Building Your Identity; Marketing You and Creating Meaningful Connections
When wanting to make an impact in the world, you have to put yourself out there and create an identity for yourself. As simple as it may sound, many components go into the creation of your identity that is working towards “marketing you” and leading to the creation of connections, work towards goals, and making visions turn into reality. It is important to acknowledge how important it is to market yourself in both a professional and personal way, to create an identity you are proud to represent. By taking the time to learn about yourself, build your identity with care and purpose, and maintain the vision, connections will start to come easily and goals will be met.
The first step to building your identity is to learn about yourself. This is done on both personal and professional levels; both on the outside and inside. In the professional and academic world, your professional personality is often prioritized and who you are on the inside may be neglected. However, your identity is made up of both components (and more), so it is important to acknowledge everything that makes you, you.
Start with the professional side. Create an image of what you want to achieve and write down the key ideas. These could be your professional goals and aspirations, and what steps you have and can continue to take to meet these standards. Think about the skills you have obtained, both critical and creative, and what you are best at and the areas of improvement. Think about the academic and professional experiences you have obtained, and what you have learned from them. The skills you may have learned and grown, the situations you problem-solved, or the professional connections you made within them. By viewing all these components on paper, you can then look at your whole professional side critically. It shows you what you strive to be and how you have worked towards your goals. It shows your dedication to tasks and the skills and experiences you have obtained throughout.
Next, look at your personal side. These components may not be as important when thinking professionally, but they are critical for making you stand out from the crowd and show the world what you are capable of and your purpose. These would include things like morals, values, and what motivates you to do the things that you do. This would showcase the purpose of your goals and provide depth beyond what experience and skills can showcase. As well, highlight personal stories that relate to your professional goals, to communicate the barriers and problems you have faced. But most importantly how you overcame the obstacles, and what you have learned through the struggle. Adding these personal components not only makes you stand out from the very 2-D skills and experiences you may have but also showcases your personality. It shows the drive you have to achieve things, and why your goals and success are important to you, as well as your storytelling skills. Understanding someone through how they tell stories is a key way to understand someone’s resilience, perseverance as well as their personality.
By combining your personal and professional sides, your identity can stand out from others and become more eye-catching to new opportunities. It showcases that you can go beyond what is written on paper, and gives others a more thorough understanding of who you are.
The next step would be to build your identity with care and purpose. Once again, this has components of both personal and professional sides to showcase well-roundedness, as well as character.
On the professional side, put care and purpose into what you do to work towards your best professional self. This can be done in a variety of aspects. The first step could be in your resume, whether you are looking for a new job or not. Either way, craft your resume to represent you well. Highlight your key skills, experiences, and accomplishments. Make it easily readable and simple. Use strong words, examples, and numbers. In many professional encounters that involve careers or opportunities, a resume is one of the first things a recruiter will see so it must represent you well and showcases your critical skills and accomplishments. Following that, you can continue to craft your identity with care and purpose when making more professional connections. This could be things like dressing professionally, being professional and polite when making new connections, and putting care into each and every encounter you have. Whether you know it or not, every connection made is important and could be extremely beneficial down the line. Connections with colleagues, classmates, employers, recruiters, or anyone else in the professional and academic world can lead to more connections and opportunities later. So it is important to make sure your identity has care and purpose in it, to showcase your best self for others to see and more importantly, remember.
This can also be done on the personal side, especially when making connections with people. It is difficult to be personal in the resume stage, or even the outfits, but is critical when making connections. Adding a bit of personality in your encounters helps you to stand out and let people better put a name to the face. As well, it helps people remember you with a more 3-D character, which could lead to more connections later. You can be personal in a variety of ways in every encounter. When meeting a new person, you can find a common interest or experience you’ve both had. This helps you to better learn about the person beyond their professional image, and ask questions about who they are. As well, it provides you with the opportunity to highlight your personal character. If meeting a person for the second time, you can make sure to address them with their name and ask about things previously conversed about. You can also go beyond in-person connections, to later send follow-up emails. This is especially important after interviews with recruiters or potential employers, to continue to maintain your care and interest in the opportunity. Sending follow-up emails highlights your dedication, as well as is an opportunity to add a personal note and thank them for the conversation. This shows personal traits of care for their time, as well as helps them remember you more personally beyond the interview.
The combination of both these aspects shows people who you, are and the image you want to be perceived of you. So it is important that this is well-rounded and well throughout to put your best foot forward.
Lastly, you need to maintain the vision. The most important thing is to keep the end goal of marketing yourself and building your identity. So when keeping this in mind, everything you do is working towards reaching this goal. This could be direct and indirect things.
The professional side relates more to the connection-making and identity-building. It relates directly to you marketing yourself, with a variety of activities. This could be attending networking events, having a mentor, or scheduling workshops to grow your professional network. These things help you build and maintain your identity, and market yourself to new conditions. Keeping your end goal in mind of how you want to create connections is key to doing things to work towards the vision.
There is also a personal side to marketing yourself and your end vision. As much as it is crucial to work towards their professional identity, you have your morals and values to guide your work. It is important to not develop imposter syndrome and feel like you have to do everything, but to stay true to your compass. The connections and marketing help to enhance who you are, and your own characteristics, beliefs, and values should not have to change. These are the things that help you stand out.
Overall, focusing on both your personal and professional goals, characteristics and ideas helps you to work towards marketing yourself, making connections, and keeping the end vision alive. It is important to acknowledge that you have to have both a personal and professional side to be well-rounded and stand out from others, to truly build an identity that is meaningful and notable.
