Polly Pearson's Blog

Question #1: Isn't Personal Branding Vain?

"The thought of Googling myself makes my skin crawl."

My prior post covered what I see as the top questions/reservations coming from business people on the subject of social media. The number one concern I hear has to do with taking the big jump into a pool that strikes many as overly self promotional, vain, unprofessional, or simply too revealing for comfort.

All understandable points.

Consider the flip side.

Would you go to an important meeting or an interview without first looking in the mirror?  You would want to know you look okay, and fix anything that might be out of place, right?

Today, "Google is the New Mirror."

What do you look like?  Not knowing could be like walking into an Interview with your fly down and spinach in your teeth.

When someone Googles your name (it could be a customer who wants to know what your track record is before they meet you; it could be an entity that wants to partner with you; it could be a company who is considering hiring or featuring you), what do they see? 

• Do you even show up on the first page of Google search? 

• How hard do they have to work to find you? 

• The longer it takes them to find you, the more of a non-entity you might seem to be. 

• What if the first listing under YOUR name is a photo of a Tequila swilling 40-something? A convict? A person who is the antithesis of you ... or of someone whose resume is close enough to yours to be confusing?

Is it professionally courteous, expedient, or responsible not to know what you look like to others?

 

Last year I had as radio guests on EMC's Visual Talk Radio Show Barbara Massa, EMC's head of North America Recruiting operation and Dan Schawbel, both author of the new Personal Branding book, Me 2.0and EMC's resident social media specialist.

A take away from this program is that matching talent to opportunity today is a branding two-way street. 

Opportunity needs to be able to know about You and what You stand for. 

You need to know about Opportunity and what it could mean to You/Your business. 

Today, you expect every entity to have a presence on the web.  You want to research every hotel room, baseball bat, pair of jeans, house and technology gadget before you decide. If something is not on the web, it must not be significant enough to be worthy of your consideration, right? 

Guess what? That's what the world expects when it comes to talent/people/partners.  They want to research you on-line before making the next step.  If you're not on-line, you likely are not significant enough to be considered.  Ouch.

Barbara noted the funny twist that exists today.  No one expects a young person to have a presence on the web. They're just starting out and their careers are likely far from remarkable.  Everyone expects senior people to have a presence on the web.  They have, their resume says, launched products, turned around companies, and done other amazing things.

Only the reality is exactly the opposite. 

The young people are easily found and their credentials and claims are validated on line. The senior people are not easily found or validated.

There is no such thing as "Job Security" any longer.  What got you to where you are won't keep you where you are. 

What can you do about it?

Be relevant. Be found. Be vain if that what it takes. 

The pay off?

The larger "your brand," the larger your company's brand and the larger the opportunities that can find their way to you and to your company.

If you want to know more on this subject, Dan's book is available as of March 30, 2009. It is a super read for anyone getting started with the concept of personal branding, or anyone in the job search game.  If you can't wait for the book in the mail, check out his blog. He lives this space.

 

-------------------- Talk Back ------------------------

"If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound?"

Do you exist if the Internet doesn't know you?

Do you have spinach in your teeth if you don't own your personal brand, a.k.a. your digital identity?

What do people want in a place to work?

Does "Fun" Belong?

As my team and I started thinking seriously about EMC's employment brand about a year ago I first put on my old marketing hat.

"Let's start with what the target audience wants ... and then look at what we have in the most genuine manner. Where they match up -- heck, that's a good place to start."

With no budget assigned to this endeavor and a strong desire from our recruiters to have a clear message, we opted to listen to our gut and take the 80/20 route. … Get the messaging 80% right, get it to market and refine as we go."

We started by asking the senior-most folks in HR at EMC, "What do people want in a job?"

This is what came back, in no particular order:

• They want career growth.
• They want to enjoy the people they work with.
• They want to have pride for where they work and feel respected.
• They want to make a difference – the type of work matters.
• They want to generate wealth.

Then our head of executive recruiting saw it and said it was missing one thing, "Fun." We added:

• They want Fun.

Some (well, one) scoffed at this last entry ... "FUN!?” He said, “I don't come to work to have fun. I come to work to work. I have fun at home. I go home to have my fun."

We put fun on the list anyway.

When we matched what EMC genuinely has to offer against that list and started exploring with our global base of employees what they thought was cool and truly compelling about EMC, we frankly look pretty darned good. I’ll share some examples and profile EMC people on this blog to back up what I say.

I’ll also share some of the more scientific findings we discovered in studying this space further.

TALK BACK:

Do you agree with this "gut list" of drivers? What's important to you? Should "fun" be on the list?  What do you think the order should be? (Please include what you do for a living or desire to do for a living.)

One of my developer (a.k.a. Engineer) friends, for example, took issue with seeing Career Growth at the top of the list. That is not a driver for him. A better phrase for him would be "rewarding career" or "exciting career."

(Looking at the photo for "work fun" I selected I'm not sure if it looks more "scary" than "fun" ... pretend it looks "fun.")

Job Hunting is Dumb

I find it interesting that we discuss the “Job Market” and set out to “look for a job.” Isn’t that a short-sighted thing to do? It is like buying a product based on price rather than total return on investment. It might feel like the thing to do at that point in time but in the mid- to long-run, you’re losing out.

I believe people would be a lot better off if they “company hunt” rather than “job hunt.” Think about it, who likes looking for a job? It must be stressful and terribly time consuming.

By a stroke of luck I landed at a great company seventeen years ago. I’ve been able to change jobs here about every 1-3 years and continue to enjoy things like a predictably short commute, un-disrupted stock option vesting, a dynamic environment always filled with growth and challenge and decade-long relationships with co-workers that stretch across the company and across the globe.

I was reminded of the wisdom of this “company hunt” type approach when reading a recent Fortune article by David Kirkpatrick titled “Why tech stocks have a glorious future.”

  The article quotes recent research, “2008 Global Internet Snapshot compiled by Imran Khan, senior analyst for Internet, media and entertainment at JP Morgan ” which paints quite an attractive future for stocks (and companies) that could benefit from the “unremitting hunger for technology, communication, Internet access, and information.”

Kirkpatrick goes on to say, “That means that while we may seem to be living in grim economic times, tech companies are facing a future that is anything but grim - something that is salutary to recall when we read the daily headlines about financial turmoil and economic uncertainty. If you take the global view - and what technology company doesn't? - there really isn't much uncertainty. While things could slow down for a year or two, there is nowhere to go but up - way up.”

I’ve been living this “way up” trend for on-line information and connectivity to information since day one at EMC and there is no end in sight. The amount of digital information grows on average about 60% per year. IDC just did a study on the digital universe and says that number is only getting higher.  As the place “Where Information Lives” – that’s pretty cool for EMC.

Now think if you happen to be a badge carrying EMCer when seeing these headlines. It means there’ll be plenty of opportunity for professional and wealth growth right from where they’re sitting. Yum.