3a. Lecture 6 - Ira Koretsky: Powerful Personal Branding (10/26)

What We Did: Today was the second session taught by chief storyteller, Ira Koretsky. In this session, we moved away from the topic of TED talks and more discussed powerful personal branding. Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. While previous self help management techniques were about self-improvement, the personal branding concept suggests instead that success comes from self-packaging. The point of building a personal brand is to differentiate yourself from the competition.

Koretsky gave very good advice to us as students for how to reach out to people in our profession. He said LinkedIn is the best way to network, and the fact that we are students can be beneficial. People are more willing to help out people who are new to the work force, so Koretsky says to use "I am a student" as liberally as we can. When asking to connect with someone, don't just use the generic invitation, make it personal. It is also important to make Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts as private as possible. Employers will not hesitate to delve deep into your private life to try and find things to use against you. I also learned to always follow up when applying for a job - people will always remember how you make them feel. It's important to always follow up when applying for a job. The employer might not need your help at that one time, but when going back through people who applied later on, they will almost always choose the person who followed up on their application than the person who didn't and showed not a lot of interest. You can even send a hand written letter thanking the employer for spending the time to meet with you in person. It may pay off in the end!


Key Takeaways and Future Applications: As I prepare to apply for internships and jobs in the future, I know I need to work on branding myself and differentiating myself from the competition. I took the time to look up how to develop my own personal brand, and found the Forbes List, "7 Things You Can Do To Build An Awesome Personal Brand":
1. Start thinking of yourself as a brand - think about what you want people to associate with your name
2. Audit your online presence - Google yourself and search through at least 5 pages of results for things on the internet that you might not know about. Know what is out there before employers do
3. Secure a personal website - having a personal website for yourself is one of the best ways to rank for your name on the search engines; doesn't need to be fancy
4. Find ways to produce value - find ways to add value to your audience by creating or curating content that's in line with your brand
5. Be purposeful in what you share - every tweet, status, and picture you share contributes to your personal brand
6. Associate with other strong brands - your personal brand is strengthened or weakened by your connection to other brands. Find and leverage strong brands which can elevate your own personal brand. Start with the three C's: company, college, colleagues
7. Reinvent - A strong personal brand is dependent on a strong narrative

Although I made my LinkedIn page over a year ago, I am not very active on it. After Ira Koretsky's talk, I logged onto my LinkedIn profile to 39 requests to connect and 3 messages, one of them with a job offer. So clearly, I need to be checking my LinkedIn profile a lot more.