Building your professional career brand

Searching and applying for your first job can easily become stressful particularly if you’ve spent the past 3 years studying at university.

Most young people are often left confused and suffer from anxiety, as they have no idea on how to secure their first job. There is a lot of pressure on graduates but no real solution on how to take the next steps to secure a graduate job. Founder of Graduate Surveyors, Shyam Visavadia believes that young people do not receive the right level of guidance and help to prepare them for the journey ahead. Traditionally, young people scramble to put together weak and often generic resume and cover letters in the hope of securing that much deserved job. We don’t believe this is the right way to build the foundations of a successful career.

“Your career will fill a large part of your life, so you should spend time in understanding what you love and start creating the right environment to succeed within it”

The way people communicate with one another is changing and social media has helped and will continue helping people realize their potential. Even though your resume and cover letter forms part of your marketing collateral, your social media footprint will play a large part in building your professional brand. Graduate Surveyors believes that recruiters and employers alike are using social media and the Internet to source good candidates. At Graduate Surveyors we want to help candidates build their professional brand by giving them the right advice to get them employed; and over the past 5 years we have been very successful in doing this.

We understand the trials and tribulations of the ‘job search’ and can empathize with those employers who are looking for the best young talent. Here is some advice to help you build your professional career brand:

Your Professional Career Brand

Shyam explains that after being rejected by over 100 employers he turned to social media to help promote his skills and experience; this subsequently led him to secure his ideal graduate job. He nurtured and cultivated relationships online to help get his foot in the door. Shyam often posted relevant content and connected those with mutual interest to create value within his network. Shyam says ‘be strategic in your approach – I built relationships with professionals that could potentially help build and grow my brand often sharing content which would stimulate discussion and interest. Shyam notes that the likes, retweets, views and shares helped attract people to his profile. Today, Shyam has over 6,500 useful connections, almost 6,500 profile followers and over 2,500 followers on his Graduate Surveyors advice group. Shyam also receives more than 2,000 profile views a week. Each of his posts receives more than 1,000 views within the first 12 hours from posting. This has opened doors to other opportunities including sitting on the RICS Matrics UK Board, freelance writing opportunities and being invited to networking events.

Maintaining your Brand

Most people can build an online brand like Shyam, however, maintaining and developing this may pose a threat to your career search. With soo much information trending online it is important that you protect your brand. Shyam suggests that every so often you should Google yourself to clear any links, pictures or posts which reflect adversely to your brand. Recruiters may often use search engines to find information on candidates and you don’t want to be caught out! Maybe look at the first few pages and see the type of content that comes up. Remember that what may be acceptable to you, may often not be to others. We believe that employers are looking for ambassadors and a picture of you on a ‘BIG’ night out isn’t really the impression you should be giving off. In todays world online image is as important as first impressions at an interview - make it count!

Protecting your Brand

If you’re finding that Google or other search engines are picking up a lot of private content, we suggest that you look at your privacy settings; ensuring that you adjust your settings to high to filter out content which may be visible on Google or other sites. With this in mind, we suggest that you don’t post content that could potentially jeopardize future potential opportunities.

Social Media is King!

It is very likely that you will have multiple social channels that you use for different purposes. (and if you don’t than why don’t you think of extending your marketing collateral beyond Linkedin). Make sure that your accounts are succinct as often one social media profile can be connected to another without you knowing! How you are perceived online is very important, as often people will form an opinion of you based on what they feel or think of your profile. If in doubt don’t post something or seek advice. GenX will probably laugh at the fact that social media is changing the way we perceive others and careers, however, their predecessors (GenY and Z) this is something that needs to be considered.

Graduate Surveyors aspiration is to help young people into the world of work through strategies which can help them become more employable. We also understand that the war on talent is fierce and we want to bring the best talent to employers around the world. We have already helped hundreds of young people over the past 5 years and we hope to grow on our success to inspire a generation.