Personal branding: 5 components to help you land a job

Days after graduating from college, I landed a job at a PR agency and received a promotion to an executive level position within less than a year. While I owe a lot of my success to my Alma Mater, one thing that made all the difference was personal branding.

Essentially, personal branding is how we market ourselves. It seems farfetched to consider marketing ourselves as if we were a product, but guess what—you are a product, and a very unique one at that.

For example, Nike, Apple, and Target all have distinct, unforgettable brands. You can use the same concept by establishing a personal brand.

Just imagine if these iconic brands chose to disregard the concept of product branding. That means no memorable taglines, logos, messaging, culture, engagement, appeal, visibility, partnerships, etc. Without a solid brand, you lose visibility and become overlooked. Given our economic climate—12.8 million Americans unemployed, 1.5 million jobless college grads—you probably thought of our job market. you can’t afford to go unnoticed.

To begin this process, you need to first identify and determine a few things: