Building a Positive Professional Brand

Whether you’re job searching or starting field, let your professional brand speak for itself.

Your professional brand communicates your core values, strengths, and attitude in and out of the workplace and helps you stand out as a marketable candidate for future roles.

For your brand to be effective, however, the mediums through which you convey who you are and what you offer need to be consistent. This includes not only your job applications, Linkedin, and other social media activities, but also your personal interactions.

In assessing your brand, consider the following questions:

    • How are you presenting yourself and communicating with others online and in person? Do your email messages and nonverbal behaviors, for example, reflect the professional image and reputation you seek to project?
    • How do you respond to feedback, criticism, or conflicts and challenges? Do they demonstrate your willingness and initiative to adapt, collaborate, learn, and grow–attributes particularly critical to the post-COVID world?
    • How are you nurturing the relationships you have with others, such as with supervisors, classmates, professors, mentors, and leaders in your field?

Your professional brand will evolve as your career grows. What impression do you want to leave on others? Use this to guide the steps you need to take to refine your brand, so others can have a clear sense of what you stand for and why they should hire you.