Personal Branding

The challenge of leading the community known as Remarkable Personal Branding on LinkedIn has been rewarding and informative.

Here's what is known about our current and short-term future economy:

• High unemployment is the new normal. 9% + is the published number, it grows when you add the sad category known as "those that have given up looking."
• Incompetent politicians who either don't care to fix the problem or are intellectually unable to do so.

Remarkable Personal Branding is the potential game changer for the current job seeker. The market demands that we have a personal brand. Your brand will differentiate you from the 100 or so others that apply for the same position.

Here's the catch. Ask someone you know what it is that makes them special. Ask them what they want to be known for from a professional perspective. When the questions are first posed you see confusion. No one has ever asked these questions before.

Individuals working on their personal brand will have the best chance to succeed in their job search. They will be the ones looking for work that is aligned with their brand. Employers continue to tell me how embarrassed they are for candidates who blindly apply for jobs for the sake of saying they submitted a resume. That's known as personal brand destruction.

To my friends in the business community I ask this question: Are you speaking with job candidates who appear to have an effective personal brand that highlights how they can help you?