Jeanette Walton knows through her own business ownership experience as well as through her cross-industry and cross-country clients, how essential career branding has become for career success.
Producing career branded strategies, content and collateral for a diversity of professionals for more than a decade, she’s observed an escalation in digital demands and expectations. She’s identified a worldwide market gap, in terms of applying career branding to enable professionals to actively and assuredly progress and evolve.
While there’s plenty of talk out there about the importance of personal branding, there’s been little focus on the more specific subset of career branding.
In response, Jeanette has made it her mission to ‘spread the word’ on why career branding matters to all professionals. Why it’s become a ‘must have’ rather than a ‘nice to have’ if you want to compete and excel professionally, across a range of contexts. In addition to her regularly advocating the benefits of career branding on social media and via face-to-face channels such as presentations, she’s developed the Career Branding MATTERS Framework that is used to help clients to define their own unique brand in line with their strengths, values, experiences, differentiators and objectives. More discussion on this in our interview below.
Jeanette Walton, Career Brand Consultant
Jeanette, what motivated you to become a career brand advocate?
It’s really been a dual motivator in terms of what’s influenced me. First, as someone who’s been involved in the career development industry for many years, I’ve seen how competitive it’s become both in individual markets and in a global context. As the professional world becomes smaller through the likes of LinkedIn, and as access to tertiary education continues to expand globally, the volume of cohorts and competitors is escalating. I recently saw a statistic that, in the USA, on average, there are 250 people applying for each job vacancy, with only 4–6 of them receiving an interview. It’s also been estimated that around 100 million new businesses are started each year globally. I think these figures give a pretty strong indication of how aggressive it’s getting out there in terms of being found and pursued, whether that’s as a job applicant, a business owner, a thought leader, a non-executive director, or an early- or mid-stage professional. And then, if we factor in the impact of AI on some of these professional contexts, such as those asserting themselves as industry experts online, it’s even more pronounced how essential it’s become to establish, speak, and exemplify a strong individualized career brand.
Second, I’ve recently been on my own professional journey, where the relevance and value of career branding has consistently been highlighted to me. After deciding 12–18 months ago that it was ‘now or never’ if I was going to push forward with my own business, rather than continuing to hide in the shadows and subcontract to others, I kickstarted a personal and professional expedition that helped me better understand and appreciate who I am, how I stand out, and why I need to be servicing others. It was also through this explorative process that I came up with a multifaceted concept to validate and activate others to undergo their own career branding expedition. I like to align this career development vision with the well-known ‘if you build it, they will come’ line from the Field of Dreams movie, which apparently stems from the Bible and Noah’s Ark. I think this can be applied to career branding, where we use a well-defined brand to confidently promote and interact, convincing ourselves, along with others, of our professional capital. I know it’s a practice that’s worked for me, with my professional reach and reputation continuing to expand. And why wouldn’t you want to convey the best version of yourself professionally?
Are there any direct or specific experiences in your own life and career that have influenced you?
The self-reflection journey I’ve undertaken has no doubt helped me better understand my own personal drivers and priorities, along with barriers and triggers. Although I just read a quote today about the internal value of focusing on our ‘glimmers’ rather than our triggers, so I think I’m going to start following that advice. If I think about my childhood, it makes sense to me why I hid in the shadows for so long professionally, why I wasn’t willing to step out and take chances in my own right. I grew up in a home where there was a lack of encouragement to aim high, along with a lot of criticism to discourage big thoughts and ambitions. So, it’s been a significant personal and professional redevelopment process for me to reach the stage I’m at now, where I’m ready and willing to publicly advocate my career branding mission and offerings. I’ve broken the family mold and started believing in and promoting my own specific capabilities.
There have also been some other positive experiences that influenced me to become a career brand consultant. This includes regular recognition as a young student that I had a flair for the written word—I also consistently won spelling bees in primary school, which is probably how I ended up as an editor. Always seen as a dedicated and efficient worker, when I started in the career development industry 12+ years ago, I realized how much I enjoyed delving and probing to gather and pinpoint critical information to enhance others’ professional prospects. I’ve regularly had clients comment that our consultation has been constructive for them in that they developed a deeper recognition of their own capabilities. In hindsight, I was unconsciously helping many of them to define their own specific career brand. I used to regularly apply air quotes when asking clients how they wanted to be ‘branded’ on LinkedIn.
Can you explain what career brand is and who it applies to?
The defining of your own unique career brand is how you clearly convey your core professional strengths, offerings, and values to others, what drives and inspires you. My Career Branding MATTERS Framework can assist with this. Career branding immediately highlights to target audiences your most relevant specializations and experiences, in line with your professional aspirations. It communicates your worth and value to those audiences through a well-defined career brand strategy that establishes trust and credibility. Keep in mind that around 80% of consumers now need to trust a brand before investing, with many doing their own online evaluation. From an internal perspective, a well-defined career brand will embolden you to speak loud and proud about yourself and will single you out from others you’re competing with. It's also likely to lead you down your optimal career path, where there’s higher job satisfaction.
I truly believe career branding applies to all professionals, from graduates starting out to executives with a well-established presence, and all those in between. I don’t think we can always comprehend or appreciate how many untapped opportunities are out there, irrespective of where we’re at in our careers. Global professional platforms like LinkedIn are only going to offer more. So, in addition to using it to stand out in high-volume, information-overloaded markets and contexts, why not have a clear, consistent, and constant career brand message across your content and collateral? This will help bring in and seize new pathways and opportunities. For example, since I formally defined and promoted myself as a career brand consultant over 12 months ago, I’ve featured on local and offshore podcasts, presented to various audiences, and partnered with local and overseas professionals on both networking and engagement initiatives.
What drives or inspires you to spread the word about career branding?
I truly get a buzz out of helping others grow and prosper professionally. When clients come back to let me know they’ve met or exceeded their career aspirations since we worked together, I feel vindicated that what I’m doing makes a difference. I also love it when I see or sense a higher level of self-confidence during and after our collaborative consultation process, where we’ve uncovered career highlights they had underplayed or hadn’t even considered, or when we correlate their skillset, knowledge, and experiences with what’s required for a next-level position.
I also don’t think some people realize how cutthroat it is these days, in terms of how many people you’re up against when applying for a role, promoting yourself and your business online, or trying to gain industry recognition, such as for project funding purposes. In just about any professional context, further validation and substantiation will be required before an investment decision is made. And that’s assuming you’ve been able to reel in target audiences.
It's the defining and applying of a strong, engaging, and convincing career brand that will propel you toward that next professional goal or career stage. It’ll not only empower you to more authentically and assuredly promote yourself and your brand, but it will help you onboard belief and conviction among those you’re most interested in gaining attention and action from. I often refer to the importance of the ‘slow-burn’ approach, where you use your career branding to continue to expand awareness, appreciation, and uptake of your professional offerings. I know in my home country of Australia, many prefer to be ‘courted’ before they respond and/or invest.
What are your short- and long-term goals within the career branding domain?
I think I’ve made it clear in this interview that one of my primary short-term goals is to further spread the word about the internal and external benefits of career branding for all professionals. Tying in with this, I am extending my service offerings internationally, so I’m helping clients across a range of markets and professions. This includes producing brand-tailored LinkedIn profiles (written in the recommended English language) and presenting to various audiences about career branding to enable people from diverse backgrounds to step up and compete globally.
In 2025, some of my other objectives include building additional partnerships and alliances both in Australia and beyond, where it’s a united effort to inform more people about the need for career branding. I’d also like to expand on the eBook that I produced at the end of last year, to produce a longer-version book on the how’s and why’s of career branding. This will help build energy and excitement around the professional as well as personal values of applying career branding.
Another longer-term goal is to develop and launch a training course where people can develop, implement, and continue to expand on their own career brand strategies and communications, to enrich their prospects. I’d love to see more people stretch beyond their professional status quo, including breaking out of any family or societal molds that are dampening their dreams.
What has been your greatest achievement so far, as a career brand consultant?
Externally, it’s helping some clients exceed their initial career expectations based on the career-branded content and collateral that we’ve produced. This includes a higher education client based in Sri Lanka, who wanted to permanently return to and work in Australia after completing her PhD in my home country, I had previously edited her thesis. While she knew she had the capabilities to transition into a higher education role in Australia, she was struggling to demonstrate this through her career documentation. We worked together to produce a resume and LinkedIn profile that highlighted how she had highly transferrable sector leadership skills and experiences based on what she’d been doing in Sri Lanka, while also flagging her continual connection to the Australian market since she’d completed her PhD. As a result of our collaborative rebranding efforts, she was inundated with job offers after she had moved back to Australia, including the offer to be part of a leadership panel. Within 12 months, she was offered a permanent tertiary educator role that would also enable her to expand on her postdoctoral research studies. Happily, this career trajectory happened much faster than she expected, based on the internal and external confidence we’d created through her career branding.
Internally, it’s watching the continual evolution of my career brand profile and assets since I asserted myself as a career brand consultant 12+ months ago. In addition to the LinkedIn profile and page that I continue to expand on to further promote and validate my career branding specialization, I’ve felt empowered to extend myself into new markets and avenues. This includes setting up a YouTube channel, co-establishing a LinkedIn Local networking group, and developing co-branding alliances with aligned professionals in both India and the USA.
Are there any personal values or philosophies that inspire your career branding mission?
A couple of personal values that I treasure and try to consistently live by are generosity and authenticity. I think we’re living in a time where these two values can only be advantageous to all of us. My generosity is underpinned by my desire to stay kind and objective in all situations, which often leads me to freely share my expertise with others and to accept that others’ life experiences can influence how they think and behave. The latter has been a big learning curve for me, as someone with my own ‘criticism triggers’ based on my childhood experiences. My aim is to be proactive and supportive when clients come to me in a stressed, confused, and even demoralized headspace. In terms of authenticity, humans need human connections. Staying true and transparent in your career branding will therefore help ensure you cut through and resonate with those you’re more likely to want to work with or engage with.
As I previously mentioned, I also feel inspired by the ‘if you build it, they will come’ philosophy, even if it has been Hollywood-ified. It conveys the importance of establishing and exemplifying our own specific career brand to draw in and convince our target audiences that we have what they’re seeking. It’s such an inspirational and motivational mantra to live by. And then there’s The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday, which I ritually read a page from each morning to help keep me grounded and mindful.
What would you define as the optimal career brand for an individual?
The optimal career brand is one where the individual feels empowered and energized. It informs and inspires them to speak and exemplify who they are, what they offer, what they stand for, and how they can specifically help others. Ideally, it consists of a concise, immediate career-branded headline or tagline that they can continue to build and expand on. In my business, I use my self-developed Career Branding MATTERS Framework to take clients on a deep dive discovery tour to pinpoint and apply their optimal career brand based on their individualized past and future, internal and external drivers, and priorities. In this framework, M = main capabilities, A = ambitions and desires, T = tingles and ethics, T = top-of-mind talents, E = embracing the context, R = relatable and realistic, and S = still learning and adapting. It’s my primary objective to co-develop a career brand that strengthens their professional resolution.
What kind of clients do you target in your business?
In line with my belief that career branding applies to all types of professionals, my business is here to assist all kinds of clients across a range of circumstances. Whether that’s helping a professional who feels stagnant or ‘too comfortable’ think bigger and broader in terms of future career moves, helping someone who’s been out of work for a while and is struggling to get an interview, let alone paid employment, or helping a high-achieving business owner or senior executive pursue soul-enriching career opportunities such as being part of a philanthropic board. No matter the reason for reaching out to me, I want my clients to feel positive and proactive about us undertaking a collaborative evaluation of their career history and ambitions to develop career branding that enables change and advancement opportunities.
What products or services do you offer as a career brand consultant?
I offer a suite of career-branded products based on specific needs and circumstances. These include both long-version and short-version resumes (job application and networking resumes), LinkedIn profiles and company pages, cover letters and eNotes (including key selection criteria cover letters), professional biographies (for individuals as well as various staff members), and client case studies (to be used to promote and validate business offerings). In most of these cases, I conduct a comprehensive one-on-one consultation to draw out and determine the most relevant career-branded information to highlight in their rebranded products or collateral.
I also offer and highly recommend my foundational career branding strategy sessions, where my Career Branding MATTERS Framework is used to define a strong, insightful, and engaging career brand for them to use across promotional content and communications. This is a beneficial process to undergo before producing any of the above products so that clear and consistent career branding can be applied throughout. Something else I also offer is group presentations on the reasons for and benefits of career branding, including for the world-leading networking and marketing powerhouse that is LinkedIn.
What sets you apart from others in your industry?
As a long-term professional in the career development industry, I’ve worked with and continue to work with some wonderful consultants, coaches, and content creators. However, as the industry has become more competitive, particularly with the high volume of resume writers now available, quality and service standards have sometimes slipped. I’m not alone here, but I choose to set myself apart from some cohorts by offering a more personalized partnership approach. This includes a one-on-one consultation, the provision of tips and resources throughout the process, and a guarantee that I will remain available post-project to respond to career branding and career advancement queries.
It’s also my strong focus on career branding that differentiates me from others in my industry. I purposefully prioritize and passionately promote the need to apply career branding across all career development contexts. I also feel driven to continue expanding within this domain to provide my clients with products and services that help them remain competitive as well as contemporary. Additionally, I aim to further fuel their professional goals and ambitions, including some they may not have previously considered.
I should also highlight that I have both a diploma and a degree qualification in professional writing and editing, as well as a long-term side hustle as an editor for several major Australian universities. I believe this is advantageous to my commitment to keeping all content concise, relevant, and immediate. I’m also exposed to a range of global contemporary topics based on the literature I review, helping me maintain a broader perspective on diverse client markets.
What are the main criteria if someone wants to work with you?
This would be to come along with a willingness and openness to go on a collaborative investigative journey with me, preparing to be probed and challenged in terms of how they perceive and promote themselves professionally. It’s also going to be a more efficient and impactful experience if they have at least some idea of where they want to progress professionally. My career branding strategy process is likely to uncover career options they hadn’t considered, but such insights will be easier to uncover if we have some sense of future direction.
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