How to Prepare Your Personal Brand for a Job Search

How to Prepare Your Personal Brand for a Job Search Youve likely seen the term personal branding in blogs and articles as youve been preparing for your job search, but you may not be entirely certain what it means. Personal branding is how a candidate packages their skills, background, experience, and public persona in order to market themselves to potential employers.A strong personal brand image could mean landing the job of your dreams, while a poorly maintained onecould hurt your chances or even worse, get you disqualified from consideration entirely.Because finding and keeping a job is all about marketing yourself properly, its a good idea totake a minute to read up on a fewkey points regarding how toboost your personal brandClean Out Your Closet Your Social Media ClosetThe first place employers look after theyve seen your resume isyour social media presence.In fact, a recent survey from CareerBuilder found that 60 percent of employers research candidates on social networking sites. Thats an 8 percent increase from last years survey.Companies want to know that theyre hiring people with character and integrity, so you want to make sure that everything you post on the Internet casts a positive light on yourself.Employers also pay attention to the ways in which your social media activity reflects poorly on you. Your conduct on the Internet can have some serious negative consequences on your job search In CareerBuilders survey, 49 percent of the hiring managers who said they screen candidates on social media also said theyve found information in their research that has led them to decide not to hire a candidate.Some of the content that most commonly causes hiring managers to shy away from a candidate includes- Provocative or inappropriate photographs, videos, or information 46 percent of hiring managers said theyve not hired a candidate after finding behauptung things on their social media accounts-Information about a candid ate drinking or using drugs 43 percent-Discriminatory comments related to race, religion, gender, etc. 33 percent- Candidate bad-mouthed previous company or fellow employee 31 percent- Poor communication skills 29 percentThis is not to say thatyou cant go out with your friends and have a good time when youre in the middle of a job hunt. Rather, you simply need to be cognizant of the moments you choose to document and share.Build Up Your Online PresenceThe flip side to cleaning up your online presence is that you also want toensurethe content the remains reinforces a positive and professional perception of you. You need totake control of your Internetfootprint and reshape the information that can be foundabout you.One of the first things I advise any client to do is update theirLinkedIn profile so that it is 100 percent accurate and portrays them as a qualified professional. LinkedIn is well indexed by Google, so when a recruiter searches your name online, your LinkedIn profile i s likely to be one of the first results they see. LinkedIn is also a great way to showcaseprojects youve worked on, papers youve published, andinterviews in which youve been quoted.If you like to write or have an online portfolio to show off, its a good idea to purchase your own website domain, such as JohnSmith.com. If you are unable to purchase your own domain, you can set up a sitefor free on a platform likeWordPress. Just make sure that your full name is included in the URL e.g., if you use WordPress, your URL should be JohnSmith.WordPress.com. No matter which approach you take, strive to always keep it professional.Your Behavior in the Real World Is Just as Important as Your Behavior OnlineMany companies see their employees as extensions of their businesses even after hours. Again, this doesnt mean that you cant have a life. But if you want the job or if you want to keep the one you have you should be on your best behavior even outside ofthe office.Do you remember many year s ago when a woman drove across the country wearing a diaper and attempted to kidnap a U.S. Air Force captain? Do you remember her name? Probably not,but you may remember where she worked. After all these years, one prominentdetail most people can recall about that strange event is that the woman worked for NASA.You likely wont do anything as serious as that, but the lesson standsYour actions outside of work can affect your employer. You dont want to do anything that would jeopardize its reputation or your chances of landing a job in the future.A version of this article originally appeared onResumeSpice.Savannah Ober is a resume expert atResumeSpice.