JOhn Lilley CV | Resume

Having created a Google Alert to notify me of new web pages referencing Personal Branding it is amazing the amount of buzz that surrounds the topic. The buzz has got me thinking that the hype about selling yourself, differentiating yourself and promoting yourself is nothing new.

I remember my Mother coaching me about it being a small world and you should never burn your bridges. Your bosses, colleagues, partners e.t.c. could show up anytime, any place. In fact we would joke and say look after the Martini people (”Any time, any where, any place”) as you moved on. Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to work with people I have known from a previous life!

My reputation or “brand” was not something that was created in words and web pages or on a CV. Your reputation is about saying what you do and doing what you say! It is who you are and what you stand for. No change there.
There is no question that the reach of a personal brand can now spread far and wide. There is also no question that we stay connected with more acquaintances (not necessarily true friends) than before through the use of the Internet and social network websites. The depth and breadth means we can project our profiles to the globe, where once it took you to send a CV to a specific person for them to learn about you. You released your information on a permission basis. Now it is important that your online brand not only tells the truth but does so attractively as anyone can Google you and form an opinion on your abilities, products or services. Based on what they find they may not even reach out and have a real conversation with you.

I wonder if Lee McQueen’s (the recent winner of the apprentice) Online CV had the same lies as his submitted CV, coupled with the bad spellings and grammatical errors? In fact I am going to take a look and check out how his brand is developing! As Lee was an ex-recruiter this was a sad state of affairs, he should have been ejected there and then.

So from my perspective personal branding is no different from what it used to be. It simply that good news travels faster than even and I’d say bad news even faster. What do you think?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 at 7:23 pm and is filed under Personal Branding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.