Personal branding - Part2

Building a brand

Although you can define what your brand is, the interesting aspect is that your brand evolves with your career. 
Self-reflection can bring you objectivity, which will make clearer and more consistent your decisions.

Why?

- Be responsible for it
Whether you want it or not, your "brand" goes with your reputation. If you don't want someone else to do it at your place, you would better anticipate

- Integrity 
You can align your image with who you really are and reveal you true-color

- Be unique
Crafting your brand makes you realise where you stand and what you can leverage off. You'll be objective with your strengths and weaknesses. Self-knowledge goes a long way with differentiating you from the crowd

- Be objective
Having a clearer view of your goals will help you keep focused, resilient and aware of where to put your efforts

- Be collected
Integrating all the multiple facets of your personality into one single core, will enhance your communication and identification to others. In the meantime, avoid the rise of red flags pointing misleading messages

- Protect your down side
You can have a better control of the content published about you. In our digital world this has turned to be vital. You will be fortified behind a unified and strong reflection of yourself.
That will also help you learn how and what to express yourself on; avoiding the pitfalls.

- Be strategic
You will dissociate clearly what goes along with your personal brand and could be beneficial to your career, with what could finally cause collateral damages.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Author - Kevin Simonnet

Personal branding - Part1

Your image, let it work for you!

If there is one efficient, effective, long lasting, influential, valuable and core asset for your career, your image is it. You mold it with personal branding.

This series of articles is to clue you in to what personal branding is and to reveal you the secrets and relieve assumptions you may have about it.

Distinguish the "image" and the "brand"

1- Brand

Personal branding marks you as a brand: "name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service" - Wikipedia

Applied to an individual, in other terms: the entire package, outside and inside, that makes YOU unique and distinguishable from the others.

2- Image
This is the perception of you that others have. The perception of your brand. All the emotions instigate, the consequences of your actions, the subsequence of your behaviour etc in other words: your reflect in the eyes of others.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Author - Kevin Simonnet

The hidden market - Part2

Why is it better to keep it hidden?
1- Natural selection. Avoid the flood of unqualified candidates that comes with high unemployment. There are more than five job seekers per opening, according to the Labor Department's in the US.

2- Networks trust: Companies rely on their employee to provide referral of the people they trust.

3- Corporate culture. A company is more than just professionals with specific skill-sets: it is above all a team of like-minded people who collaborate at pursuing the same goal. The fit with a new comer is more likely to happen if it comes internal.

4- Building a Talent pool. Companies now understand why having a strong network can improve their business. They want to to integrate and grow deep roots in their  industry. That will not only provide them new hires but a whole networks of opportunities arisen by a live community.
"When employers do advertise, they are much more selective in where they post by utilizing smaller, free sites that are unique to a skill set or a specific market" according to Tig Gilliam, CEO of Adecco Group North America

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Author - Kevin Simonnet

The hidden market - Part1

Definition
Every opportunity that is not advertise publicly (job boards, company’s employment website, recruitment agencies etc).
The hidden job market is an unfamiliar and "dark" concept. 

Breaking the assumptions
1- "The common way for hiring is through advertising": One would think obvious for a company to just advertise and wait for responses in a dominant attitude. Hence, the proportion of hires made aside would just be casual.
But, consider it simply, just as you would do with your own relationships: you don't advertise to find friends and rarely meet new people through public events. Most of the time it comes from an introduction. 
Reality is that companies sometimes even bypass the big online job boards and placement agencies to fill job openings directly.

2- "Hiring starts with an formal process": The classical hiring process (sourcing, selection, interview) is activated only after a referral plan.
In deed, why to go through the time-consuming and expensive process of posting an ad and sorting through thousands of applicants when you have an alternative at hand?
As well, 24% of the openings remains through opportunistic encounters.

3- "Referral is a national secret": You may think that networking is restricted to a handful of individuals with the right insider connections who jealously guard the information about such opportunities.

Even if this approach is a long-term process that requires:
- extraordinary efforts, 
- strategy and planning, 
- market intelligence,
- innovative skills,
- self-drive,
- resilience
and so forth
this is the best career investment you could do. It will not only provide a dream job but leads to new challenges, business resources, professional support and advice for the future.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Author - Kevin Simonnet

Networking strategy - Part14

Networking for what?

The essence of networking is to:
- articulate your networks
- by interacting with your connections, generate opportunities
- to find how you can be of service.

The principle of reciprocity.

If you want to receive from people (advise, introduction, reference etc), you first have to be willing to give. 
Others are just like you: looking for a solution at their concerns or liaising only with the people that are interesting. It has to be mutually beneficial.

Learn to be a good listener

They are extending their networks beyond their circles, because they would like to gather something that their immediate peers can not give. It's your responsibility to find out what.

Categorise your networks

1st connections:

Those people you can easily call and ask for advise, coffee, introduction, information. Take the time to list them: screen your phone directory, Facebook, not only LinkedIn.

What is important is looking at the ones that can give you a hand and maybe discover a new resource.

2nd connections:

Some people give access to the list of their contact. Have a look at whom they know and maybe ask them to introduce you. You will also learn:

- the association/group they are member of

- how influential they are

Their roles

Think about the manner they can help you as:

- promoter

- role model

- hub

- partner

- informer

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Author - Kevin Simonnet

Pursue your goal - Part4

Anticipate
The best way to land your dreamed one is by figuring out the next steps and what it will take. The more you can foresee concretely what means are required and be prepared, the easier it will be.

It takes much more effort and time to extinguish a fire (which has already caused damaged), than taking actions to prevent it.

Protect your downside
Just like no one is perfect, you will make mistakes, there will also be imponderables on your way.
Working out in advance all the scenarios that could go wrong and making sure you have all those eventualities covered, will give you a hand at managing the risks.

Be prepared to reconsider
As you explore, you will discover innovative ways or ideas; but also, hit a snag! Take it as a chance for creativity: "if you lack the means, then find ideas" and sometimes, don't hesitate: take that escape hatch!

Be prepared to loose
As you pursue your own vision, take heart if it involves overcoming hurdles and containing critics.

Resist the temptation

By exploring, you'll get excited by what you discover and quickly find yourself willing to do a lot of different things.. !  but at the end, doing nothing at all.

That's why you have got to follow a firm guideline, stick to a strict planning and always keep your feet on the ground.

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Author - Kevin Simonnet

Pursue your goal - Part3

Set your shinning star

Just like a sailor referrers to the pole star, you first have to determine a goal: a concrete, clear result to achieve.

This will be your reference: everytime you feel like you're loosing track, come back to it.

Establish a strategy
There you go. You know what you are aiming for. You now have to stake out the path with milestones: they are those intermediate objectives that will help you stay focused and measure, as you go, your achievement.

Each step must be a clear objective: a piece of achievement in a limited time. Breaking down your goal into smaller chunks, will make you step back to have a full sight on the big picture.

You will then be able to consider diverse tactics to reach out at the same goal; and sometimes short cuts! That will help you imagine different possibilities and open the door on change on the way.

The main point is to have a pragmatic vision of what you need to do and the concrete actions that are to take.

So, you will be less likely to feel overwhelmed.

Methodology
What I do:

1. to keep my goal(s) in mind:

listing those long term goals on a label on my mirror.

    2.  organise my work

- listing the intermediate objectives at the beginning of the week
- prioritise them in regards to my final goal
- everyday I take only 3 TASKS that I want to be achieved by the end of the day. You'll be surprised as hard it is to actually do it!

Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Author - Kevin Simonnet