Brand vs. reputation – are the days of “career brands” over?
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Many of you have been on our Drive Your Career programme where we discuss career brands. Some like the phrase, and some don’t, and a delegate recently asked me whether it’s still a valid phrase.
We’ve always used both ‘reputation’ and ‘career brand’ lightly; knowing that the latter makes some people feel like their fur is being rubbed backwards. There are perhaps 2 reasons for using ‘career brand’ instead of the solid and well-established word ‘reputation’.
First, if you want to read around a subject, it’s useful to know what to search for. (If you Google career brand it will return 209 million results. Even when you include quote marks to narrow the search, it still returns over 76,000 hits!)
Second, ‘reputation’ is a more general term. Lots of people have a good reputation at work, but it’s not always clear exactly what their best skills are. Career brand is more directional – just as with corporate brands, a brand has a sharper focus and more personality, and indicates the nature of what you do best. Pepsi and Coke both have good reputations; but each has a distinctly different taste and brand with clustered associations.
Practically, your career brand – i.e. the unique skills that make you stand out – is the basis and direction of your good reputation. You want people to understand not only that you do a good job – but also to have a clear picture of your personality, enthusiasms and exactly what you excel at. Only then can they spot career opportunities that would be a perfect match, and recommend you to others.
Whether you call it your brand or reputation, our research continues to emphatically demonstrate that the more people who have a strong picture of what you enjoy and do best, the more likely it is that you’ll be approached with career opportunities you’ll be excited by. So:
Building your reputation and visibility still needs to be your #1 career priority – and you don’t have to call it your ‘brand’ if you don’t want to!
We’ve always used both ‘reputation’ and ‘career brand’ lightly; knowing that the latter makes some people feel like their fur is being rubbed backwards. There are perhaps 2 reasons for using ‘career brand’ instead of the solid and well-established word ‘reputation’.
First, if you want to read around a subject, it’s useful to know what to search for. (If you Google career brand it will return 209 million results. Even when you include quote marks to narrow the search, it still returns over 76,000 hits!)
Second, ‘reputation’ is a more general term. Lots of people have a good reputation at work, but it’s not always clear exactly what their best skills are. Career brand is more directional – just as with corporate brands, a brand has a sharper focus and more personality, and indicates the nature of what you do best. Pepsi and Coke both have good reputations; but each has a distinctly different taste and brand with clustered associations.
Practically, your career brand – i.e. the unique skills that make you stand out – is the basis and direction of your good reputation. You want people to understand not only that you do a good job – but also to have a clear picture of your personality, enthusiasms and exactly what you excel at. Only then can they spot career opportunities that would be a perfect match, and recommend you to others.
Whether you call it your brand or reputation, our research continues to emphatically demonstrate that the more people who have a strong picture of what you enjoy and do best, the more likely it is that you’ll be approached with career opportunities you’ll be excited by. So:
- Do you still know, and can you still articulate, three things you love doing and are excellent at?
- Do you clearly convey the benefits these strengths deliver for your manager and the organisation?
- Are you still sharing memorable stories that stand out in people’s memories as beacons for how you can contribute?
- Are you still collecting evidence and data that proves you are an achiever in current and past jobs, making it easy to justify appointing you over a candidate with more years of experience?
Building your reputation and visibility still needs to be your #1 career priority – and you don’t have to call it your ‘brand’ if you don’t want to!