When you think of a brand you know and love—Coca-Cola, perhaps, or Disney, or any other major consumer brand—certain expectations come to mind. You love a brand because those expectations exist and are consistently met. So what expectations do you create (or want to create) in other people and consistently meet? Are they positive expectations that help unlock career opportunities? What, in other words, is your brand?
Your brand, quite simply, tells a potential employer who you are. It tells them what to expect from you. They build that brand from everything they can see and learn about you: from personal interactions or hearsay to social media, open source projects, and Q&A websites where you participate—basically, everything online and everything offline as well. Your brand helps an employer see what you’ll bring into the workplace, so you should ensure that your brand reflects what you genuinely will bring.
2.1 Brand building: Know your audience
Whether you like it or not, and whether you take an active hand in it or not, you have a personal brand. Just the way you dress for a job interview is part of that brand.
The marketing departments of large corporations spend a considerable amount of time defining their audience so they can tailor their marketing efforts to be most effective. Gatorade, for example, probably works to impress a completely different audience from, say, Bacardi. Understanding who the brand must speak to—really understanding who they are and what they care about—is the key to building a brand that speaks to its audience.
With products like beverages, brand-building usually starts with identifying and learning about the audience. Products exist to fill a need, and that need is defined by the audience. Who are we trying to sell products to? The entire development of the product and its brand are driven by that audience: when it comes to our product, we’re going to do only the things that resonate with our intended brand. Our research shows that athletes are drawn to bright-colored drinks, for some reason, so we’re going to create beverages in fluorescent colors. Kids like candy flavors; older people may respond better to nostalgia, and so on. The drivers of the audience help craft the brand and the product that the brand represents.
That’s what brand means: a set of expectations that anyone interacting with the brand has. People like a brand and even become loyal to it because of those expectations and because the underlying product meets those expectations.
You have a brand too. It’s your personal brand, and like a corporate brand, it tells people—your employer, your co-workers, and your colleagues—what to expect from you. This brand is visible even before you meet people thanks to your interactions on social media, in open source projects, and other online locations.
With your brand, you can’t necessarily change who you are, so understanding your audience is less about building your product. You already are the product. But you still need to understand what’s important to your audience. Let’s look at some hypothetical examples to show you what I mean by “understanding your audience.”
Putting my examples in context The following examples are built on stereotypes of industries. I don’t in any way mean to imply that these industries are like these examples; I want to use straightforward examples to demonstrate the concept of understanding your audience.
Consider a bank: a traditional, 200-year-old company. We’re talking about a large national or multinational banking corporation, the kind whose executives wear three-piece suits and whose office buildings are towering edifices. When considering technology professionals, what might a company like this value? A trim, neat appearance in the office, perhaps. A fairly conservative person, maybe, who is dependable and doesn’t take a lot of unnecessary risks. Someone who’s punctual and who understands the need for information to be safe and secure. Someone who’s comfortable in meetings, because big banks have lots of divisions that need to coordinate. Maybe someone who’s comfortable using older, proven technologies.
Now consider a brand-new, lean technology startup with one office and a handful of employees. What might this company value in tech professionals? Perhaps a willingness to work long hours every day of the week. Someone who’s a little quirky, maybe, who can think outside the box. Maybe someone who’s well-known in their portion of the industry and is thought of as an innovator and leader.
As you can see, it’s important to consider who your audience might be and what’s valuable to them. You don’t have to pick one audience, and you don’t even have to choose one industry. Your brand can appeal to a variety of audiences, if you do things right. But you need to understand what’s valuable to the companies and people to whom you hope to appeal.
How would I go about branding myself to appeal to both the large, established bank and the small, agile startup? What value do I bring to the table, and how can I communicate that value succinctly in a brand?
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I might ensure that my visible brand is highly focused on technology. I might tone down the more personal aspects of my visible brand, such as where I like to vacation and what politicians I support. Neither company is likely to care about those things not being in my brand, but they might be turned off if those things were part of my brand.
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I would probably ensure that I had a lot of community contributions—blog articles, open source projects, and other visible contributions—that showed my work. At the same time, I’d be careful to focus on the security aspect of my work. I wouldn’t post code in open repositories and expose API keys, for example. Demonstrating that I follow best practices for security would appeal to any company.
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I’d make sure that my appearance—my social media avatars and the like—reflects a neat, businesslike appearance. Pink hair might be acceptable at a startup but maybe not at a bank, and the startup probably won’t mind if my hair is a natural color.
These ideas reflect a specific approach that I’m taking. I’m saying that I want to be appealing, as a brand, to a couple of different audiences. That means I’m going to have to find a common denominator and go with that as my personal brand. But there are also some things I explicitly won’t do, right? Let’s look at those things in table form.
You might feel entirely differently. You might want to work only for aggressive, exciting startups, which means you could tailor your brand more precisely to what that audience values. What you decide is okay, and what’s not okay, for your brand is your decision. Please don’t see my examples as being some kind of directive; they’re decisions I made for myself, not for you.
The point is that your brand will say different things to different people. To some people, Coke says, “Refreshing, energizing beverage that I enjoy.” To other people, that same brand says, “Sugary junk food that should be banned from the planet.” Coke obviously focuses its efforts on the first group of people and doesn’t worry too much about the other group, at least in terms of how it presents their brand. So you need to decide who your brand will appeal to, and you may want to tweak your brand if it doesn’t appeal to the companies you want to work for. By defining and understanding your audience, you’ll know what’s important to them, and you will be able to market yourself as a professional who helps meet their needs.
It’s still okay to be yourself I added the comment about having pink hair on purpose. Please don’t feel compelled to take something out of your brand if it represents who you really are. Your brand reflects what you bring to the workplace, and it should be authentic. Just be aware that some employers may not like your brand. You can’t please all the people all the time, right? But if having a certain hairstyle is a genuine part of you, anyone who’s turned off by it probably doesn’t deserve you in the first place, so there’s no need to edit that part of yourself. I would look silly with pink hair, but you might rock it. That’s why my specific brand decisions won’t be yours.
2.2 Social media and your brand
Social media is a tremendous part of your personal brand these days. Whether you’re looking for a job or already have one, what happens in your publicly accessible social media accounts matters. Your activity on social media informs your co-workers, your employer, and your potential employers who you really are. People tend to be at their most candid on social media, so everyone else more or less takes you at your word. To the world, what you put on social media is who you are.
I use Facebook sparingly, mainly to connect with, and share news and photos with, a dozen or so friends who are scattered across the country. I can be my real self with those people because I’ve known most of them for most of my life. They’re the ones who can see the photos of that time in Mexico when I got a little carried away at the cantina. As a result, my Facebook profile is incredibly locked down. My friends can’t even tag me in a post unless I approve it. Nobody I work with is a “friend” on Facebook unless we’ve actually spent personal time together. Facebook is not part of my personal brand; it’s not something that the public gets to peruse.
Twitter, on the other hand, is very much part of my professional life. So is my blog. Those places are where I engage with my professional audience. The content I post in those places reflects my work life, my community involvement, and the work I do. I’m absolutely fine with my current employer or a potential employer seeing my Twitter feed (@concentratedDon) or my blog (DonJones.com). Even the political content of my blog is safe for work, because it’s mainly explaining how various aspects of the US political system work, as opposed to rants about my political opinions or attacks on political opponents. Even my personal comments on Twitter are the kind of innocuous chat that almost anyone might find acceptable around the water cooler in the office. I try very hard to ensure that both Twitter and my blog reflect my brand—the person you can expect me to be at work.
My deliberate separation of the personal and the professional does not mean that I’m plain-vanilla online in an effort to appeal to everyone. Ask anyone who’s seen me speak at a conference or teach a class, and they’ll tell you that good-natured sarcasm is very much part of my brand. I use it tactically to help make important points stick, and for my audience (the people I’m engaging with as part of my work), it mainly works. I do recognize that some people don’t like that approach, and as a result, they don’t really relate to my brand. That’s fine. You can’t be all things to all people, and I accept that whatever appeal I might have isn’t universal. But I’ve taken the time to know my audience, I accept what works for them, and I’m okay with making those things part of my brand. That doesn’t make me a win for every audience, and I’m okay with that too.
What does your public social media footprint say about your brand? If it says nothing, people will simply infer whatever they want from whatever evidence they see. Not managing your brand isn’t the same as not having a brand; as I have said, we all have a brand. If your brand seems to say nothing, people might conclude that you’re not publicly engaged. For some audiences, that conclusion might be fine; for others, it might not resonate in a positive way.
My social media brand is communicated largely through LinkedIn, Twitter, my blog, my professionally focused YouTube channel, and the writing I’ve done for a huge variety of technology websites. I essentially have no other social media footprint, because anything else I do is massively locked off from the rest of the world, accessible only to a small group of friends and family.
I keep my personal Facebook account cut off from my public image, but I do not cut off social media as a whole. I use it actively. I use LinkedIn because it’s the de facto social media network of technology professionals. I use Twitter because I have an audience that engages with me there. I use YouTube because it’s an opportunity to use my videos to reinforce what my brand is all about. If a potential employer or my current one wants to get to know Don, they’ll find plenty to look at—largely on-brand. I wouldn’t want someone to start looking me up and find nothing, because then I wouldn’t be able to manage my brand. If I weren’t publicly active on social media, I’d be left to whatever an employer’s imagination provides, which isn’t what I want.
I also need to be aware of what I repeat or share in public social media. Want to know what’s in my Twitter feed? Mostly news from the many Disney Parks websites I read, along with a smattering of Apple rumors. That’s what I like to read, and it’s what I’ve taught Twitter to show me. I also have a few comedians in the mix, who can get pretty snarky when it comes to the political events of the day. I don’t necessarily agree with all of their opinions, but I do enjoy reading them. That said, I don’t retweet them. Even if I think my audience might find those opinions interesting to read and discuss, I don’t want to imply that I agree with those opinions (I don’t always, but they can be interesting without my agreement) or that my Twitter content is straying from its path. I don’t want to take a risk that a potential client or employer might see me as the kind of person who brings controversy into the workplace. So I’ll ask again: What does your public social media footprint say about your brand? Does it say things that would appeal to your target audience or not?
NOTE It’s always a good idea to understand what your brand is saying about you, especially on social media. It’s critical that you do so before a job search, because many organizations will consider your public brand—as communicated on social media—in their decision-making processes.
2.3 Your brand has a wide reach
Never forget that we live in a small world. I once worked with a fellow named Mark. He was a great guy, and we got along really well. He was one of the few professional acquaintances I’ve made who truly saw me at my worst on occasion—like the time the server migration we worked on did not go smoothly. In time, I left the company where we worked; he stayed on longer but also left eventually.
Some years later, I was applying for a job with a new company. I got through to an interview, and my prospective new boss started with “So I understand you’re a big fan of Disney Parks! Which is your favorite?”
Mind you, this happened long before the advent of social media. There was no way for a complete stranger to know that I liked Disney Parks. But Mark already worked for them. He’d started with them a few months earlier, had recommended me for the job, and had told them a bit about me.
Fortunately, I’d never given Mark too many negative experiences to talk about. Our work interactions had been positive, and we saw each other as solid professionals. But it struck me: What if I’d really been a jerk to work with? Singlehandedly, Mark could have killed my ability to get that job. I’d probably never have gotten an interview. Our relationship—positive or negative—would have affected whether I got the job.
The world is much smaller today. Your brand reach is vastly greater than you may realize. People you’ve never met have definitely heard about you or could hear more about you with very little effort. In a lot of ways, the expanded reach of your brand today is a good thing. It’s what will get you that next job or other opportunity, but it can obviously work against you as well.
The take-home message is to spend every moment of every working day pretending that it’s the job interview for your next promotion, job, contract, or other opportunity. Everything you do today will have an impact on how you’re perceived in the future. It’s important to be a consummate professional all the time because your personal brand will be a positive reflection of you as a technology professional.
Use the reach of your brand In chapter 3, “Network,” I explore the idea of extending the reach of your brand by continually using networking as part of your career. And in chapter 4, “Be part of a community,” I look at how being a positive community contributor can add serious panache to your personal brand.
2.4 Professionalism and your brand
Do you know the biggest concern every hiring manager has when they decide to extend an offer to a job candidate? It’s whether that person is a professional—someone who can work in a team environment with other human beings; someone who can be polite, efficient, and effective; someone who can make the workplace better, not worse.
Those things are hard to pull out in an interview. That’s why recruiters and hiring managers will search for you on social media and seek references from other people in the field—not just the references you provide, which are always upbeat, but real references—co-workers they’ve located on LinkedIn, for example, or people they’ve found through a thorough review of your social media footprint. Before they make you an offer, they want to get to know you.
Professionalism is an important part of your brand. You want to be known as someone who shows up at work every day to get the job done; someone who can work with other people, accepting that they will have different opinions, backgrounds, and cultures; someone who can manage their time effectively; someone who keeps their word, pays attention to details, and can be a supportive member of a team.
Know the characteristics of successful tech professionals In chapter 6, “Show up as a professional,” I explore several key behaviors that can help support and build a solid brand.
You need to not only exhibit professionalism, but also a find a way to make it part of your brand. Do you have a blog? Don’t feel that you always need to write about technology topics! Take a break now and then to write about professionalism, or an aspect of it, and what it means to you. Engage on social media on the topic. Offer suggestions for time management techniques, or share how you’ve struggled with interpersonal communications at work. Your brand is how you’re seen, and you want to make sure that you’re seen as a person who thinks about professionalism and is deliberate about it. You might be surprised by the opportunities that this focus on professionalism unlocks for you!
2.5 How to sabotage your brand
There are lots of ways to sabotage your brand. Some of them you can probably guess from reading this chapter, such as being inappropriate on social media, behaving unprofessionally, or misunderstanding your brand audience. Becoming known as a poor manager of your own time is another way. Being thought of as lazy is another; you may not be lazy, but if that reputation attaches to you, it can damage your brand. If you work remotely some or all of the time, it is a mark against your brand to be seen as a poor remote worker—someone who goofs off without supervision, is not available during office hours, or doesn’t answer calls or return emails promptly.
The simple-to-remember, hard-to-execute basic truth is this: everything you do at work, or in front of your colleagues or employer, affects your brand. Whether you like it or not, you do have a personal brand. All of us have one. Our brand is simply the way other people perceive us and think about us. We can take control of that brand, and work to make it (and keep it) a positive, career-enhancing thing, or we can simply let the chips fall where they may.
Everything you do within sight of your colleagues and employer affects your brand. That “within sight” piece has become much bigger in the past decade, with the rise of social media and our always-connected lives. It may seem unfair that an employer would penalize you for something you posted on Facebook or that you didn’t get a new job because word got around that you were perceived as lazy. That’s the world we live in, though, which is why it’s so important to actively manage that personal brand of yours.
2.6 Further reading
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Introduction to Personal Branding: 10 Steps Toward a New Professional You, Mel Carson (independently published, 2016)
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Branding Pays: The Five-Step System to Reinvent Your Personal Brand, Karen Kang (BrandingPays Media, 2013)
2.7 Action items
For this chapter, I’d like you to evaluate your brand. We all project a brand, whether we intend to or not, and by evaluating its current state, we can decide whether we want to make any changes and what those changes might be. For this exercise, consider the following:
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Where does my brand exist? Include in-person encounters (like those you have at the office), as well as social media, technology communities in which you participate, and other online presences.
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What does my brand say? As developers know, empty is not the same as null ; your brand says something, even if only “This person doesn’t seem to engage much.” To find out what impression you are making on other people, you can ask colleagues and co-workers what expectations they have of you, based on your performance. How do they expect you to handle a project, collaborate on a team, and behave on the job? Set up an anonymous survey if that helps them be more candid with you. Ask the people who encounter you online what they expect from you, based on what you post. A friend who performed this exercise was alarmed to learn that many of his Facebook friends considered him to be a person who was primarily interested in politics. Politics was the main content he reshared on the platform, so it was the main image of his brand there.
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What about my brand contributes to my success definition? Go back to your success bullets from chapter 1. What aspects of your current brand support some of those bullets? Does anything about your current brand detract from any of those bullets?
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What could my brand do to better support my success? Consider all the places where your brand exists. If part of your life definition is to be a valued contributor to a technical community, are you doing that? Can your contributions be seen in a way that defines your brand as a contributor?
When you’re done, look at the results and decide whether your brand could use a more deliberate approach. What might you do differently to create a brand that more perfectly aligns with your success definition? Do you need to amend your success definition to include brand-building and brand-maintenance goals?