The Working World

Create a Personal Branding Statement

Whether you get to a hiring manager by referral, through a recruiter or a job board, today’s candidate needs to make a distinctive impression quickly. The traditional resume form does a poor job of quickly, clearly, and succinctly telling the reader why they should spend more time on this resume.

Since the average time spent reviewing a resume is 15 seconds or less, a job seeker needs to quickly convince the reader to stick around. A well crafted personal branding statement tells the hiring manager three extremely important things in a well crafted, concise single line. The following questions and explanations will help you craft the right statement for you:

What does the candidate want?

In a Fishing resume the candidate has to give a generic title, but can make it specific for a response resume. It should be a single title, rather than a range, or something so broad as just Executive, or manager. Listing an industry specialization can help make it more specific.

What single problem can the candidate solve better than anyone else?

Many candidates struggle answering this. Some will start listing everything they can do, not understanding that it’s primarily one problem that they will be hired to solve (don’t worry, plenty of problems solving will happen on a day to day basis, but hiring decisions are usually made to solve major problems). Make this problem solving statement very specific (stay away from broad terms like “strategy”, “leadership” and “people skills”) to differentiate yourself from the thousands of others applying for the same position.

It also can be challenging to making a Personal Branding Statement this into a very succinct statement – a single line incorporating the position and the problem solving skill. Many candidates, especially technology, engineering, and finance people have a difficult time making this short and to the point, as their minds work in a wonderfully detailed way – great for their jobs, not so great for a resume. Left brainers – you’ll have to work to make this specific, yet succinct.

How can the candidate deliver value?

Frame your specific problem solving skill around the business results you achieve…rather than the technical issues you deal with to deliver results. By focusing on the results over the method, you focus the reader on the value you’ve delivered to the organization.

To see some examples of Personal Branding Statements and read the rest of this article, go to reCareered: How a Personal Branding Statement Can Help Job Seekers.

Tags: job-hunting, jobs, personal branding