CFA Podcast: Personal Brand and Skills Assessment

This CFA Institute podcast entitled "Personal Brand and Skills Assessment" defines personal brand and delves into the relevance of brand to personal and professional success in organizations.

The key takeaway is this:  whether you manage it or not, you have a personal brand.  Others make assumptions about you based on their experiences with you and with your work/impact.  Greater awareness of this can lead to greater career success.

In the interview: the CASH model

You’ve done the hard work of creating your personal brand, building a winning resume, and scoring the big interview.  You’ve investigated the organization, know what questions to expect, and have thought about what makes you different and better than other candidates.

Chances are you don’t interview every day, so you might be working against your nerves a bit.  To make it easier, remember CASH – four simple reminders during the conversation.

4S Model: Steps

The final S of the 4S Model is Steps:  taking the steps to actually move the new, prepared you towards your career goals and aspirations.  The first three (Self, Surroundings, Skills) are about knowing yourself, understanding the environment in which you operate, and assessing and improving your unique skill set.  The fourth S is about creating your personal marketing plan.

4S Model: Self

At many large malls, large conspicuous maps are posted showing the many different stores, attractions, and points of interest throughout.  When the typical individual approaches a map like this, the first inclination is to look for a red dot, a big arrow, or the words “You Are Here.”

The first step in the 4S Model is Self, and focuses on creating your guiding mission and vision.  To get there, you have to understand who you are, where you’ve been, and where you want to go from a career perspective.

4S Model: Skills

In the same way organizations must continuously improve, you must also continually increase your capability to become more valuable to employers, clients, and other stakeholders in your career.

Capability is the overall combination of your knowledge, skills, abilities, and the other intangibles you possess.  Increasing this capability is the Skills step of the 4S Model, and is driven by your personal development plan.

4S Model: Surroundings

“No man is an island.”  This is the first line of John Donne’s famous poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” written back in 1624 as part of his private notes, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions.

Also popular in corporate circles is the story of a butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane:  a small event far away that creates a large impact.  While some of the nuance is usually lost, the point remains that we can be affected by events outside ourselves.

Surroundings are important, as they determine in large part what the effect will be of actions we take.  The better we know our surroundings, the more effective we can be.

Coaching

“Hey Coach!”

In little league, the NFL, and in soccer camps around the world, a coach is someone that teaches, consoles, trains, offers a shoulder to lean on, and can be counted on for swift correction.  The coach is the one that teaches teamwork, fundamentals, and how to win in style.

4S Model

In thinking about a career, it’s important to define exactly what that means to you as an individual.

At many universities, career is about getting a first job using the new skills from an undergraduate or graduate program.  Some organizations define career as more of a retention tool – focusing on keeping the individual engaged to drive organizational success.  Individuals at nonprofit and religious organizations might interchange career and calling, intimating that what they get up and do every day is driven by a larger force outside of themselves.

What is a career to you?

Elevator speech

Marketing and advertising can teach us a lot about creating a personal brand.

In advertising the challenge is to deliver a memorable and actionable message in thirty seconds to a minute.  On radio, these messages are a mixture of words and background sounds.  With television and streaming media, sights and sounds combine to deliver the message.  At an amusement park, all of the senses are stimulated to deliver the message in the first thirty seconds:  bright lights, bells ringing, the scents of tasty food drifting through the air – so sugary you can almost taste it, and the bustle of people.  The message that primes the rest of your experience is “you’ll have a great time here!”

In How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less, Nicholas Boothman writes:  “Believe it or not the attention span of the average person is about 30 seconds!