Lesson 2: The professional environment, your professional environment. Analysis of strengths and areas for improvement in personal branding

Introduction to the module

Welcome to the course “Personal brand to find employment”.

Through this training we want to bring you closer to a new world that has emerged in recent decades and is increasingly present in our lives: The Digital World.

We will talk about our personal and professional starting point, the resources and tools for employment and self-employment and the practical use of the Internet and its tools. We will also analyze the impact that digital technology has had on people, society and how they are influencing companies and therefore employment.

The course will begin with a theoretical part and active participation in the forums. Next you will review the most important points within this formation. Finally, you will be able to put the acquired knowledge to the test by taking a quiz.

At the end of the training you will have learned how it has evolved and the impact it has had on people, society and employment. Forward!

Introduction to the professional environment (1 hour video)

Video 1: Please activate the subtitles in English.

Employment as we know it is over and we need to think differently. Have you ever heard it said? There is no longer a difference between a self-employed person, an entrepreneur, an employee, or an unemployed person. Really the only difference between all of us is the number of clients and how we charge. That is, like you, I do not have infinite clients.

An employee is a person who works for a company. He has a single client to whom he sells one hundred percent of his production and an unemployed person is a person who currently has no one to sell his productive capacity to.

We are all professionals.

I want you to think that each of us are professionals, that we sell services to companies, public administrations or clients. Although at this moment no unemployed person has clients. Or a freelancer has several clients.

In the end, what it is about is that we think as companies, as companies with brands. I want you to reflect on it a bit. The brand is not the result of a department, rather it is the result of all the actions and everything that a company does. If we apply it to the point of view of people, the personal brand is the result of everything or everyone who does things.

Which is it?. So I want you to think as if you were a company, as if you had an organizational chart in which there are several departments, a department with a management committee, a production department, a human resources department, a quality department, a Marketing Department, etc…

So the result of all those actions of all those departments that in the end is ourselves. We are directing, who will be will leave a mark and leave a mark in our environment, in the environment in which we want to influence.

Therefore, summarizing all this and before getting into the matter, I want you to think about that phrase “I don’t know how to sell myself” or “I want to learn to sell” I want you to get it out of your head, because what you have to think about is selling your own work. Your work, your product, your profession, your company and the result of all this will be a mark that we leave that will be what we call “personal brand”.

The objective of Personal Branding is to leave a mark on a specific group of people so that they know us. Something more important for us to be recognized is that we are associated with something that makes us useful in such a way that we are perceived as valuable professionals. And this is very important and reliable.

When they see us as valuable professionals they will pay more for us. We are going to have more demand and we are going to get them to call us, well, have more job offers, whether we are employees or entrepreneurs, or in this case at this moment we are unemployed.

And for that we have to generate credibility and later we will explain how it is achieved, therefore, what a brand is. The mark is, if we think about it, a footprint, it’s as if I took a pen and left a trace on the table in front of me. It is a mark and and the personal mark is the mark that we leave in the minds of other people.

But in order to move forward and to be able to position ourselves, we have to define what our destiny is. What is our starting point and what is the destination. Well, one of the first things we have to say is how I want to position myself in a few weeks or months. For example, I want to be the benchmark for immigration lawyers. We have to organize ourselves as if it were an organizational chart of a company. In the first place, we have to have a department, a kind of steering committee, asking ourselves what is my goal? What is my start now? What is all this for?

The next block is who I am, it is about doing a self-analysis, like a kind of personal audit. What are my beliefs as a professional? What are my values? This seems like a philosophy, but it’s really like what a company does is define its specifications when it defines its limits, the work environment of the people that make up that company.

The next step is what do I sell and/or what products do I offer? What is my professional offer?

Next step is fine, and who do I turn to? . The question is who am I addressing who is going to buy my professional offer? It is not about being well known, as I said before, and it is not about being known and valued by those who are going to pay you the most. Therefore, your positioning strategy has to be focused on your customers,

The fifth dilemma is what makes me different? This is the most marketing part, that is, how did it reach people, how do I transmit all this that I am saying, that I am communicating.

We usually give the example of Kodak or Nokia or any company with a powerful brand. But what happened to Motorola that have collapsed in a very short time or Kodak in a little longer?

Basically, their problem is that they weren’t clear about what they wanted, what they did, what their mission was and let’s say what footprint they wanted to leave, and they ended up getting lost, almost dying of success.

If we want to leave a mark, the first thing we have to decide is how I want to position myself, how I want to be recognized, how I want them to think of me when they think of my service or product.

How do we want to position ourselves? For example, “I want to be the best specialist in gardens for developments”, “I want to be the best project manager in the highly competitive automotive sector.” It is true that we are limiting the field of action, but if we do not define where we are going to go, it is very difficult for us to leave a mark.

Reliability/Credibility

Before I spoke of reliability, credibility. It is important to have a goal. When we see that someone has a clear objective, what we are seeing tends to generate confidence because we think that this person may be wrong, but it seems that they understand a lot about “their thing”.

Therefore, one of the most difficult questions now when it comes to positioning a brand is defining the following question: who am I? And this is usually a bit of a tricky issue, because it is where most, where most people, most professionals tend to get stuck. It is the most cerebral part. It is the most emotional part.

If I ask you if you have a blog, surely you will answer no. You would be embarrassed to give a lecture or upload videos to Youtube or even write a blog frequently. You don’t do it out of fear, out of shame, out of laziness. As you can see, the problems when it comes to communicating who we are are head problems. They are not technical problems, but mental barriers that we impose on ourselves.

You must associate your name with a title, a card, a profession. You will define your position throughout your life.

There is another important question, a little philosophical. It is the issue of values And why is it important to be clear about what our values and priorities are? Because when you don’t have clear values or you’re skipping them and one day you’re doing something. But it turns out that the next day you are doing the opposite, that is, you are skipping your values without any criteria.

That is what ends up generating mistrust. And when it generates mistrust you lose value and when it loses value, your brand collapses. Therefore, it is important that you define what is important to you.

What am I selling?

The next step to take is what am I selling? That is, I want you to think that this is this would be the equivalent of, if we were talking about companies, a production department. And here it usually comes together with the definition of the objectives. It is usually the moment in which many of the professionals with whom I interact tend to get stuck. Let’s see, what do you do? I have a degree in Medicine. I am a plumber, I am a forklift technician. But that’s not right, that’s what I would put on your card, what or what you do. But when I want to, when I ask you, what do you do? Above all, I want you to tell me what I can win with you. To think that to leave a mark so that someone takes us into account so that someone values us. We have to be able to offer something.

It is not necessary, let’s say, to have a title to be valuable. That is, we all have capacities, we all have experiences. We all have abilities that we can combine with what makes us valuable. There are three important things to look at:

One is a question of money. That is, what are you capable of making someone or some company or something earn more money, or lose less money. If you are able to achieve it, they will value your time

Another is time: if you are able to get something done faster or someone loses less time or, for example, if you are a product manager and you are able to launch more products in a year than other problems from other professionals, that will make you valuable.

And the other variable, well-being, or feeling good. And that has to do with the more spiritual theme of this digital frame. If you are going to be happier or in some way you are going to dedicate yourself to making others feel better, it is also valued.

And basically it is about combining these three elements: time, money, happiness or well-being with one of these variables: Increase, Reduce, improve or create. That is, it is capable of increasing, for example, the visibility of your customers. You are able to reduce costs or reduce losses, for example, of a certain product. Are you capable of improving processes, etc…

I want you to think not only about what you have studied, your academic knowledge or your titles, but I also want you to tell me about your experiences. If you think “I am very young, I have no experience”. That doesn’t work for me. Yes, anyone, for example, says that they are very good at doing certain things, anyone who thinks of all the skills, knowledge and experience that you have to combine can then create something valuable.

You are capable of doing something, above all else, that is related to what you are passionate about, what you like. If you are very good at doing something, you are able to get value, to get valued and get paid for it. Since you can combine all of this somehow, you could use it to get someone to pay us. So maybe you can use your our ability to train people like this ability with your knowledge of languages. Well, to teach kids to learn languages doing sports.

Surely there are jobs that have already been invented, another question is how I can put myself in the sight of those who may need me so that they can look for me and find me. This has to do with what we are going to see a little later on visibility, well, where are those who can hire me. I always recommend that you try to reach the decision makers. Going through a selection process, you have to try to reach those who can or will decide for you. I’m talking about department heads that you can attract and impact in such a way that they say “Hey, look, I hadn’t thought of this type of professional, but I could be interesting because they can help us out.”

Impact

The fifth step is how do I impact, how do I differentiate myself, that is, with my products and/or my professional services. There are many very similar ones already on the market. The question is how I manage to differentiate myself from the rest of the professionals who are like me.

First of all, this has to do with reputation, which is like personal branding: it’s the mark you want to leave. Reputation is the final one, the mark that you are leaving in saying how you perceive, how that personal brand is perceived.

I recommend, first of all, that you analyze how your services or products are being perceived. For example, ask people who know us what labels they would give us. With what adjective would you describe us?

If you are a hard worker, responsible, etc… That is fine, but they are not differentiating elements. You have to find what makes you different. Well, maybe in your style, when it comes to doing things, that you are faster than the others, that you have a way of listening that is different, try to find that within your profession.

Why do I have to trust you? Why do I have to believe you, what makes me have to believe in you. What do we do when we base ourselves on something we don’t know? How can I see your work through a resume.

If we trust everything to the only letter of a CV you take it very badly. Are there other ways to see your work? That is, the same as in financial matters, because you write articles on your blog analyzing the current crisis. If you are a good electrician, why don’t you make me a series of videos explaining how to fix certain issues and that will not take away your market, don’t worry, I’m not going to start doing what you are doing.

If there is no one who knows that you dedicate yourself here and what you are capable of doing, well, let’s say that this option is going to be taken away from you. Therefore, the more people know about you, the more people have seen what you are capable of.

There is also another aspect that when trust has to do with the most rational part, there is a more emotional part, which is well, other things being equal, I prefer to use emotions to choose. If they are all the same in all equally good, I’ll take the one that I like best. How do you manage to generate that chemistry, that harmony with those people? Well, the way to generate harmony with other people is for them to think the same as you, who consider you one of their own. And that has to do with something I told you before about the values.

If it turns out that you are sharing values with a person in front of you when choosing a candidate, a person to fill a job, a potential client, if I have five equals, I will stay with the one with whom I feel more aligned, with the one with which I am more in tune, with which there is more chemistry. On the internet you have to get wet, that is, if you are very aseptic, without showing our most personal side (I am not saying your private side), but if your most personal opinions are very difficult for people to tune in with you.

Video 2: Please activate the subtitles in English.

Therefore, two aspects predominate. The rational aspect and the emotional aspect that makes similar professionals stand out from the others because they are generating credibility and on the other hand, they are generating a harmony of a chemistry that the others do not have.

And this brings us to the last part of the process, the visibility part. Surely you think “This is all very well, but if I stay locked up in my house, if nobody knows me, the only way I have to communicate my work is through an Infojobs job offer or by sending two hundred resumes in letter that will go directly to the trash”.

Let’s say that the chances of being chosen are going to be very small. My value will always be far below what it should be. Therefore, what we have to do is go out and count. And basically when we talk about visibility and going out and telling what we are capable of doing, I usually talk about three levels:

The face to face to a person, talk to a group of people and it is reaching a lot of people

Face-to-face or one-on-one is what is now called networking, but simply using any relationship, any opportunity we have to put ourselves in front of a person. The point is that we are going to take advantage of all the opportunities we have: and this includes calling a friend from university that we haven’t talked to for a long time, staying for lunch with someone we are interested in or that we met at an event, but we want to know more. It’s about using every opportunity we have to meet interesting people. It is about, for example, going to any event and I am not saying that you are going to have to go every day, but maybe a couple of times a month go to an event, a book presentation or a conference in a place for entrepreneurs or businessmen where there are a lot of opportunities. We are talking about doing your best to connect with people, especially people you don’t know and who may seem interesting.

The next level is public speaking, giving lectures, talks or workshops. I recommend that whenever you can, you open up to “your thing”, to your professional world, giving a conference, a talk. Or actively participate in a group of professionals in your area, which is specific to your field. The interesting thing is that you start. That they know you, that they see you.

And the next level is, internet. But getting into the world of the Internet if you are not clear about all of the above is going to bore you. Second, what you’re going to say isn’t going to make any sense. And thirdly, you are going to generate a lot of mistrust, which is just the opposite of what is intended.

For me the fundamental tool is the blog. It is your communication platform that has no limits. It is not a third party platform. You can write whatever you want. You can upload photos, you can upload videos You can comment, it’s like your home, that’s the difference with a social network, you can do and undo it and no one is going to take it away from you.

There have been many tools that have come and gone but the blog still works. Maybe in five years it will be called something else. It is simply about having a website where you can communicate however you want.

If the blog is your headquarters, the artillery is Twitter. If the blog is a suit Twitter is like your belt or scarf, but it has many limitations. You can’t write everything you want. It is very volatile, very fast.

The next tool, although it is a bit boring, is Linkedin. You can connect with all of them with Twitter, with the blog. LinkedIn is like a tool to find those clients because I commented before on their people who may be more interested in seeing you.

Another tool is Facebook. It is a tool that can be very useful for SMEs, for companies, but also for people, especially professionals who want to leave their mark. You can’t customize it much but it has a great reach.

It is not that you are going to use all of them, in the following modules we are going to tell you about the ones that we believe are best for finding a job. Maybe you don’t have to use any but maybe you have to use several.

It is important that once you are clear about who you are, what you want, what you sell, then you will choose the right tools or package of tools so that they know you.

It is simply about learning things that can help us or that can allow you to continue growing, to continue positioning your image as a professional. It’s about getting started and it’s about staying. Therefore, the sooner you start the better. It takes time to get results. If you want to find a job tomorrow, thanks to personal branding, it will take time.

You need up to six months or a year to position yourself and generate views and from there your whole life to promote your brand. Therefore, start as soon as possible and do things, even if you are embarrassed at first.

Remember: your first YouTube video should always make you ashamed, don’t wait until you have a studio, a professional camera, a very elaborate script… the important thing is to launch yourself and continue generating a brand.

Video 3: Please activate the subtitles in English.