Have you wondered how you can translate your personal brand into a new job you love? Or how to leverage your personal brand for your organization? Or perhaps how to position yourself as an expert in your field?
Dave Culter has successfully accomplished all of these things after being laid off and deciding to start-over with a brand new carrer! The best part about it is that Dave has been very open about his success and his challenges, so we can identify exactly what to repeat his success story.
How You Can Replicate Dan Cutler’s Success
Dan’s personal brand is sensational. He went from laid off to the cover of the Boston Globe’s Business section. From a forgettable general marketer to an unforgettable story about leveraging social media marketing to get national media exposure while building a new career.
As amazing as it is, his success boiled down to a handful of key choices. Choices that we can all make to produce our own style of success
Step One: Find a place where your skills, interest and market needs overlap.
Dave knew that after getting laid off, he needed to differentiate himself from the crowd of job seekers. He started by identifying his transferable skills, evaluating trends in the market and determining where his curiosity pulled him towards.
From this research project -slash- soul searching, Dave saw that there was opportunity to grow in Social Media Marketing.
Step Two: invest in increasing your skills or outside expertise when required.
Since Dave’s skills weren’t complete in the social media realm, he invested in himself and attended an intensive course at Rutgers University to help him bridge the gap.
It’s smart to invest in yourself and your personal brand. No one can do it alone.
Step Three: Build a network by showcasing your skills and your personality!
Dave then built his website HireDaveCulter.com and started to build robust following on social media sites, like twitter and 4Square.
The key here is that Dave was doing more than chatting on twitter — he was deliberately showing the skills that would enable him to be successful in his desired role. He wrote and curated content that designated him as an expert and showed his ability to build and leverage an online following.
For a programmer, that might look like building an amazing new app and getting it in as many hands as possible. For an accountant, that might look like volunteering to do an assessment of a small non-profit’s books. What would it look like for you?
Step Four: Don’t be afraid to promote yourself.
Once Dave had built an audience, he used that audience to promote his job search on a national level. He was featured on the cover of Sunday’s Boston Globe Business Section, was interviewed on NPR and was covered by many other media outlets.
You may not need or want national media coverage, but on any scale, leveraging your connections to reach beyond the immediate people in your network is key.
Step Five: Keep your personal brand robust.
Even now that Dave is hired and working full time as a social media manager, he continues to build and leverage his personal brand. That is how he came to be featured on this site, write Eloqua’s Grande Guide, speak at events and generally have an excess of career opportunities.
Remember, your personal brand is not about attaining a singular goal, like getting hired, its about cultivating a long-lasting brand for yourself that will support you in the good times and the bad.
