teamwork, critical thinking, creativity, or problem-solving.
Both hard and soft skills are important to employers, so the winning strategy is to work on both types of skills and to showcase them in your resume and social media profiles as explained below.
Update Your LinkedIn Profile (and other Social Media Accounts)
Recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates just like you. It’s really important that you update your LinkedIn profile so: a) recruiters find you and b) they’re encouraged to invite you to apply for the role.
As well as using LinkedIn, recruiters these days also scour Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook profiles in order to properly vet candidates. This is why it’s so important that you update each of your social profiles so that they appeal to any future employer.
Update Your Resume
Your resume remains one of your greatest tools as you look to find a new job. Now that you’re updating your professional brand, it’s time to update your resume.
Makes sure to review and refresh your resume objective, your transferable skills (including hard and soft skills), and formatting. Avoid buzzwords, jargon, and any past employment that’s no longer relevant.
Continue Your Education
As the great investor Warren Buffet once said, “the more you learn, the more you earn.”
In other words, nothing will help you more as you seek to change your career and rebrand yourself than education.
Prioritizing learning means prioritizing your personal and professional growth. Learn things about your next career and field of work, but also learn things outside your chosen career. Absorb knowledge, master new skills. You don’t know where it could take you.
There are lots of reasons to change your career. If you’ve decided that changing your career is the next move for you, it’s important that you rebrand yourself in a way that gives you the best chance of landing the job of your dreams.
Use the tips in this article to make yourself stand out from the crowd. This will require some time and effort, but the end result will boost your employability and prepare you for the next stage of your life and career.
Syndicated with permission from Jobbio. Feature image courtesy Unsplash.
