Creating your own Personal Brand Statement

Communicating your personal brand statement is an important key to further your career development for either internal or external advancement.

Your personal brand statement will describe to the listener:

1. Where you have come from (your background roles, industries worked, and experience). This establishes credibility and relevance – i.e. how do you relate to the person you are speaking to
2. Who you are (your values and qualities) – Enables you to establish rapport and describe some of the essence of you. Connects you with the other person, particularly if your values are in alignment and qualities are valued by that person or organization they represent.
3. What you have to offer (your benefits or strengths) – Captures how you will be able to benefit them in a specific way. What will spark their interest and attention?
4. What makes you different (what is your uniqueness and how it has been applied) – Why they should listen to you more than the 50 people that have already called in for an interview in the last couple of weeks.
5. Why are in the position you are now in (Circumstances leading to change in role) – Provides a sense of how you feel about your current situation. Is it something that you are comfortable with, relaxed about or is there some sensitivity about your circumstances?
6. What it is you want (your career objective, leadership aspirations) – Supports the listener to identify in what ways they might be in a position to help you in your career direction.

Your personal brand statement will be used in a number of situations including introducing yourself in:

• Networking meetings
• Cold-calls
• Career summary for your resume
• Interview questions such as ‘tell me about yourself”
• Informal social gatherings

Generally speaking, when introducing yourself to someone in a networking or more informal situation, if you are speaking continuously for more than 90 seconds, you will run the risk of the listener losing their focus.
In an interview situation you can afford to provide more information and weave in evidence of strengths in the form of achievements. In this situation you may extend your personal brand statement to speak for about 120 seconds, which is two minutes.

personal brand statement will need to be practiced and rehearsed so that it is fluid and natural and above all, succinct. But don’t over practice as you would like to have some spontaneity depending on the situation and you don’t want what you say to sound contrived and scripted.

You will use different versions of this depending on the context of the meeting. For example, if it is an interview situation where clearly the objective of the interview is for you to land a job, your final comment will be about your career objective. However, if it is an information networking meeting, your career objective may be toned down somewhat to emphasize that your objective is to obtain information on the opportunities existing within the particular industry.