How To Rebrand Yourself At Any Age - Liz Ryan

Most of us are still getting used to the idea that we have brands -- and that in fact, we are brands, whether we like it or not. We're used to thinking of branding as a product and service thing, something for Coke and Honda, but not for people like us.

We all have brands, even if we're not aware of them. You can say "I don't want to have a brand," but that's like saying "I don't want to have a reputation."
if you're alive, you have a reputation. Babies have them. "Did you see Miranda's baby, Alex? He's the most adorable three-month-old you've ever seen, with a shock of black hair like his dad's. He's already trying to scoot across the floor."
Little Alex doesn't have a clue that people are talking about him, but he'd better get used to it. People will be talking about him throughout his life, just the way people talk about you and me. Sometimes they're people we don't even know!
Once we realize that a brand is nothing more than the way we're known to people -- the ones who have personal experience with us and the ones who don't - we can relax about our branding.
We don't have to boast and preen. We have no one to please or impress. We don't have to trumpet our accomplishments. We can write a LinkedIn profile and a Human-Voiced Resume that make it clear where we've been and where we're going.
We can allow some of our personality to come through.
There's nothing scary or intimidating about branding when you realize that your story is your brand.Your story is a great one, and no one else has it. Go ahead and share it!
Imagine that you're writing your LinkedIn profile. What do you want people to know about you as they read it?
That depends on what you want. If you're job-hunting, you might focus your LinkedIn profile toward managers who could hire you and recruiters who could snag you for their firms' or clients' open positions.
if you're consulting, you can pitch your LinkedIn profile toward prospective clients. If you're looking to build your network, you can create your profile with an eye toward meeting new people who are interested in the same things you are.
Millions of us in the worldwide, white-collar working population are working our way up the personal branding curve at the same time. You can see that as you browse profiles on LinkedIn.
Some people write about themselves using Business Traditional Zombie language a la "Motivated self-starter with a proven track record of success." Some people use a human voice in their LinkedIn profiles, like this: "I help small specialty food brands get bigger."
The words you choose to brand yourself make up part of your brand. If you're a formal person, you'll use more formal language. If you're a funky and freewheeling person, you'll write your LinkedIn profile to sound the way you sound when you talk.
Your brand is not just your LinkedIn profile. Your Human-Voiced Resume is part of it, and so is your physical presence and the way you talk. Your manner of dress is part of your brand. Every single aspect of you is part of your brand. You can't separate yourself from your brand - that's the point!
Here's the thing to remember about branding: some people will like what they read or hear about you. Some people won't. God bless them all. What do you care?
There are seven billion people on our planet. There are millions of people who would love to meet you and share a nice gelato with you. There are others who wouldn't give you the time of day, and that's fine. You don't have time for people who don't appreciate your kind of jazz.
Never worry about people who don't care for you. You won't change their opinion. Focus on people who resonate at the same frequency you do!
You might want to shift your branding at some point. You might be changing careers and avid to shift your branding to reflect your new direction. You can brand yourself to attract hiring managers and/or clients who'll hire you in your new arena. Your branding goal will be to make clear exactly what that arena is.
The LinkedIn headlines "Job-hunting" and "Seeking new opportunity" will not help you. They tell us nothing.
The headline "Job-seeking" isn't specific enough. No one is going to click through a set of LinkedIn search results to see what kind of job you're looking for. You have to spell that out right in your LinkedIn headline, like this:
HR Generalist with startup experience and tons of recruiting looking for my next challenge
Someone scrolling LinkedIn search results in search of candidates will be able to make a yes/no decision about this HR Generalist in two seconds. That’s what you want. There is no benefit in trying to be all things to all people. The only brands that appeal to everyone are the brands Air and Water.
You might want to change up your branding because you’re changing careers, or you might simply want to showcase a facet of you that is becoming more prominent in your career.
We get a lot of calls from people who say “I’m a Marketing person and I’m not changing that, but I need my brand to bring out a side of my background that especially appeals to me and that is going to be more important as time goes on.”
You might want to revamp your brand because you’re in reinvention mode and don’t have the foggiest idea what you want to do next. That is an interesting time – we call it the Desert of Reinvention – and the key to your branding in that zone is to keep your options option.
You wouldn’t say you’re an HR Generalist with a startup bent and recruiting experience in that case. You don’t know what you want to be next, and that’s fine. You can use a very open branding statement like this LinkedIn headline:
Thirty-year middle school teacher exploring possibilities in Higher Ed and Human Services
If you go on three interviews and decide that Human Services is not your cup of tea, it's no big thing! You can change your LinkedIn headline ten minutes later.
These are the Big Three reasons for people to rebrand themselves in mid-career:

• Career change (destination known)
• To showcase a facet of themselves that wasn’t highlighted before
• Career change (destination unknown)

It is easy to spruce up your brand through the miracle of framing! A frame is a mental model. When someone puts a frame in your mind – and by this time in your life there are millions of ‘em in there – it shapes your view of the world.
When you write a short Summary for your Human-Voiced Resume or your LinkedIn profile, you set the frame for the reader as s/he reads the rest of your profile or resume. The reader will make sense of your history through the lens of the frame that you established for them in your Summary.
Here’s the Summary for the HR Generalist we met earlier. His name is Trevor. Trevor hasn’t been an HR Generalist before, but he was a Recruiting Assistant at one fast-growing company and an HR Coordinator at another one. See if he sounds like a recruiting-heavy HR Generalist now:
HR Generalist with Recruiting
I learned HR by hiring large numbers of people into fast-growing Silicon Valley startups. I learned how to run job ads, screen resumes, set up interviews and conduct them, run background checks and negotiate job offers in a high-volume hiring environment.
I learned how to keep my cool in a crisis and get feisty hiring managers to agree on hiring decisions, handling everyday employee matters from payroll issues to maternity leaves as well. I’m looking for an HR Generalist position that will let me combine recruiting and employee relations roles to keep a great company growing and thriving.
In four sentences Trevor lays it out. We learn a lot about him. We understand what he wants to do. When we read down Trevor's resume and see that his past job titles are HR Coordinator and Recruiting Assistant, we're not likely to say “Oh, HALE naw, we're not interviewing this guy! He's never been an HR Generalist before.”
We're not likely to react that way, because Trevor comes through the page as a human being and we respond to him the same way.
There is no age limit and no statute of limitations on career change and mid-stream rebranding! It's just the opposite. Branding is a constant process.
If you can imagine yourself sitting on a blow-up exercise ball, constantly making tiny adjustments to stay on the ball, you’ll have the idea. Your brand will keep evolving forever, just like you and your brilliant career!