What Would Others Write About You

Join Isaiah as he discusses why understanding how you come across to others will help you establish your professional brand and connect with employers

Here’s a quick rundown of this week’s episode…

• First, Isaiah reveals how you can better understand your profesional brand by discerning what others think about you
• Next, Isaiah explains how you can use your understanding of your professional brand to ensure you connect with the right employers
• Finally, Isaiah illustrates why this is important from the employer’s point of view

From This Week’s Show… 

How Being Self-Aware Will Help You Develop Your Professional Brand

Imagine giving everyone you know plus a handful of strangers post-it notes and asking them to write down three things they can always count on you for, as well as three things they can never count on you for. What are the people who know you best going to write down? What are the people who barely know you going to write down?

The sum pattern of their answers is a strong indication of your professional brand—or how you will come off to employers prior to being hired and certainly after being hired. You could take the above exercise a step further—and I recommend you actually do—by asking different questions to tease out exactly how people see you.

You could ask: What three traits describe me best? What did you think of me when we first met? How has this changed over time? What made it change? The key to understanding your current professional brand is understanding how you come across to others holistically.

Why Understanding Your Professional Brand Will Help You Engage The Right Employers

Once you understand this, all you have to do is either find an employer who is aligned with your professional brand or adjust your professional brand to align with an employer whose brand you value. You will likely end up doing some combination of the two.

Once an employer is aware of you—you’ve crossed over from invisible to visible—they carefully evaluate whether you are going to disrupt their professional lifestyle, their team’s current dynamic, or the company’s overall culture. In short, they’re looking for red flags. That’s right—every employer you interact with during the hiring process is asking themselves, Can I stand to be around this person for eight hours a day, five days a week?

You want to avoid them thinking, My God, I can’t even stand talking to this person on the phone for five minutes, let alone having to interact with them day in and day out. If you come across overly awkward, arrogant, defensive, boring, or negative, what does it say to your potential employer? What person in their right mind would recommend that their company hire such a person?

Employers Prefer Candidates With A Defined Professional Brand

This may seem overly critical to you, but their scrutiny during the hiring process is justified. Consider it from the employer’s perspective. Even if you have twenty interviews with an employer and talk to dozens of people at the organization, they still have very little information about who you actually are.

Employers must carefully evaluate your candidacy and make certain you will not have a negative impact on them. They must also—and this is good news—go into the hiring process with positive intent. The intent must be to hire you, train you, and keep you on for years to come.

There’s no way around it. You must start considering yourself from the employer’s perspective because no employer will sacrifice their job for the sake of yours.

If you’re ready to start your transition into industry, you can apply to book a free Transition Call with our founder Isaiah Hankel, PhD or one of our Transition Specialists. Apply to book a Transition Call here.