In This Highly Digitised World, Spotlight Your Value-add Human Offerings to Professionally Progress
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 15
- 5 min read
Written by Jeanette Walton, Career Brand Consultant
Jeanette is spreading the word about the essentiality of career branding for all professionals. As a Career Brand Consultant, she has pioneered a career branding framework, amongst other educational resources, to amplify the use of career branding to cut through and stand out.
Sometimes we get so caught up in our jobs, work pressures, and career comfort zones that we scale back when it comes to considering who we are and what we have on offer professionally, as well as personally. I recently read that in the USA, and this no doubt applies to other global markets, many employees are choosing to stay put despite a lack of job satisfaction. And I get it, we live in fast-paced, tumultuous times. The speed of emerging technologies is giving us whiplash. Hectic job markets make us feel that it’s all too hard. The billionaire tech bros are ruling media airwaves. And online platforms are so condensed and attention span crippling that some of us are ready to jump into ‘leave it to the AI robots’ hidey holes.
We’re in very real danger of neglecting or forgetting our unique isms, underpinned by our own specific backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and cross-purpose offerings. So many of us have multilateral professional and personal assets that can benefit others, in addition to helping us professionally progress. At this time, when it’s not always easy to differentiate between machine and human-generated, I believe it’s more important than ever for us to stand up and speak out about our nuances, our storylines, our values, and our people-oriented assets.
Have you fully considered your brand self?
Any of you who follow me know that I regularly advocate the importance of personalised career branding to keep us feeling inspired, to keep us attracting the right attention, and to keep motivating us to make a positive impact in our markets, professions, and broader communities. Whatever your professional context, a digital presence is expected, if not demanded, among your target audiences. And with over 80% of consumers wanting to feel trust and credibility in a business or brand before investing time or money, it’s a well-rounded, individualised brand that will speak to them and reassure them. And the term ‘consumers’ doesn’t have to be your average money-making kind. This term could also be applied to recruiters, industry alliances, and social media followers.
When you use tools like my self-developed Career Branding Matters framework, there is a range of internal and external benefits from defining and applying a strong, foundational career brand across your professional promotions and interactions. You’ll know what matters most to you, what continues to drive, inform, and influence you, how you are different from others, and the advantages you can bring to your target market or industry. And you’ll cultivate clarity and consistency that fuel consumer confidence across your content and communications. All while holding your ‘I’m human’ hand up high among AI-based content makers and information feeds.
Any brand-enhancer skills and experiences?
Job tailoring and fine-tuning your resume, LinkedIn profile, and other career documentation is all but essential now when seeking career opportunities. There’s a minuscule time span for reeling in recruiters and other target readers to convince them that you’re worth further investigation and consideration. Clinically structured content is what’s required in a resume, as a primary piece of career-branded real estate when job seeking. And while there’s greater brand marketing freedom in LinkedIn profiles, this item also needs to factor in the scan reader commonality. But that doesn’t mean you should completely disregard any professional (or personal) offerings that are going to convey you as a candidate with individualising value add strengths and capabilities.
For example, I recently worked with a client with an expansive background in customer sales and account management, who had recently undertaken studies to transition into the work, health, and safety domain. Rather than us viewing her existing career history as irrelevant to her future ambitions, we determined ways that we could spotlight those job experiences as career enrichers, as value add professional assets that would set her apart from other job candidates. Another example is a client who most recently worked as an independent parks maintenance crew member for a local council and wanted to step up into a more senior-level role as a facilities manager. In addition to conveying the ease of transferability from his already being a local council employee, we demonstrated the depth of knowledge and experience he had on offer as a former builder running his own business and large property construction projects. There have also been clients with paid and voluntary side hustles, where we’ve used this additional work experience to underscore them as broader calibre professionals, all brand aligned, of course.
Are you letting people into the real you?
As a business owner and career brand consultant who’s active on LinkedIn and social media, I wouldn’t say that I’ve divulged all my internal quirks and lurgies. There are some parts of our personal selves that we should probably keep separate from our professional selves, such as opinions that others could view as contentious or soul-conflicting. It’s easy to quickly deter followers today, particularly with so many other options online, so why take the risk of alienating yourself via oversharing? Yet it’s common knowledge that most consumers want to feel some sort of affiliation with a brand or business. And we all know those feel-good vibes that arise from an in-sync interaction with another, a human connection that screams ‘this person gets me’.
“Best keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the world.” (George Bernard Shaw)
In terms of providing feel-good insights into the real you, the brand element that should be prioritised across professional engagement activities is authenticity. By remaining true to ourselves and our audiences, true to what propels us forward as professionals, we’re going to establish trust and credibility for the long term. No matter how hard people try to camouflage less than authentic intentions, most of us can see straight through those khaki clothes and face paint smears. We humans have an internal radar that sends skin prickles and other body discomfort when something feels off or contrived. So it’s best to concentrate on transmitting a brighter, clearer, and truer version of yourself to draw in optimal interests and connections.
If you’re not feeling the fatigue and overwhelm impacts of our highly digitised professional and personal environments, you’re an anomaly that should really be bottled for further research. With so much information swirling around us and so many job markets and professional sectors brimming with cutthroat competition, it’s getting harder to remain grounded in self-focus and self-belief. It’s therefore the definition and exemplification of our own unique, well-rounded career brand that will help us to polish up and refocus that spotlight on what we have on offer as both a person and a professional.
Read more from Jeanette Walton
Jeanette Walton, Career Brand Consultant
Jeanette is a Career Brand Consultant who helps professionals worldwide to enhance their career prospects. To address a gap in the market, she designed a career branding framework that helps professionals design and apply their own unique career brand. She also avidly writes articles, newsletters and eBooks, features on podcasts, partners with industry alliances, and delivers educational presentations on the benefits of career branding. In her spare time, Jeanette fosters dogs, visits an aged care resident, and co-facilitates a LinkedIn Local networking group.
