Establishing Your Personal Brand as a Job Seeker
Over the past few years, the job market has shifted. If you look at this market as a horizontal line with employers on one side and job seekers on the others, the pendulum has swung post-Covid from completely in favor of job seekers to mostly in favor of employers.,
With an increase in the supply of workers (in most industries) and overall demand going slightly down or staying relatively stagnant, the rapid salary increases and lax hiring standards from 2022-23 have all but disappeared. More companies than every are extending their interview processes, being pickier about who they hire, beating up candidates over their salary asks, finding reasons to “not hire” someone rather than reasons why they should, and holding out for the “perfect” candidate. This shift in employer sentiment is an equal and opposite reaction to job seekers having so much leverage just a few years ago. At some point the pendulum will swing back in favor of candidates but for now, we are in a buyer’s market.
As a candidate navigating today’s job market, you must do everything you can do to put your best foot forward. This includes streamlining your resume, over-preparing for interviews, and being proactive about your personal brand.
Of those three areas, the one that’s overlooked by the greatest number of people is their personal brand which encompasses everything that is publicly available about you.
“What goes on the internet stays on the internet”
-Unknown
The Basics: Anything that could be construed as controversial or polarizing should be removed from public view.
- As an example, you may feel strongly about a certain political party or social issue. In today’s climate around half the people will agree with you and half will be on the other side. There is a time and place to discuss these topics but it’s typically not when searching for a job. In most cases, there is nothing to be gained in your job search by advertising to the world that you feel a certain way about any potentially polarizing issue.
- Keep it private: This likely means making your personal social media accounts such as Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, TikTok, blogs, etc. private. Everything that’s public about you is fair game as due diligence for future employers and many candidates get ruled out for jobs because of their online presence.
Be Honest, Be Positive, Be Yourself: For the Social Media accounts that you leave open to the public (such as LinkedIn) everything you have posted publicly should meet these three criteria. If it doesn’t, take it down.
- This means that you should go through your profile and remove that posting about your horrible boss in 2008 or how bad your company’s management team was in 2012. Remove the poll about your annoying co-worker who always microwaved fish in the office from 2015 and your thoughts about the 2016 & 2020 elections. You have nothing to gain from that sort of thing right now, so simply remove it from public view.
- Google yourself: According to job board Monster.com, 77% of future employers will Google you before moving forward with an interview (other sources have it higher than that). That number likely increases as you move forward in the interview process towards an offer. Some of the results from google are out of your control but some are not. At the very least you should know what others are seeing so if they bring it up you’ll be prepared for it and for the results you can control, make sure they meet the three criteria above.
You’ll never truly know…
- The maddening part about this is that if an employer finds something about you online that they don’t like, you’ll never know about it. Employment discrimination laws are written in such a way that employers have nothing to gain and everything to lose if they provide you with detailed feedback about something they found about you that they didn’t like and that’s what caused them to rule you out. You’ll simply get an answer like “we went in another direction” or “the role is on hold”.
- If you’ve been out of work for some time, have been proactively looking, and can’t figure out why you can’t land something – one of the first places you should look is your personal brand.
- You may also want to consider hiring a career coach who can help you with interviewing and finding your next role.
Going Further: The basics above are how to prevent future employers from finding negative things about you. This section will discuss how to create a positive personal brand.
- Write thought leadership articles about the area that you want to find employment in and post those articles to LinkedIn and/or a personal blog.
- Attend networking events in your chosen field and become known in the community. You never know when a connection of a connection will be the next person to hire you.
- Send out a newsletter to your growing network about how your search is shaping up. This is a great way of staying in touch and letting those who want to help you know how you’re doing and what they can do to help.
RX2 Solutions provides HR Outsourcing, Executive Search and Strategic staffing services on a National Basis. If you want to discuss working with a proactive company that provides customized solutions while listening and treating people the way we want to be treated, feel free to reach out info@rx2solutions.com.