Written by Jeanette Walton, Career Brand Consultant
Jeanette is spreading the word about the essentiality of career branding for all professionals. As a Career Brand Consultant, she has pioneered a career branding framework, amongst other educational resources, to amplify the use of career branding to cut through and stand out.
Crafting a strong, insightful career brand is more than just a buzzword; it’s a strategic tool that sets you apart in a competitive job market. By clearly defining your unique strengths, values, and expertise, you create a powerful narrative that attracts the right opportunities and professional connections. In this article, we explore how a well-defined career brand can elevate your reputation, enhance your credibility, and open doors to career growth.
What’s in a career
Whether we like it or not, our careers take up a significant portion of our lives. A ‘career’ has been defined as a longer-term occupation or series of jobs pursued across a person’s working life, often involving growth, evolution, and advancement. It is a major part of our human experience, providing financial stability, enhancing psychological well-being, including a sense of purpose, and positively contributing to both the individual’s and broader society’s enrichment.
What’s in a career brand
As a subset of broader personal branding, career branding is how you define and convey your core professional strengths and offerings to target audiences, underpinned by your core values and drivers. It immediately highlights career specialisations and differentiators, effectively communicating your value and cultivating your reputation among those target audiences.
As highlighted by the award-winning branding specialist David Brier: "If you don’t give the market the story to talk about, they’ll define your brand’s story for you." And this assumption no longer applies to businesses only it also applies to individual professionals across just about any industry or market. Now that so much of our professional engagement is online, and there’s so much digital noise and global competition out there, it’s more important than ever to provide clear, consistent, and constant career branding. Whether that’s using a LinkedIn profile to attract target audiences, including customers, maintaining a professional biography for business development, or regularly posting on social media to assert yourself as an expert or thought leader, these statistics validate the essentiality of well-defined career branding for all of us:
In 2024, Forbes reported that 84% of consumers need to trust a brand to consider investing.
In 2023, LinkedIn reported that 70% of hiring managers prioritise a strong personal brand over a strong resume.
Why all professionals need a career brand
“Your personal [career] brand is what people say about you after you leave the room.” (Jeff Bezos, Founder & Chairman of Amazon)
In addition to amplifying the ability to achieve your career ambitions, there are other internal and external professional benefits from defining and applying, speaking, and exemplifying your own unique career brand and story.
In my own case, since first branding myself as a ‘career brand consultant’ about 18 months ago, I have continued to extend myself professionally (and personally). In line with my favourite ‘if you build it, they will come’ mantra, it’s given me an authentic voice and a clearer purpose that I have used to reach out, speak up and advocate myself and my brand in the following ways:
Appearing on local and international podcasts
Presenting to academic, STEM, and NFP audiences
Featuring in ‘preferred supplier’ listings in Australia
Launching a networking group with a coaching partner
Growing online followers across multiple channels
Producing an eBook, YouTube channel and newsletter
Some of the core professional benefits of identifying and activating your own specific career brand are:
Deeper understanding of strengths and offerings
You’ll have an in-depth appreciation of your professional skills and capabilities in terms of what you can specifically offer others and why you are likely to stand out from others. Knowing and aligning with your career strengths and offerings will help to ensure that your professional life is strategic and fulfilling.
The University of Utah summarised the importance of knowing your career brand strengths in that it “will help you identify opportunities that would be a good fit for you.” Many professional profiling tools and methodologies are primarily based on individual strengths because of the positive impact of determining and prioritising these in a career.
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” (Confucius)
Preparedness for planned and unplanned opportunities
You’ll be adequately prepared for career opportunities you’re pursuing, such as stepping up to a leadership role, while also opening yourself up to unexpected opportunities. A strong foundational career brand that includes collateral such as a resume, biography, and LinkedIn profile means you’ll be able to quickly and assuredly respond to queries and requests (often influenced by your corresponding brand promotions).
Up-to-date, fine-tuned career branding will also enable you to navigate unplanned career bumps and challenges, such as redundancies and changes in market demand. This was substantiated by USA’s JMC Legal Recruitment: “Having an updated CV ready to go provides peace of mind. It minimises the stress of job hunting by eliminating the need to scramble to update outdated information during already challenging times”.
“If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door." (Milton Berle)
Build interest and excitement around brand
The brand confidence and excitement that you cultivate and convey will also filter out to others as someone who advocates and reflects their own specific branding. I know in my own business, my ever-evolving desire to share insights on career branding is underpinned by creativity, curiosity and self-belief. I truly believe career branding is advantageous for all types of professionals in our digitally dominated world, and I continue to attract interest and alignment.
The UK’s Birmingham City University verified the importance of purpose and individualisation, as well as consistency, across brand content and messaging: “Be sure to create a clear brand identity built on strong brand purpose and personality to ensure you have consistency in the design and tone of voice of the brand across all the brand touchpoints.”
“Define what your brand stands for, its core values and tone of voice, and then communicate consistently in those terms.” (Simon Mainwaring)
Enable a well-considered branding strategy
You’ll be able to establish a career branding strategy that enables you to achieve professional ambitions based on a staged, well-considered approach. For example, if you’re striving to gain industry recognition as a thought leader, a future-focused organic LinkedIn profile that you continue to build based on career accolades and movements will add depth and energise your online and offline engagement. My own LinkedIn profile is a good example of this, as I continue to add additional roles, offerings, and activities as my career and business continue to progress.
The use of foundational career branding to develop and deploy marketing and engagement strategies in line with your professional aspirations will help you to assure clarity, continuity, and common sense. Forbes noted that a brand strategy “makes your brand appear more cohesive and consistent across platforms you are not leading your customers or clients astray.”
“Branding is the process of connecting good strategy with good creativity." (Marty Neumeier)
Establish a thought leadership reputation
You will feel informed and energised to deliver brand-aligned insights that convey you as an industry specialist, thought leader and/or someone who’s ‘paving the way’. A thought leader is someone that continually evaluates established principles and practices in their industry or profession to conceptualise alternative options and pathways to better address needs.
The USA’s NYT Licensing defined ‘thought leadership’ as “addressing your audience's pain points, providing ongoing education and adding value, while building credibility within your niche.” By interweaving evidence-based knowledge, first-hand experiences, and career story vulnerability and authenticity when promoting your offerings, you will establish credibility and conviction among target audiences.
“A thought leader's goal is never to show off, to confuse with industry jargon or to leave anyone in the dust.” (John Rampton)
Fuel ongoing brand expansion activities
You will have career brand foundations or pillars that inform and encourage you to continue to build on and extend yourself professionally, such as via brand engagement activities. In my own business in the past 18+ months, this has included expansion onto additional online platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, participating in and co-hosting cross-purpose networking groups, and building alliances with other industry specialists such as a personal branding thought leader in India.
The more you boldly speak and exemplify your well-defined career brand, the more you will evoke professional creativity and invigoration. You’ll actively seek out and attract opportunities that continue to expand your brand reach and engagement. In line with this, Mailchimp has defined ‘brand expansion’ as “growing a company's presence by entering new markets or regions leveraging the existing brand's equity and reputation to reach new customer segments or geographical areas.”
“A brand is a living entity, and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively overtime, the product of a thousand small gestures.” (Michael Eisner)
Cut through online noise and traffic
Strong, concise career branding that immediately validates and differentiates you, including via keyword optimisation, is going to help you cut through the online noise. If we factor in that most consumers are exposed to up to 10,000 online ads per day and that we are now competing with AI in most contexts, including online searches, it’s more important than ever to define and apply a unique, clear, consistent, and constant career brand.
Studio Space in the USA specified that “[brand] cut through is about distinctiveness.” On average, you have 5-7 seconds to convince online audiences to read on (including recruiters), so use your well-defined career brand to differentiate yourself from the online marketing mass. I also often refer to the benefits of the ‘slow-burn approach’ in terms of applying a career branding strategy that gradually builds interest and uptake (e.g., LinkedIn followers).
“A brand’s strength is built upon its determination to promote its own distinctive values and mission.” (Jean-Noel Kapferer)
Attract the right target audiences
A clearly defined career brand will assist you in identifying and profiling target audiences in alignment with your offerings and aspirations. It will enable you to attract and resonate with the most relevant audiences based on the identification of their specific needs and expectations, as well as validation of ways you can assist them. It will also optimise your brand marketing strategy in that you’ll avoid being ‘information swamped’ (i.e., most beneficial online engagement) so that you can deepen your understanding of your target audiences.
In line with this, USA’s Qualtrics specified that “an ideal customer profile can help your business focus on only the kinds of leads and accounts that are likely to prove fruitful to be able to tailor efforts to specific demographics and idiosyncrasies.” The more that you confidently speak, exemplify, and evolve your foundational career branding, the more likely you are to establish trust and credibility among the right target audiences.
“Don’t just create content to get credit for being clever – create content that will be helpful, insightful, or interesting for your target audience.” (David Ogilvy)
In summary, it's worth putting in the effort to pinpoint your core career brand elements and showcase these across your digital profile and other brand collateral. A clear, consistent, and constant career brand will make you stand out and deliver on your professional goals and aspirations. It's also likely to provide unexpected, magical, and rewarding career opportunities.
Read more from Jeanette Walton
Jeanette Walton, Career Brand Consultant
Jeanette is a Career Brand Consultant who helps professionals worldwide to enhance their career prospects. To address a gap in the market, she designed a career branding framework that helps professionals design and apply their own unique career brand. She also avidly writes articles, newsletters and eBooks, features on podcasts, partners with industry alliances, and delivers educational presentations on the benefits of career branding. In her spare time, Jeanette fosters dogs, visits an aged care resident, and co-facilitates a LinkedIn Local networking group.
