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Your Resume-The Brand YOU Brochure

March 27, 2006 by Liz 7 Comments

Forget the Rules

The rules are for everyone. Personal brand is about showing you are the only one.Somewhere along the line, you probably learned rules about writing resumes. What I’m about to tell you is going to break them. I like breaking rules, especially when that works in our favor. I don’t usually do it when it doesn’t.

You don’t need a resume anyway. You need something that works like one, but is more than that.

Get Rid of the List

It’s easy to think of a resume as a list – three suits, two blue, one gray, of what you’ve done and to write it off as a painful requirement of job acquisition. That’s a major missed opportunity. With a few tweaks, your resume can be a dynamic tool in your personal branding strategy.

Throw away the list as concept.

Think about Brand YOU and promotional tools.

You’re making a personal branding brochure. Just let other people think it’s a resume. They’ve been confused before.

A Personal Branding Brochure

Imagine that you’re a product — a Ferrari. Your resume is your specification sheet. Add some marketing copy, and you’re well on your way to a promotional brochure for that Ferrari. On my own resume I include the usual career experience with the chronological job history, but that is page 2.

On page 1, I include branding information built around my branding big idea – that I am a leader and a strategist with a proven track record and competencies in several key areas of publishing. I want the person reading my resume to read this first, to know what I can do before where I did it. The former is more important than the latter. As you read through, you might notice how I took the opportunity to further my brand identity by targeting first statement under each core competency.

Turn a resume into a personal branding brochure.

Use It as a Promotional Tool

Change the way you look at your resume, and you soon find a world of uses for it. Use it as you do your business card. Just this week I sent mine to a business friend with a note saying, ““Let me know if my voice might help you in the meetings with the publishers you told me about.” Design it into your blog’s About Page to let your readers know more about you, your brand, and your business.

I use my “branding brochure” a lot when I’m networking.

It’s one more way to let people know you’re not just another suit. You’re uniquely valuable.
Without you, the world would be missing something–the one and only Brand YOU.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Building a Personal Brand – YOU
Brand YOU – €œCapitalize on Your Strengths
Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool
Brand YOU – What’s the BIG IDEA?

Filed Under: Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Personal Branding, SS - Brand YOU, Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: blog_promotion, personal_branding, personal_branding_brochure, promotion, resume_planning, self-awareness, self-promotion, strengths_and_weaknesses

Personal Branding: Strengths Assessment Tool

March 21, 2006 by Liz Leave a Comment

Strength and Weakness Assessment

Personal Branding logo

Here’s a tool to help you assess what you have to work with.

Capitalizing on My Strengths

  • What am I asked to teach others?
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  • What responsibilities are delegated to me?
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  • What kinds of meetings and tasks am I asked to lead?
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  • What special skills do I have that others rely on?
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  • What parts of my job would be hardest to fill?
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  • What traits make me a valuable member of the team?
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  • What are the things that only I can do?
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How does each strength meet a need in the marketplace?

Strength _________________________________________________________

Means that ________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

Means that ________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

Means that ________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

Means that ________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

Means that ________________________________________________________

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Strength _________________________________________________________

Means that ________________________________________________________

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Making My Weaknesses Irrelevant

  • What weaknesses do I have that correspond to my strengths?
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  • Who might I talk to that has a strength where I have a weakness?
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  • When might I do the following?
  • Volunteer for jobs that play to my strengths.

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    Find opportunities to learn about shoring up my weaknesses.

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    Find people to work with who have strengths that balance my weaknesses.

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    Remind myself to check tasks for what strengths and weaknesses I’ll be using.

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My Personal Brand

With what I already know about capitalizing on my strengths and weaknesses, I can say this about my personal brand.

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This is one kind of assessment tool you might use to get ideas from your head onto the page where you can look at them to make decisions about what to keep and what goes away.

Like any great city builder, you want your personal brand set on a foundation of concrete, not on sand. You can’t promote yourself, your brand, or your business, until you know who you are. If you take the time to think through these questions you’ll be farther than most folks are.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Related articles
Building a Personal Brand–YOU
Brand YOU–Capitalize on Your Strengths
Brand YOU–Making Your Weaknesses Irrelevant

Filed Under: Checklists, Marketing /Sales / Social Media, Personal Branding, Productivity, SS - Brand YOU, Successful Blog Tagged With: blog_promotion, business, personal_branding, promotion, resume_planning, self-awareness, self-promotion, strengths_and_weaknesses

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