How your professional reputation affects your career success and growth.
Your professional reputation is extremely important because it affects help
other people in your industry
see you and it affects the success at which you can launch and grow your career.
I mean, Jeff Bezos said it best. Jeff Bezos was the founder of Amazon.com and
he said that your reputation is what other people say about you when you leave
the room. What Jeff Bezos said was about a company's brand,
but the same is true of your career.
What people say about you is really important because professionally what they
say about you can either make or break you.
And this was a concept that I had to learn myself.
You know I began my career in academia, 10 years in college,
and the concept of a brand, of a personal brand, was just so unknown to me.
It wasn't until there was one time that I attended a session for graduate
students and there
was a speaker in the front of the room and she came from the business world.
She was an entrepreneur and she was talking about your personal brand.
Prior to that,
all I thought a brand meant was a company's brand and I thought it didn't apply
to me because I didn't have a company and I wasn't thinking about being an
entrepreneur.
But when she said your personal brand is extremely important because what people
say about you could either make or break you. That really changed things for me.
I realized that even though I don't have a business,
even though I don't plan on being an entrepreneur,
you still have a personal brand. So what exactly is a reputation?
Our reputation is basically
just a set of beliefs and values and standards that someone else assumes about
you and your character.
Of course,
the good news is that our reputation can be built on facts and their experience
of you,
but on the other hand, our reputation can also be based on assumptions,
opinions, that come from gossip or innuendo.
So you want to make sure that you are taking control of your reputation,
that you are intentionally building your reputation and not having it built by
accident. And your reputation is made up of two things.
It's made up of your capability and it's made up of your character.
Building your professional reputation can take the better part of your career,
but it can be undermined or even destroyed in the matter of minutes. Right?
And so that's why it's important because your career capital,
the most important career capital you have is not your technical skills,
it's not your work history,
it's not the skills that you developed as a result of training,
specialized training, your most important career capital is your reputation,
because your reputation is what preceeds you.
And that's why it's extremely important that you build it intentionally and not
to let it happen by accident.
The problem is most people aren't doing anything to control their reputation and
to do so with intent. I mean,
there was a survey out there where they surveyed a thousand adults in the US and
they found that
about 80% of them didn't do anything to manage their reputation online.
And only about 22% of them, when they went online to look at, Google themselves,
and what they found, the information they found,
they were actually satisfied with,
and that's what they wanted others to know about them.
So talk about the 80 / 20 rule.
80% of them aren't managing their reputation and among them,
most of them would say that the thing that they would find themselves,
information they would
find themselves online that they weren't really happy with.
That's not what they wanted people to know about them.
And only 20% are satisfied or
did something to actively manage their online reputation. Right.
So when I heard this, when I heard the statistic, it was astonishing.
But at the same time, I remembered that
when I was a college student or even when I recently graduated with my PhD,
I really
didn't think that I could do anything in my power to manage my reputation.
I felt that, what I was saying, the conversation in my head was like, well,
people are going to say what they're going to say about me.
How can I control what they think? Right? And that was the thing that
was the limiting belief. Actually you can,
you can influence what people think about you.
It's true you can't control what they say about you because you can't control
what they do what they think.
But you can definitely do things to do highly influence their perception of you
and that's
managing your reputation. So how can you, how can you manage your reputation?
How can you do it with intent? Right?
What am I going to share with you are 15 avenues that you can control,
that you can use to manage your online reputation and influence how
others perceive you in your professional career. Comment below.
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The first avenue is your bio and your resume.
Treat these two documents as marketing materials. These are front facing,
customer facing if you will, documents that you can completely control.
You can control what goes on them and what to remove from them.
The second avenue is your career story.
I mean watch my video on how to sell yourself to a hiring manager where I talk
about how you can talk about your career journey in a way that's captivating.
That's when you talk about where you started
from the desires you are trying to achieve any conflicts along the way and of
course the transformation that happened to you in your career journey.
The third avenue are your achievements that you were recognized for.
Maybe they are within your company, maybe it was in your community or cause
that you are passionate about any achievements where you received recognition
that people can actually say yes, I was a witness to that.
The fourth avenue is your accolades and your credentials. Yes.
These include things like your degree, it's your college diplomas as well.
They also include other programs that you've graduated from,
other accolades,
awards that you have received.
And these also go a long ways in terms of speaking towards your reputation.
The fifth avenue is what your peers and colleagues say about you.
I mean after all your reputation
is what people say about you when you leave the room.
So why not ask someone who has
something positive and something powerful to say about you.
And that goes a long way in terms of
shaping the footprint that you left in your industry.
The sixth avenue is your authorships and of course
if you published any books or ebooks,
published anything that was published by a major publication company,
that definitely is included in here. But if you haven't,
if you don't have a book,
if you don't have a journal or an article written in a magazine, that's okay.
Authorships can also include things that you have written within your company
that
were published internally or that were very industry specific.
The seventh avenue is your salary and also how it's grown over the years.
I mean, when you began your industry, you began your career,
you started at a certain salary, your starting salary.
So how did that change over the year?
That also speaks volumes in terms of the things that you've learned,
how valuable you were in the marketplace,
especially if you can show a tremendous growth in your salary.
The Eighth Avenue is your work presentations.
It's different from your authorships because in your
presentations you are demonstrating your unique expertise,
your unique knowledge.
This is the value that you have been putting in your organization or in your
industry. So any presentations that you've made to partnerships,
to colleagues within your team that
have transformed the way that they do things,
this goes a long way in terms of managing your reputation.
Avenue number nine are your public appearances.
It doesn't mean that you need to be speaking from
stage or give a Tedx talk, but if you did, that's great.
If you didn't any public appearances you made,
maybe you were fighting for a cause,
maybe you were standing up to speak about something.
Any public appearances that show your passion,
that show your interest and that show your
articulation goes to managing your reputation.
Avenue number 10 is your portfolio of work.
I mean these include things like if you are an artist,
of course it is your physical portfolio,
but if you work for a company for a number of years or if you changed companies
over the course of your career, all of that amounts to the body of work,
work that you had done within the company,
within your industry to transform the way things are done and your body of work
goes to show your thinking process.
How you are analytical, your capabilities and your competence.
Now the last five avenues are a
little bit less obvious, but they
count as points towards your reputation and they help to influence the
way other people perceive you. Right? So the next avenue is your appearance.
This is exactly as it seems. It's how you dress, it is how you show up.
It is how groomed you are and how professional you seem. I mean,
you've heard the same that you really can't have a second chance at making your
first impression. So why not make it a strong one?
Think about how other people in the industry show up and look at the
way that they dress and you want to mirror that. You don't want to just down,
it's okay to dress up or the same,
but you also want to make sure that your appearances speak volumes to how
professional you are and that you have a high value of professionalism.
Avenue number 12 is the way you live and your lifestyle. You like it or not,
you can't deny this,
but people are watching. And of course you're also publishing too,
you're on Facebook, you're on Instagram. The pictures you post,
people will Google and people will find these photos because they are part of
the public domain. So what do you want people to know about you?
What don't you want people to know about you?
So be careful on what you put out there in terms of showing and showcasing your
lifestyle and the way that you live.
Avenue number 13 is the way you carry yourself.
This goes part and parcel with your appearance,
but more likely the way you carry yourself goes in terms of your posturing,
the way that you shake someone's hand, the way that you look into their eyes,
the way that you frame yourself when you're in a conversation,
do you appear too timid?
Do appear to commandeering, things like that.
So you want to carry yourself in a positive way that
doesn't turn people off when they have a conversation with you.
Avenue number 14 is your sense of humanity. Yes.
This includes if you have a certain cause that you're passionate about,
but it also includes your desire for contribution,
making a meaningful contribution in the world and helping other people and your
sense of
humanity goes a long way in terms of being likable and trustworthy as well.
So showcase that if you have a cause that you're passionate about,
the way that you help other people, find a way to articulate that in a way
that is authentic.
And avenue 15 is your inner circle and the people that you associate with.
And this is really important because you know you've heard this,
I mean how many of you heard
the saying that you're the sum average of the five people that are closest to
you, right?
So who, who is it?
What kind of success do you want and where do you want to see yourself?
Where do you want to see yourself five years, ten years from your career.
So who you see yourself is going to go a long ways in terms of the way people
perceive you. Because if you associate yourself with people who are successful,
with people who carry themselves professionally, then your association,
"by association" that's where that phrase comes from, by association,
you will also be seen as professional.
You will also be seen as someone who is successful
and you will also be seen as someone who is very serious in the way that they
manage their career.
Once you've started implementing these 15 avenues and started to take an active
role in managing your reputation,
it will really help you to gain the trust and respect of key decision makers in
your
professional career path and it can also help you to achieve your professional
goals.
So if that's you and you are looking to transition your career in a different
direction or accelerate your career,
I have something for you. Go to careerrevisionist.com/intensive
look at the link below that. What that is is at is a program,
a career intensive program that will help you to use these avenues
of managing your reputation.
Once you have the influence that you need to influence key decision makers,
this program will help you to build your career in the new career direction and
achieve the goals that you always desired in your career path.
So go to that link and I'll see you on the inside.