Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter discusses career branding classes that you can find in your local supermarket.
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I want to give you an example of how effective branding can be. It’s one that you are familiar with in your personal life and I want to use it as a metaphor for why you should be doing branding in your career and your professional life.
When you go to the store and buy laundry detergent have you ever in your entire life picked up the container of detergent, turned around and said to yourself, “Hmm. I think the combination of chemicals in this detergent will do a better job of cleaning my laundry then these chemicals will.”
No. You’ve never done that once in your entire life. You put that laundry detergent because you’ve always bought that laundry detergent, or because there was a coupon, or it was cheaper… Anything other than the fact that it would make your wash cleaner.
Job hunting can be much the same thing and you can become the preferred hire for an organization by creating a brand for yourself as powerful as the detergent makers make for theirs.
Coffee. Starbucks coffee or another brand of coffee? How did Starbucks become so powerful? It’s more expensive. Oh! It is a better coffee! They created an experience for you at the store and you want to take that experience home with you.
Item by item things that advertisers are doing to create a brand image in your mind to advantage themselves over competitors. The organic apple versus the nonorganic Apple. It’s healthier. That’s the brand that they have.
Item by item, there are things that are been done to create an impression in your mind that it is better to work for versus another one. You’ve been trained and conditioned to do this.
In job hunting, branding takes a lot of different forms. It’s all the things that you do online they create an image that allows you to be the expert. If you do public speaking, to our hat a seminar, if you work with the firm that is recognizable… Let me give you an example – – Facebook, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Microsoft versus three guys starting up in their basement.
How about Goldman Sachs versus another financial institution? On and on and on there is an image that firms try to create from an employment perspective that you can create for yourself from a job search perspective, from a career perspective that can advantage yourself over your competitors so that when you are found and reached out to, you’re the person that they believe can do the job, you’re the perceived expert walking in the door versus the supplicant hat in hand begging for the job.
Always put yourself in the position of being the expert.
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Do you think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.
The skills needed to find a job are different yet complement the skills needed to do a job.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.
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