I've been going through the job hunt for a little over a month, and one of the biggest pieces of advice I've heard over and over has been to market yourself or your brand. As someone who's studied marketing over the past two years and worked in marketing roles over the last four, you would think that self-marketing would come second nature. I can market and brand any product, service or idea, but myself? For some odd reason this became one of my biggest challenges.
Part of the reason it seems a little harder is because I'm not big on bragging. Sure, I'll brag about a product any day of the week if I think it could be of use to you, but in general I don't like to honk my own horn.
Most of this branding when you're in the job market can come in your resume, where you basically get a page to tell employers why you're the best for their job. I've looked at innovative resumes on various blogs, where graphic designers showcase their skills in creative ways, so I tried giving this a shot. Calling this little experiment a disaster is an understatement. The problem wasn't in my graphic design skills, it was the fact that 1. I had no purpose to the design of my resume and 2. I'm not a full-time graphic designer and am not applying for such jobs.
Note to everyone: Don't make your resume something it's not, or worse yet, resemble something you're not.
A month goes by as I steadily plug away at job applications, sending off my Microsoft Word product, and getting a few call backs, but not at the rate of return I'm hoping for. Part of the problem might be unreasonable expectations (many sites report that the average job gets over 100 applicants), but part just might be that my resume doesn't really convey Alex Bryant: the brand and just how awesome I know I am. So this morning I got a wild hair and decided to retool the old faithful, giving it a facelift to reflect what I'm all about. Unlike my last abomination that I was too embarrassed to even think about showing employers, this one I actually like a lot more than my old Word resume.
Instead of just plugging away at Microsoft Word in something that even resembles a template, I decided to go with Adobe Indesign and really give myself more options when it came to spacing and design elements. It's not over the top, cluttered or confusing, but in my opinion it would stand out in a stack of template products. As an update to this beautiful space, I turned it into a jpg file and added a link on the left side of the page. Let me know what you think (especially if you're an employer)!
The next step in the branding effort was updating the logo here on Tumblr. Like my last resume effort, the old logo was loud, chaotic and somewhat pointless. Now, if you look real closely, you'll see that the fonts of my name in my resume and the fonts in my logo are the same. This is the part where you give me a thump over the head and say "Duh, branding 101". However, you'd be surprised how many people lack that consistent image, and how easy it is to ignore.
I would call my social media branding the third step, but this one was pretty well thought out a while ago. If you look at my resume or follow me on other social media networks, you'll notice that the url is always alexhbryant. That's a strategy that I hope makes me easier to find. I understand that for some people, their desired url is taken on Facebook but maybe opened on Twitter, but as some free advice of the day, if you're thinking about integrating your social media into your job search at all, having a consistent brand message and a clean, consistent username can't hurt.
How do you brand yourself? Let me know in the comments below!
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