Your personal brand should be the sum total of all that you, as an individual, use to make yourself distinctive in public compared to every other person.
In previous posts, I have written about how your personal brand needs to include all of these essential elements:
#1–What you are like on the outside (your outward appearance versus your inner self)
#2–How well you communicate verbally and in writing in public
#3–What others perceive of your most dominant character trait (e.g., friendly, grumpy, warm, cold, reclusive, trustworthy, etc.)
#4–What it is about you that makes you unique compared to every other person
In this post, I will cover why your unique outcomes are so important to creating or fixing your personal brand.
Outcomes vs. Output
Each of us needs to accept that there’s a big difference between our professional outcomes versus output. For instance, if you are an accountant, your output in the professional sense is that you provide essential direction to people who need advice about financial matters. Your outcomes in the professional sense need to be stated like this: As a certified public accountant, I have helped 15 clients in the last year each save thousands of dollars when they filed their income tax documents. Do you see the difference between output and outcomes in this example?
The lesson here is: Clearly stating your professional outcomes will give you more persuasive impact than if you merely state your professional output. This is true whether you are writing about your outcomes in a job application or in your resume, or, if you are talking to someone who may want to hire you for what you can do for their organization.
If you are one accountant in a crowded field of tens of thousands of accountants, why should you expect anyone to hire you unless you can differentiate yourself by your professional outcomes? This is true for every professional!
Rewrite Your Career History
The simple fact in creating or fixing your personal brand is: You must take the initiative to rewrite your career history to show clear and distinct outcomes for which you were responsible. Having a resume that shows merely your job titles, companies you worked for, years of service, and other traditional data points will get you nowhere fast in today’s highly competitive job market.
You should sit down and carefully go through everything you have done professionally over the past 15 years to extract at least one essential outcome within each job you held. Then, you need to write out those professional outcomes in clear and compelling language without sounding like you are bragging wildly.
Of course, if you were a heroic bus driver who truly did singlehandedly pull a dozen school kids to safety from a bus crash, then by all means, go ahead and say that!
Copyright © 2012, Woody Goulart. All Rights Reserved.
See the growing list of posts in the “Stand Out” series here at Ned’s JOTW website.
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