Jobless Rates

The point of all this information is simple: Before you spend a dime on a Yellow Pages ad, new business cards or a snazzy suit, create your Online Personal Brand. As a job seeker, your Online Personal Brand is especially important, because there’s no barrier between it and your potential employer.

Even if seeing the first benefits from your brand takes six months, it’s worth the investment, as long as you can support yourself in the meantime. It’s far better to live with no Online Personal Brand for a while and start with a blank slate than to create a bad brand in haste, then try to undo the damage months later.

The Difference between Success in Employment, Marketing and Branding

I’m not a zealot. It’s possible to build a successful job seeking strategy without ever building a Online Personal Brand. All I’m saying is it’s easier, faster, more effective and more rewarding to build a strategy you can enjoy—one that leaves you time to relish your success—with a strong online brand than without one.

In fact, employment, marketing and branding success aren’t necessarily connected. Employment success means survival, the ability to produce a steady income. It doesn’t imply anything about growth, happy employer(s), or your own happiness. Often, it’s the result of long, long hours

Marketing success means you have the ability to attract quality interviews, recruiters, and so on. It doesn’t guarantee you can get the best jobs back, or that you’re paid equitably for your skills. Marketing means you are able to offer something of value to generate job prospects. Marketing is expensive.

Branding success, however, implies marketing and employment success. You can’t build and maintain a successful Personal Brand without strong marketing, great referrals and testimonials that creates loyalty, a sustainable employment model, consistent salary that enable you to enjoy the fruits of your labor. It’s the best of all worlds.

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For more info: Click on “Subscribe to Newsletter” and enter your email address at the tops of the page to receive notice of this weekly feature and other new articles. You may also email your Job Search related questions to Mark@MarkMontoya.com
Want more info? Try these articles:
Oprah Winfrey and Job Search
Passion and Your Career
The Essential Skill of Executive Branding
Why Get Personal, How Your Online Personal Brand Can Help Your Job Search
Job Specialization Development- A Great First Step in Your Job Search
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Mark Montoya has been working in personal branding for more than a decade for hundreds of online and offline companies, small businesses and individual service professionals. His focus has been toward improving the way jobseekers find employment on the Internet. He has synthesized his expertise by helping job seekers obtain their ideal choice of employment over the Internet on his sites MyOnlineCareerSpace.com and MyOnlineCareerCoach.com, and through his books 101 Tips Every Job Seeker Should Know and The Ultimate Online Job Search eBook. Learn more at MarkMontoya.com, on Twitter, Digg, or StumbleUpon.