Interviews are daunting, and quite frankly they suck. With the economy how it is, what is a potential employee supposed to do in order to differentiate themselves from the rest of the applicants? In a word: Personal Brand.
People like @Garyvee have been promoting personal brands as a way to get to the next level, but what about if you can’t afford to jump right into the lush lifestyle of a talent agency representing you with speaking deals, book gigs and other lavish luxuries that people in that caliber are enjoying from their personal brand? What if, as crazy as it sounds you need to “take the deal” as Seth Godin says and go for a ‘regular’ job to earn more money?
All Hail the Personal Brand
While some employers may be timid about hiring an up and coming personality that is building their brand, the smart employers also know that the value you can bring to the table far exceeds the risk of losing you to bigger and better things. How will they know this? Because someone who is working on building their personal brand through blogs, social media, forums and other forms of communication really understands what is going on in the technology, marketing, communication, pr etc.
Personal brands are a great way to showcase your creativity, enthusiasm for whatever category you want to work in and give a potential employer some insight into who you ARE as opposed to just what you can DO. Personalities are equally as important as abilities to many employers, how are you building your brand?
Here are The College Startup we love to meet people who are young, entrepreneurial, focused and have found a model that drives value to the marketplace. All of these points could be checked off for Aaron Kallenberg (@kallena) with his Dandyid.org and Claim.io that focus on helping people manage their personal and business brands across the social web.
So what is the value is paying someone else to help you gain control of your brand across the social web? The immediate result is that none of your competitors or impostors can operate under your brand name. Imagine if a service like this has snagged the Twitter handle of “jt” or a similarly short and “premium” handle before the service became incredibly popular?
Kallenerg notes their connection to Vaynermedia which is a sweat equity partner in the sense that Gary and AJ Vaynerchuk, as well as their entire team have teamed up with Kallenberg for equity in exchange for pure effort to help build his business. This relationship has appeared to work out well for him so far as it is a match to his DNA. When asked what drives him, Kallenberg responded with “At first I did consulting out of necessity and quickly realized that being creative and working with great people is what I wanted to do”. His drive to also create a greater impact for people and society is admirable and fits in nicely with the increasing trend of young, tech oriented entrepreneurs using innovation for the greater social good.
From a competitive standpoint, Kallenberg notes that due to their high quality control, but still outsourced business model they are able to beat their competition by roughly 45% and still deliver the same top notch service for his customers. Being from the Pacific Northwest originally, this unique model found him some media coverage in the NW Business Monthly and other localized publications.
So as another entrepreneur, what can you take away from Aaron and his success in growing Claim.io to supporting over 300 social sites across the web? A big takeaway should be should be a common occurrence at this point is that firms who invest in people as both their customers and their management team do well in the long run. Claim.io in particular is an interesting business because not only do they believe in caring about people, but the service in fact promotes the personal connection that so many brands could benefit from, and by extension help other businesses care about their customers in a similar way.
Check out Claim.io and see if it is the right fit for your business.
I had the pleasure to meet Brian Calvert from Komo News Radio back in December to talk about MyBigGive. Our projections were a little off on the amount raised for the quarter but the interview was still fun! I will be meeting with Mr. Calvert again tonight here in Pullman, WA to walk through the Pepsi Refresh Everything and about where we plan on going as a company.
Enjoy!
Komo News Radio 12/2009
