The Importance of Personal Branding

A student came to me, saying that there had been no improvement in his career for 2 years working, he was almost frustrated, especially since starting his career until now, what he had imagined about a brilliant career had never come.

My question to him was "Tell me what your strengths are?"he was stunned and couldn't answer my question.I asked again more specifically, "What makes you different from your colleagues?" He couldn't answer.

Many people live life flowing like water, I happen to not agree with that saying.Because in essence we are what we think, like my favorite saying "you are what you think" when we view life as flowing water, then be prepared to face strong currents and circumstances that we cannot control.For this reason, we should be the ones who control our lives, including planning the jobs we will take, measuring the pros and cons and the efforts we will make to improve our careers to be even better.

In the book Personal Branding –The secret to success and survival in a career that I wrote with Becky Tumewu in 2014 contains 2 components to Personal Branding.The first is the Main Component, including Value, Skill and Behavior.This is a component that a person must have.However, in today's digital era where there is a lot of competition, having the main components to support your personal branding is not enough.So each individual must have additional components, namely: total look, uniqueness and authenticity.Well, like this student, if you don't even know the Main Components, of course the skills you have won't stand out.So they cannot compete in this increasingly tough competition.Being just good is not enough, we need to find the uniqueness in ourselves in order to stand out in the crowd.So one needs to have Additional Components to make it look different.Arranging what style will stick to him, because a good appearance will be attractive to look at, including looking for things that can make me different from my competitors?Of course, everything that is made must be made as authentic as possible, not just a copy.So that other people see us as a sincere person, not fake.

As the advertising jargon says, "I know what I want".Do we know what we have to do to be ready to compete in the field we are going to work in?

Erwin Parengkuan
Managing Director Talkinc
www.talk-incorporation.com