Thursday's "Brand You World" teleconference was interestig to tune into, which I did for the "Resume Branding" segment with Deb Dib, Bernadette Martin and Megan Fitzgerald providing their insights and experience in the (now shadowy) field of personal branding, which can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I suppose we could all agree, however, on the basic premise that we are talking about 'personal' as equivalent to individually differentiated from the crowd (of competitors) and 'branded' as essentially our creative character at work--as what else could it be if titles, responsibilities, achievements and status are basically undistinguishable?
The terms value and impact and infused with passion and what you can do and who you are were bandied about in the circling around a descriptive essence of "personal branding," especially by Dib, who warns against common resume mistakes of becoming a generic document, nothing more than a jobs list [resume as job obituary] or merely another bland and faceless sales piece. Another word I found awkwardly tossed into the mix was "courage," especially when it was defined in terms of "having the courage to trim your resume to one page." Please forgive me, but since in 1975! I was the one in New York City who started selling high-priced, Fifth Avenue-style 1-page resumes rather than 3+ page "executive resumes" I might consider this "courage" bit a dollar short and a day late. It was radical, yes, 32 years ago.
I'll tell you what I think courage would look like in today's job market/job strategy: using a powerful bioblog to show your passion, your potential, your value, your impact. Here's a chance to do a performance breakout on a mini-scale, and to set yourself apart from the crowd: what you can do. This will show not only your creative character at work, but will voice your "brand statement" loudly, clearly and with a sense of curiosity.
One word the panel failed (not accidentally) to mention was bait, that unsophisticated kernel of truth about all resumes no matter how fancy or unfrilled. Those certified-this and certified-that folks who sell their consulting services don't want to admit to it, but that's what they are selling: bait . . . good, better, or best . . . it's still the wiggle of the worm that gets the attention of the fish.
Ms. Martin rubbed up against it with her comment that the components of a good bio are "used to set the stage" (which I construe as meaning a stage upon which your creative character can speak your part and make your case); and Ms. Fitzgerald laid it out right on the table: all you are doing is trying to prequalify for an interview (with a fish, I'd add).
All in all, these personal branding experts (Certified Personal Branding specialists, no less) were pretty vague about what the core of branding is, other than "passion" and "impact" and "value."
I wish they would have mentioned bioblogs, which are all about your potential and future value, or in other words, the personal brand of your creative character at work: the sum of all your personal parts plus work and experience and education, all aimed forward into the slippery workstreams of worklife.
And by the way, Ms. Dib, going to 1-page resumes is not the biggest thing happening in resumes today. Bioblogging is, but I don't expect you to endorse them because you are not certified to create them.
