Be a Brand and Not an Employee
Transcript
good afternoon my name is kanika Tolbert and i'm the author career rehab and today we're going to be talking about how to be a brand and not an employee I'm the author of career rehab and in my book I have a chapter dedicated to how you can build your personal brand for your career and how you can let go of the employee mindset so today we're gonna walk through a great presentation that's fun to explain to you how you can be a brand and not an
employee so let's check it out this is me my name is kanika Tolbert and I am this awesome author but I'm a wife I'm a technologist by trade so I'm in the tech industry I've been featured you know all over different media outlets as you guys can see on the slides but I really enjoyed helping people through my coaching programs my events my webinars and my digital resources on Kanika tober calm all right that's a little bit about me so this is the overview of today's
presentation we're gonna go through three sections the first section is branding how do we brand ourselves the third the second section second section is marketing how do we market ourselves out there how do we sell ourselves the third section so we're gonna go go through these three sections and we're going to have an amazing time here in this presentation so let's dive into it so this is the first section so the first section is all about branding so we're gonna the power branding how to you
know let go of the employee mindset how to adopt the branding mindset how to become an industry expert how to develop a good solid resume and cover letter how to create a great LinkedIn profile for your brain how to create a blog website in product so we're gonna talk about how you can you know take things to a whole nother level with a blog or website or product then as you become a brand you want to become an expert so we're gonna talk about white papers
presentations and ebooks so let's dive into this first section of branding so the power of branding the power of branding is so important I really like this slide because you think of brands like Nike and Reebok and we think of Starbucks and chick-fil-a but we are brands ourselves so we you know we can actually have brand have a brand for our career that can increase our growth our sales would be more like our salary you know how much we make how much we want to make
our customers would be like our clients or the companies that we work for our awareness would be everything that we put out there online so people to get to know what our brand is about and then all of these things equals success for our career brands so that is the power of branding the same way we look at these companies we aren't little companies ourselves we have to be CEOs of our career brands the next slide is really talking about the employee mindset so the employee
mindset is one that does just enough work to get the job done but doesn't go above and beyond and you gotta let go that employee mindset and shift to a brand mindset a brand is a personal company that goes above and beyond to provide a unique service or product we are brands within our careers and we have to look at ourselves like that so we have to adopt the branding mindset even at work the next slide is more ways to let go of that employee mindset
how do we let go of that employee mindset so we have we have to really first stop under valuing all the things that we do every day even though it's redundant we have to stop doing that we have to value the small and big things we have to value the relationships that we have with people so this is our stakeholders our team members the leaders we have to really value those relationships and we have to stop thinking that because we communicate with these people on a
day to day basis that these relationships don't matter we have to start finding new ways to display our knowledge presentations attending conferences conference calls briefings web meetings any way that we can put our information out there we have to start doing that and the last thing is we have to make sure that we are attending all corporate events All Hands meetings and we are letting people get to know who we are at these events these are just four ways that we can let go of that
employee mindset you then that's what the next slide is really talking about three ways to embrace a branding mindset so now that you started to let go of those you know just traditional employee ways of doing your job now you have to embrace that branding mindset so I really think it's so important as a brand is to really document all the great things that you're doing keep track of that on a weekly basis or bi-weekly basis because these are your accomplishments these are this is how
you're gonna shine the next thing you want to do is you want to make sure that you display effective and good clear communication in meetings face-to-face meetings conference calls emails when you pick up the phone make sure that people get to know that you know exactly what you're talking about you effectively communicate at all times and then we want to make sure whether we do things redundant like reports if there's a task that you do on a regular basis that you think is small we have
to make sure that we call it out to look big whether it's a report whether it's a spreadsheet whether there's a presentation what does a document that we do every week we want to make sure that we are delivering quality deliverables but we are calling it out in a way that looks big and stop making things sound so small so these are just three ways to embrace some branding mindset all right so this is the slide that I really love because this basically kind of identifies
your brand so you have your education you have certifications you have college degrees you have you have a diploma you whatever you have acquired over the years far as education you want to make sure that these things always identify your knowledge the next thing is your experience experiences volunteer experience your professional experience any type of projects that you work doing all those things out to identify your brand you know on your resume or you link their profile these things really really are amazing things that you
can call out for you professional experience and the last thing is expertise we are experts at something so things that you're really knowledgeable about things that you have learned and you know the most about make sure that you are calling out those technologies those methodologies those theories anything that is gonna make you shine as an expert you need to make sure that you're using that to identify your brain all right so we're gonna go into the five ways to build your personal brand so I think
it's so important for us to be continuous learners because we really need to make sure that we're building our brand on a regular basis so these are just five things that you guys can do to continue to build your brand on a regular basis so I think working on really challenging projects really really sets you apart because you become an expert you really need to step up and act to be a part of those amazing challenging projects then in rolling training take training online extra job
to send you to training attend industry related conferences this is going to allow you to build your expertise and knowledge all the time when you continuously learn getting more certifications the third one I really like this because this really separates you from everyone else when you get certified in something you really become an expert and you can get certifications on a regular basis that'd be amazing idea for your brand I love this into podcast podcast allows me to learn information very fast so if you could
just listen to some industry related podcasts if you're in tech if you're an HR subscribe to some of those podcast shows and listen to some of the industry experts and then you know if you're not into reading a book or you don't like to read books you can read one career related article or blog subscribe to those blogs find those subject matter experts there write on a regular basis about the things in your industry alright those are five ways to build your brand alright we're gonna
go to the next slide and we're going to talk about how you can build your cover letter and resume these are the five sections that are really key to your resume so you want to make sure that you always have a professional summary this lets people know you know is the highlight of your career it kind of summarizes your expertise and knowledge you want to make sure that you have a professional experience section this kind of outlines all your jobs and all the different great things
that you've done at those particular companies and organizations you want to make sure you have education and certifications if you have the traditional route with college degrees you want to call that out if you have God the certification route and you have professional certifications make sure you're listing those things out and make sure that you're kind of putting the information of what you got certified in and when you got certified then your computer skills or technical skills you want to make sure that people know that
you know how to use various softwares and technologies you understand how to basically use different internet browsers to network and technologies to programming languages whatever technologies you know how to use for your industry you want to have a section for that and lastly you want people to know that you have won awards so when you actually get recognized you want people to know that you are an amazing person and you've accomplished some amazing things at work with your professional awards and then you always want to
make sure that you have a professional cover letter cover letters are optional sometimes but you want to make sure that you have one when you're applying to jobs because sometimes they're required by certain sports or certain companies all right so that's creating a cover letter and resume that is the foundation of your brain you need a cover letter and a resume for your personal brand for your career all right so LinkedIn I am a huge fan of LinkedIn anyone that follows me on LinkedIn you guys
can connect with me on LinkedIn anyone that follows me on LinkedIn know that I really really love like then LinkedIn is like the next step after you have a great resume and cover letter you want to put your stuff on your LinkedIn profile you want to create a LinkedIn profile because a LinkedIn profile is going to allow you to connect with so many people and set up lots of jobs so make sure that you guys create a great LinkedIn profile use your resume and create your
profile and enter in all the information into your profile that you have on your resume you can apply to jobs and you can connect with other recruiters and other professionals in your field only alright so next we're going to talk about next we're going to talk about how you guys can actually create a blog website in product so this is for people that want to really stand out they want to be a huge brand this is for people that say you know I got a resume
I don't like their profile but I have something extra I want to offer so creating a blog you can write articles you know that are around the things that you're knowledgeable about you can write blog posts this really makes you an industry expert then you can have a website so I have Kanika Tober com I am an author a coaching a speaker so I have a website that identifies all of my services and all of my knowledge then you can create a product so creating a
product is like an app you can create a solution you can create software you can create all these different amazing things to make you stand out even more and then you can sell that product because of that product or that solution or that service or that software is solving a problem it really helps you kind of separate yourself from the other professionals that only probably have a resume and a LinkedIn profile and then if you're like me you know you want to write a book you
know you can write a book book really makes you an industry expert because then you can actually push that out there to so many other readers and viewers using Amazon books-a-million Barnes and Nobles and you're gonna have an audio book so I think book as a book is an amazing way to show your knowledge alright so we're going to go to online training so now you have your resume you got your cover letter you got your LinkedIn profile you may have a blog online training keeps
the brand fresh the more you do online training you can continue to learn so much more so these are a couple of resources that I use and my career coaching clients they use on a regular basis to keep their knowledge fresh so I'm a big fan of YouTube there's always free I'm a big fan of udemy because you can do free courses you do pay courses for as low as 1099 money have they sailed do you have Linda which is monthly subscription so you can always
do Linda I used to use lynda.com as a very good source as well and Coursera and you can use that as well as well they have free classes they have a lot of good information out there from the big-name colleges that I believe school so there are a lot of courses and nando degrees that you can take for free or you can take per course per course so on these are just a few online resources that I use to continue to stay fresh in tech and
you can use as well in your industry all right so we're going to jump into the marketing section now you build your brand you have your LinkedIn profile you have your resume you have all this amazing knowledge that you've acquired through online training we're going to talk about how to market yourself now because that is the next level into being a brand and not an employee so we're gonna go through job boards sites the most popular to use we're gonna talk about how to build your
linkedin network we're gonna also talk about connecting with recruiters professionals and industry leaders on LinkedIn we're gonna talk about social media marketing how you can use and maximize social media to market yourself into the job that you want or into you know it's a doing business online if that's something that you want to do as well we're going to talk about attending networking events and how they're beneficial to your brand and we're gonna talk about how volunteering helps market your skill sets and it helps you
to meet so many new people when you volunteer within your industry all right so marketing let's jump into it so marketing now that you have this amazing resume you have this amazing cover letter these are the most popular job board sites that I use myself in my career coaching clients use so indeed is one of the largest ones indeed has amazing amount of jobs on there you can create a profile upload your resume you can start applying to jobs right away then if you are a
person I want to go into the government I haven't spent a lot of years in the federal government myself a lot of my career coaching clients want to work for the federal government you want to create a profile on USAJOBS USAJOBS is the source for federal government jobs if you want to apply to jobs that connect with people you want to make sure you have your LinkedIn profile linked it is not just for creating a profile you also can applies the jobs and you can connect
with other professionals through professional groups or you can apply to apply for jobs on their job section these have clearance jobs so Clarence jobs is the site where if you have a security clearance and you specifically want to use maybe you have a secret clearance or you have a top-secret clearance you can actually go through USAJOBS and apply to jobs for those jobs that require security clearances and you create a profile right on Clarence jobs all right always make your profile searchable that's how people are
gonna reach out to you so those are my most popular job or sites that my clients have use all right so let's talk about LinkedIn so LinkedIn is really the big benefit of LinkedIn is to network that's why it's called LinkedIn it's linking you with people that can help you so you can connect with recruiters you can connect with professionals just like yourself you can also connect with industry leaders so I would say number one join LinkedIn groups that are specific to your industry so I'm
a partner ladder I am a part of a lot of project management professional groups so if you're a cloud you want to join some of the cloud groups they're closed groups close communities where you can have conversations with people that are in the same field with you the next thing you want to do is you want to make sure you connect with recruiters so make sure that you're using LinkedIn to connect recruiters search for recruiters if you want to if you want to work for Google
go to the top of the search and search for Google recruiters and add them as a connection and explain to them that you're interested in working for the company and then other other things that you can do is just learn from so many great amazing industry experts on LinkedIn all right so don't underestimate like then right social media marketing we're all the part of social media most of us are part of different social media networks this is how you take your blog your websites and your
products and you market it or social media so if you have a blog if you have a website if you have a product that you've created market it and sell it on social media so take your blog postings your articles your your website information and retweet it on Twitter we share it on Facebook share it on LinkedIn share it on Instagram whatever social media network that you're on maximize that opportunity to market your expertise and knowledge on social media this is how you're able to connect
with other professionals and possibly connect with other recruiters and people that are looking for your skill set all right that's social media marketing then we have attending networking events I know this is you know very hard for us right now during this coronavirus season but when we are able to go back into the real world and able to attend face-to-face events it's so important to use meetup comm and to find meetups in your area to connect with other professionals that are doing the same thing that
you're doing or wanting to do the same thing that you want to do so meetup.com is an amazing way to connect with industry leaders experts and other professionals on a monthly basis but due to coronavirus and due to all that we're going on going on right now you can attend all those meetups virtually you can attend conferences virtually so don't underestimate that you cannot do this online so I would definitely check up check meet up meet up comm industry conferences a lot of us in tech
and a lot of us just in various industries we attend annual conferences like the AWS conference you know Microsoft has their conference and Google has their conference you can also research attending the same conferences through virtual do virtual access now so you can always research that as well and then workshops and webinars are an amazing way to meet people and learn and as you meet these people you're introducing yourself to them so you can actually connect with them about new opportunities at the companies that they
work for or they represent at these networking events so attend networking events is very very very important to marketing yourself alright volunteering voluntary is people underestimate volunteering with volunteering and working on special projects whether it's at work is an amazing opportunity for you to transition into a new office or a new field if you want to get into so volunteers detailed opportunities are really good so if you want to work in another group I really suggest that you do a detail these are opportunities is a
great way to transition into a new field or to transition into a new group that you want to work with so looking other opportunities extra current job and then also become an ambassador of an industry-related organization so you know whether whether you want to you know represent getting a certification and you want to support you know the CompTIA folks if you want to support the awx aw AWS industry related organizations volunteer for those organizations as you want to be a part of helping them put on
events on conferences or you want to help them promote their products and services this is a great way for you to meet industry leaders that can help you land another position or you can just advance your knowledge by indirectly marketing yourself as you volunteer so volunteering is an amazing opportunity for you to meet new people share your experience and expand your network alright that's volunteering all right so now that you have conquered the idea of learning how to brand yourself market yourself the last part of
this presentation is about how you can sell yourself when you are a brand you are interested in learning how to sell yourself because you set the foundation for your brand you're marketing yourself now you have to hook in selling yourself into a new job creating a business opportunity or just getting a promotion in your current organization so selling yourself is really important we look at products and services that that people sell all the time but we have to sell ourselves into the career that we desire
so we're gonna talk about how to apply to jobs by selling yourself we're gonna talk about how to ask for company referrals how to create a LinkedIn message this is basically just using LinkedIn to direct just to send a direct message to someone to sell yourself how to prepare for the job you know how do you prepare for the job how do you ready to sell yourself for a new job we're gonna talk about how to prepare yourself for a job interview it's important because you're
selling yourself in this job interview and we're gonna saw what the follow-up how do you seal the deal to selling yourself after you have got on a job interview so this is the selling section so hope you guys are enjoying this amazing information about how to be a brand and an employee and don't forget you can ask questions as we go here okay all right so let's jump right into it all right so applying to jobs so as you have your resume you're marketing yourself online
I wanted to share some additional sites of where you can apply to jobs so we talked a little bit about LinkedIn and USAJOBS we talked but I want to introduce to you guys clear jobs that net so clear jobs that net is another website we'd you guys who have security clearances can set up a profile to apply to jobs Clarence jobs is a separate site that we talked about earlier but clear jobs is an additional site that people with security clearances use all the time to
land high-paying tech jobs then we have dice so dice has been around for a very long time for those of us that are in the tech industry I think this is an amazing opportunity for you to create a profile on dice comm they have a lot of job postings as well and then like I said we always want to make sure that we are using indeed and having our profile updated on indeed LinkedIn and if you're in the government space you want to use USAJOBS it's
so important to keep your resume up to date and keep your profile up to date because it notifies recruiters this is how you're selling yourself online by keeping your resume and all your profiles on all of these job websites you're keeping them up to date so you can sell yourself indirectly without even meeting anyone alright so this part is my favorite part because I think that people underestimate axing for company referrals so company referrals is when you know that you want to apply a certain company
and you know somebody that works at that company so say you want to work at Deloitte and you're like hey I found the job on Deloitte's website or on one of the job board sites and one of my friends or someone on my LinkedIn within my LinkedIn network work there you can ask them to put you into the Deloitte system and it will basically cut out the middleman and they can directly refer you in and a recruiter can pick up that referral and contact you directly
for their job they will trust your friends your colleagues or industry leaders that you may have worked with they'll trust them first then you just blindly applying to job so you want to make sure that you are connecting with people that work at the companies that you want to work at because this cuts down on you just blindly applying and someone may or may not reach back out to you but your chances are higher when you do a company referral so axe your friends your family
members your people that you went to school with the people that you work with at previous companies acts for a company with Pearl send them you send them the link to the job and send them your resume and they can refer you into the company system for job that's how you're selling yourself all right so we're going to talk about how to create a LinkedIn introduction message this is really really critical because people sometimes are scared to introduce themselves to other industry leaders or hiring managers
or recruiters but this is allowing you to sell yourself in helping recruiters and helping HR folks you're doing their job for them so what you want to do is you want to make sure you crack a template message and you want to let them know that you found a job you want to link the job in the message to them you want to introduce to them that you have interest in the job and you want to attach your resume and cover letter in a private message
so the same way you send a direct message to Instagram with your Facebook or through Twitter you can send a direct introduction message through through LinkedIn make sure you connect with those folks first send them send them a connection invite and send a direct message to them introducing yourself to them and letting them know about who you are the job interest that you have it that the specific company that you want to apply to and letting them know which role you want to apply to and
attach your resume this will help recruiters and they will be able to get a jumpstart on helping you get possibly a job interview alright this is how you send an introduction message make sure you guys are doing this all right so the next thing is preparing for the job interview so you have to prepare for the job interview it's so important that you guys make sure that you focus in on reviewing the qualifications it's your cheat sheet to what they potentially will acts and make sure
your resume is aligned to those qualifications so make sure you understand the technologies that are on the convocations the tasks the duties and responsibilities and be able to tell the story of how you've done that in a previous job or your current job number 2 review the technologies they're going to possibly ask you about technologies or technical questions so make sure you know things about those technologies that is that are on the qualification so if they're accent about cloud make sure you have basic understanding of
cloud networking make sure you understand networking make sure that you understand the cutting-edge technologies that are caught out in the job announcement so if they say hey want you to know slot make sure that you know Splunk if you want you to know AWS make sure you know AWS research in the company is the third thing you have to know what they offer what services what products when they were founded you know how they got recently public you want to make sure that you researched the
ins and out of that company because you want to seem like this you are connected to wanting to work at that company and you clearly understand what that company offers the next thing is preparing your own questions so you want to make sure that you prepare your own questions because you want to make sure that you have at the end of the interview together you want to make sure that you prepare your own questions so I always say have two to three questions prepared and make
sure that you ask those questions at the end of the interview all right so this is the follow-up so now that you've gone on the interview you have pretty much you know had a great experience or maybe not so great experience on the interview either way you want to follow up within 48 hours you want to make sure you send a thank-you email because you want people to know that you're interested in the job you even if you're not interested in the job you want to
make sure that you are thanking them for their time and consideration for for considering you for the interview because even if you're not a good fit or even if this job offer doesn't come through they may remember you for another job so you want to make sure that you continuously follow up if there's a panel you want to get everyone's email address if there was one person you want to make sure you have their email address if you don't have their email address you want to
make sure that you work with the recruiter or you work with whoever set the interview up to properly you know to get the proper information for everyone that's participating on the interview with you so follow-up is important this is like selling a deal for flip for the job and this is like still selling yourself because you don't want them to forget about you so I say 24 to 48 hours and whatever you want them to remember you you don't want them to forget about who you
were and you send it like 72 hours or more you know after the job interview so this is another way to indirectly sell yourself a sell your interests all right so if you guys have questions we'll be taking additional questions don't hesitate to ask because we really I really want to make sure you guys can brand market and sell yourself and I hope that you guys enjoyed this presentation you so even if you have questions you can drop the questions you know in the chat and
I'll answer them but this is how you guys can stay connected with me so if you guys are interested in working with me as a you know in my career coaching program you definitely can stay connect with me these are all my social media handles at Comiket over and then you can also reach me at Comiket over comm this is this is my book career rehab five-star rated book on Amazon if you feel like you want to be a brand and I you want to be
a brand and you no longer want to be an employee and you want to you know get more skillsets and you want to get more knowledge on that this book career rehab will be a perfect guy for you to understand how to be a brand and not an employee so I hope you guys enjoyed this I really enjoyed giving you this great information on how to brand market and sell yourself so thank you so much for your time and have a good day [Music]
