Your Personal Brand Is Showing – Job Search Quiz (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this series, you learned that you already have a personal brand whether you know it or not. Your brand has important ramifications on your job search. It is apparent to others through your behaviors and actions, your image, your communications style and expressions, and the types of people you hang out with both online and offline. It permeates everything you do and say.
Are you aware of the current state of your “personal brand health”?
Brand building starts with brand awareness. Since your personal brand is perceived by others, you will need to get honest feedback from them. Only after you have gotten this feedback can you move on to tweak the expression of your personal brand and relay your professionalism, distinctive traits, and behavioral style. By changing your actions and communications, you can alter the perception of your personal brand by others.
How are you expressing and exuding your brand in the interview stage of your job search?
Directions: In this Job Search Quiz – Part 2, select the behavior or quote that most closely resembles your actions or communications. Note the responses you have chosen.
1. This is your first interview for a job that is exactly what you want and you have just met the interviewer. What do you do first?
a. Say, “Can you validate my parking ticket?”, OR
b. Make eye contact, smile, and offer a friendly handshake, OR
c. Start texting an IM to your best friend about how excited you are.
2. The interview is for a management trainee position in the hospitality industry. You are wearing:
a. Jeans, hoodie, and sneakers, OR
b. Well-fitted suit that conveys your personal brand image, OR
c. Hawaiian-print T-shirt, cut-offs, and flip-flops.
3. The interviewer asks, “What are your strengths?” and you reply:
a. “That’s easy: dependable, intelligent, resourceful, caring, smart, reliable, bright, a team player, honest and trustworthy, self-confident, and a people person,” OR
b. “Others have described my personal branding attributes as rock-solid dependability combined with an enthusiastic and helpful team spirit,” OR
c. “Ummm…let me see…I’m not sure?”
4. The interviewer asks, “Why should I hire you?” and you reply:
a. “Because I desperately need a job to avoid being homeless,” OR
b. “My skills, experience, values, and personal brand appear to be a perfect match with your job requirements, company culture, and values,” OR
c. “Why not?”
5. You are not sure what employers will see if they Google your name before or after the interview. While in college you posted some photos on Facebook that show you in a beer-chugging contest. You:
a. avoid the whole issue as it is unlikely that they will Google you, OR
b. Delete the beer-chugging contest photos from Facebook, and substitute more professional pics, OR
c. keep the original photos on Facebook and add more professional photos to “round out” your personal brand.
Responses: Answer (b) is the most professional behavior or response AND opens the gateway for you to express your positive personal brand in the interview. By aligning your brand attributes, strengths, and skills with a potential employer’s needs and culture-fit expectations, you will have leapt ahead of the majority of job seekers for selection to the position.
What does your brand say about you ? Take the complimentary 360Reach personal branding assessment at http://www.reachcc.com/360v4register and use the insights gained from the honest feedback to build your personal branding image, behaviors, and communications. Contact Susan Guarneri, a Certified Personal Branding Strategist at Susan@AssessmentGoddess.com for personal branding coaching.
About Susan Guarneri:
Known as the Career Assessment Goddess, Susan Guarneri has a Master’s Degree in Counseling from The Johns Hopkins University and 24 years of experience in career counseling and career coaching. With 13 career-industry certifications, she is the only National Certified Career Counselor worldwide who is also certified as a Master Personal Branding Strategist and Online Identity Management Strategist. In addition, she has won recognition as a Master Resume Writer with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Susan has assisted thousands of professionals and executives with career transitions and job changes. She has also provided Fortune 500 companies, colleges, non-profits, and government agencies with management development, team building, career consulting, training, and workforce development. Susan is co-author of Job Search Bloopers (2008 Career Press).
