Personal Brand Week 2.0 Your Name is Just the Start - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Brand Week 2.0 Your Name is Just the Start - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Are you attending Personal Brand Week 2.0? Throughout this week, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is five whole days of tips and activities dedicated to your personal brand. According to the website: “Each day during Personal Brand Week, PwC will provide insightful tools, recommendations and tips that will help you prepare for what’s next. Start shaping your professional brand and building your career today!” What’s on the agenda for the week? Day 1: Building your network Day 2: You are what you write Day 3: Your online image makeover Day 4: Prepare for career fairs and interviews Day 5: How to perfect your pitch Each day includes a worksheet and top tips for the selected topic. Below are some of my favorite tips from each day: Be authentic: Before you even think about your personal brand, you have to think about who you really are and what you really want. What have you accomplished so far? What are you passionate about? What are your goals? If you find it difficult to analyze yourself, ask friends or relatives to describe your best qualities and greatest achievements or take a self-assessment test online or through your college career center. Support others: Another great way to find meaning in your work is through the relationships you forge with colleagues, clients and others. Be passionate about helping and supporting other people. Share job leads, event invitations, networking contacts, advice and moral support. “Paying it forward” makes you feel good and it’s bound to come back to you in wonderful ways. DO make sure all networking relationships are mutually beneficial: While you may feel you have nothing to offer more experienced contacts, you never know what you might be able to do for them. Simply ask any networking contact, “Is there anything I can do to help you?” and see what happens. The best way to com- bat a discomfort in asking people for help is knowing that you’re always willing to return the favor. Google yourself: Google your own name and make sure the results reflect the image you want to project. If you don’t show up in search results or you don’t like what appears, create one or two professional social networking profiles and post bylined content in your school newspaper or a club or association website. Don’t be afraid to fail: Failures will happen to you during your career, and probably already have. Some employers won’t hire you. Some “dream” internships will be disappointing. Some bosses won’t promote you. Congratulations! Once you’ve got some certified failure experience, you’ll be better at knowing how to recover the next time it happens. Failing isn’t much fun. But real failure comes from never trying something in the first place. For more on what’s in store for Personal Brand Week 2.0, check out Dan Schawbel’s interview with Paula Loop at PwC here. Author: Heather R. Huhman is a career expert, experienced hiring manager, and founder president of Come Recommended, a content marketing consultancy for organizations with products or services that target job seekers and/or employers. She is also the author of  #ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), national entry-level careers columnist for Examiner.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.