On Tuesday, I gave you a tool box of questions to ask yourself to try to hone in on your inner-self as well as develop a strategy by assessing your target audience. Today, I want to share with you my answers to these questions so that you can see an example of what it would look like - maybe get your own thought processes kicked off.

Who am I and why?

  • I am a leader because I will talk when no one else will.
  • I am student because I try to learn something from everything I do.
  • I am a geek because I sometimes enjoy technology more than other “normal” things.
  • I am a good person because I always strive to do what is right.
  • I am an honest person because my first instinct is to tell the truth and do so.
  • I am a protector because I would give my life for those that I love.

What are my core values?
Truth, honesty, reliability, leadership, integrity, achievement, excellence, perseverance, teamwork, courage, loyalty.

What am I passionate about?
Technology, service, podcasting, the outdoors, helping others, listening, camping, baseball, friends, achievement.

What am I good at?
Communication, technical skills, problem solving, listening, project management, leadership, detail orientation, education.

How would you describe your personal brand now? What do you want it to be?
James Connors is a dynamic problem solver with an eye for technology and its positive value. He strives to learn constantly from both resources and personal experience.

What dreams and goals do you have?
Professional: I want to grow into a powerful decision maker within a global corporation or organization, such as a CIO.

Personal: I want to be a loyal friend, a good man, a beloved husband, a positive role-model, and a proud father

What does it mean to you to “live well?”
Living well means having a job that supplies for immediate and future needs and personal wants. Having a lifestyle balanced between work and play. Being able to enjoy time with friends and family - all while being about to walk into work with a smile because I enjoy my job.

What is your personal mission statement?
I will continue to grow and learn in order to make myself a better asset, friend, family member, and man through consistent effort, confronting challenges, and always pushing myself to do better.

Looking, now, to the external factors of your personal brand: the people you want to reach. Again, I will try to address as best I can the basics of audience assessment.

What is their background?
The recruiters are people, educated employees. They are probably used to weeding out those that don’t fit - they look for keywords and congruent experiences. They are paid to find good people to hire. They might work with these people in the future.

What is their motivation?
They are paid to find good people, the people they find may be the future leadership of their company, they are evaluated by peers and leaders for their performance, they want to find the best. They want to understand who you are beyond your resume and they don’t want to work too hard to figure that out.

What are they looking for?
They are looking for someone that is reliable, intelligent, and carries congruent values as their company. They want to find people that fit the job position, that will stay with the company for the foreseeable future, who will reflect well on themselves.

How much effort will they spend looking?
They don’t want to search hard. The easier it is to find that person, the better since it means more time to do other projects. They will make sure that the information they find is actually about you and not another by the same name but they aren’t going to do a full background check.

What information do they value?
They want to know the stuff that isn’t on the resume. Who are you as a person? Do you work well in a team? Do you have other interests beyond work? How do you treat others? How do you treat strangers? Do you know how to hold yourself or market yourself?

Where are they located?
We are in a global society and they can be anywhere. Their culture may hold value on certain characteristics different from my own. They will most likely look for those that are close to the job but may look farther afield for the right candidate. Recruiters may be local to you but placing jobs on the other side of the country/globe.

With whom are you competing for their attention?
Everyone. At least, everyone that is in the same field as I am. They can be from India, Europe, Mexico, or right down the road. They will be just as smart, just as witty, just as intelligent.

How will you attract these people to your message?
I will use all means necessary to get my name out. Placing well in search engines will be key. Claiming my name on every social network they can search will be key. Making sure that people search engines have the right info will be key.

These are works in process and develop over time. So go out and ask yourself these questions - challenge yourself to give honest and complete answers. You’ll learn more than enough, I promise. Once you’ve gone through these exercises, it’s time to put together a full strategy for establishing your personal brand. In the next installment, we’re going to walk through how to get yourself up to the top, make yourself seen, and deliver the message you want to have delivered.

TALKBACK
What sorts of feedback do you have about my answers? Do you see areas that I can improve? Do you want to share your answers, realizations, aha! Moments? Leave a comment, drop an email to collegetechcentral@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at the listener hotline: 206.203.1877.

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Previously « Student Survival Guide In a Web 2.0 World: Personal Branding Part 1 - Getting Started | Student Survival Guide In a Web 2.0 World: Personal Branding Part 3 – Taking Actions »



This entry was posted on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 at 8:44 am and is filed under student survival guide. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.