Episode 12 – How to create your personal brand with Jennifer Holloway

March 4, 2015 Podcast

Welcome to the 12th episode of the Graduate Job Podcast.

This week I speak with best-selling author and PR and branding expert Jennifer Holloway, as we cover the topic of how to create your own personal brand. Jennifer shares why everyone needs to start thinking about their personal brand, no matter what your age or experience. She provides great insight into how you can begin to develop exactly what your brand is, and the best ways for you to share it with the world. If you are a current student or recent graduate then this episode will ensure that you set yourself up for personal branding success.

You can download the podcast to your computer or listen to it here on the blog. Additionally, you can subscribe via iTunes, or Stitcher radio.

MORE SPECIFICALLY IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT:

  • What personal branding is
  • Why it is important to develop a personal brand
  • How to develop a personal brand using the personal brand pyramid
  • How to share your brand with a wider audience
  • Why coffee and tea don’t go well together
  • How to best use feedback when developing your brand
  • A magic word to use for interviewing success

LINKS AND RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Transcript – Episode 12 – How to create your personal brand with Jennifer Holloway

James:   Welcome back everyone to the Graduate Job Podcast, with your host James Curran. The Graduate Job Podcast is your weekly home for all things related to helping you on your journey to finding that amazing job. Each week I bring together the best minds in the industry, speaking to leading authors, entrepreneurs, coaches and bloggers who bring decades of experience into a byte size weekly 30 minute show. Put simply, this is the show I wish I had a decade ago when I graduated.

This week I speak with PR and branding expert Jennifer Holloway as we examine how to create your own personal brand. Now I know that I might have lost some of you straight away there with that title, trust me, this is one episode you need to stick with, if it doesn’t resonate with you now, I promise it will in exactly 38 minutes time. Jennifer is a brilliant speaker and she will passionately convince you why you need to start paying attention to your personal brand, and thinking about what people are saying about you when you’re not in the room. So without further ado, lets go straight to episode 12 on personal branding.

James:  Hello, and welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast. I’m thrilled today to be speaking to Jennifer Holloway.   Jennifer is author of the book, Personal Branding for Brits and a coach and trainer specializing in the field of personal branding. Jennifer has over 15 years experience in PR and brand management and today we’re going to explore why you – yes, you – need to start thinking about your personal brand.

Jennifer, a very warm welcome to the Graduate Job Podcast.

Jennifer:      Thank you very much.

James:   So, I’ve given our listeners a very brief introduction but before we delve into our topic today, would you like to introduce yourself properly and tell us a little bit more about what it is that you do and what your business does.

Jennifer: Yeah; definitely.   So, my name is Jennifer Holloway and, essentially, I spend my time and run my business helping people to blow their own trumpets without sounding like idiots; and that’s it in a nutshell, though.   It’s whether people are just starting out in their career or they’re a bit further along or they’re heads of organizations, it’s getting people to appreciate in business people buy people. So if you want to buy you, you need to be very clear what it is and who you are that you’re selling. And, essentially, my job is helping people to do that without, as I say, sounding like complete idiots.

James: Super. Because I know lots of people are concerned they might end up sounding like they are someone on The Apprentice.

Jennifer: Yes. Stuart, ‘the brand’ Bags, often springs to mind when people are talking to me. I mean, The Apprentice is very extreme, obviously. It’s good television. They chose people that are good bigging themselves up, but to be fair, actually, apprentice style ways of promoting yourself are unfortunately creeping in. There was an article in The Sunday Times a while ago about universities had had applications from people and they had to write back people and ask them to de-apprentice the applications because they were going so over the top with their description of themselves. One person — this is a genuine thing that was quoted in the article – they were applying for a drama degree and they basically said that the first time they had ever been on the stage was when they were in their mother’s womb and you just think, how does that happen? So, yes, there are people out there who genuinely think that’s the way to get ahead. That is not what I believe.   It’s about being yourself, but being the best version of it and then giving lots of subtle clues so that whenever I come into contact with you I get lots of little good messages instead of one big overblown, you know, blowing your own trumpet.




James: And today we’re going to explore why students and recent graduates need to think about what they’re personal brand is. So starting at the very beginning, what is a personal brand?

Jennifer: Right. Personal brand is just a label or a ribbon that you can put around the package that consists of two key things. Number one, it consists of what you have to offer. So when you’re a graduate starting out, a lot of graduates I know and I do work with an awful lot of graduates when they are on graduate schemes and my client, and number one thing that they have to offer their new boss is, here’s my degree. Here’s what degree I have and what I have learned with that degree. Now, that’s quite limited because I’ve also got all these other graduates who are saying, here’s what I got. Here’s what my degree is.   So what it is, what personal branding is trying to do is to increase the what you offer.   It’s not just about what your qualification is but what experience have you got, what skills are you really good at, what have you delivered previously. So it’s really getting that, what do you bring to the table stuff. Now, that’s part one of your brand.

Part two of your brand, though – and this is a bit that often gets overlooked – is the “who” part of your brand. Now, the reason that’s important is, as I say, I’ve got loads of graduates that I could be asking to fill this position. You’ve all got the “what I need” to get the job done. But, who are you when you’re bringing that what to the table, because that’s what’s going to help me decide. Because when I’m thinking about getting this job done and filling this position, I’m also thinking, what’s this person’s personality? How am I going to enjoy working with them? Are we going to share the same sorts of values? Is their attitude going to be right? How will they get along with the other members of the team? And if you can only tell me what you can do and not who you are, you’re limiting the chance that I’ll buy the whole package. So personal brand is about going out there and not just selling the “who”, it’s selling the “what” alongside it.

James: Why is it important that people need to start thinking about developing a brand?

Jennifer:  The reason is, they already have a brand, whether they realize it or not and that’s just not a flippant answer.   Jeff Bezos — the man who founded Amazon — now that guy is worth a bit. He’s certainly a very astute businessman and he once said, your brand is what people say when you’re not in the room. All of us, me included — definitely — when we’re not somewhere but our name comes up in conversation there will often be a little comment that will be added. Now, if you’re lucky, that comment will be something positive like, oh, my goodness, I’ve never met anyone that works so hard. Or, oh, my goodness, they’re so ambitious. They’re really going places. If those sorts of things are said when you’re not in the room, good on you. You’ve got a great brand. However, it might be that someone says, oh, my goodness; does that person ever meet a deadline? Or, oh, my goodness, their attitude sucks. I mean, if that’s what’s being said when you’re not in the room, you still have a brand. It’s just not a very good one. So, the reason why I say to people, you want to be paying attention to your personal brand is it’s about helping to put out strong positive messages that will increase the chance of what’s said when you’re not there is the good stuff and decrease the chance it’s the bad stuff.

James:  And you talk in the book about the need to allay sceptics to the idea of a personal brand.

Jennifer: Yeah.

James:  What would you say to people who are listening who might say, look, I’m a student. This isn’t relevant to me.

Jennifer:  I would say, that’s fine if you want to think that but you are missing a trick because there are plenty of other students out there who are already starting to formulate what and who they bring to the table; they’re already starting to build their profile online; they’re already starting to put a network together. It doesn’t have to be full-on, but don’t just sit there twiddling your thumb thinking that jobs are going to suddenly land in your lap because there are other people out there being much more canny.

James: And then as the title of the book implies, Personal Branding for Brits, sticking to national stereotypes, we’re not always the most forthcoming about blowing our own trumpet. What would you say to people who might say, Oh, I’m too embarrassed to do that? I like to keep my skills— My work will speak for itself.

Jennifer: Yeah. Well, you snooze, you lose is a phrase that my other half and I say. Yeah, I come across — and it’s not just graduates — I come across people of all levels of business who say to me, my work should speak for itself and you know what? I genuinely believe it should. You’re absolutely right but the world doesn’t work like that, and I can give you plenty of examples from my own corporate life when you would see people getting promoted that you would think, hey, why did they get the job? They don’t even do their work properly. Well, because they went out and they raised their profile and they got themselves out there and you know, life’s not fair. Sometimes the people who are great at interview get the job but they’ll be shit at doing the job. So why should you lose out, though, just because you’re great at the job but you’re not so good at putting yourself out there.




Again, I keep coming back to this, the reason I called it Personal Branding for Brits, a lot of people when they go looking for personal brand books online, most of them out there are written by Americans for Americans. Now, that’s fine but that is a culture where if you stand up and say, hey, look at me. I’m great at X, people will go, yeah. Wow. That’s fantastic. They won’t laugh in your face. You do that in Britain, hey, look at me everybody. I’m great at X. They’ll be like doing the tosspot symbol. I don’t think so. So, it’s very much about getting yourself out there but doing it subtly. That is the way of doing it.   So, just relying on “my work will speak for itself”, that is so subtle nobody is getting it. You need to bring a bit more to the table.

James: And you talk in the book about the personal brand pyramid.

Jennifer:   Yeah.

James:  Can you run us through what the foundations are of that and what makes up the pyramid?

Jennifer: Okay. So, a personal brand pyramid is just a structure that I came up with. I started my business in 2008 and I started working on people’s brands and I realized humans are very complicated creatures.   You need a bit of structure to put this around. So, essentially, the personal brand pyramid is taking what I said earlier, of the two key components of your brand – the “who” and the “what” – and just breaking them down a bit further. So if you imagine a pyramid, it is split into six layers. At the top, the first layer you come across are your values. So, this is where you set out very clearly in your mind what your personal values are; your top one or two. Is it the honesty that really matters to you, or fairness? Or is it more about equality or treating others well, or putting yourself first, or community spirit? What are some of these values that you know for you to be happy those have to be in place?

The next layer of the pyramid is your drivers.   This is you getting a clear idea — and this is particularly pertinent for graduates starting their careers — what the hell is it that motivates me? What is it that really floats my boat? What is it that I want out of life? If I’m going to go to work and put all these hours in, what is it that matters? Is it the money I’m going to get or the fact I’ll be working in a team? Or that I want responsibility or I want the chance of being ambitious and moving my career on? Understanding that will help you chose the right job.

The third layer of the pyramid is reputation. This is what Jeff Bezos was talking about. This is what people are saying when you’re not in the room. So, when you create that in your brand, this is you getting a clear idea of what do I want people to say when I’m not in the room and it’s about having one very clear thing that you become known for.

So those are the top three layers. The bottom three layers of the pyramid, you then have behaviour.   This is the personality. So, I can have two graduates walk into my office and have exactly the same qualifications on their CVs but personality–wise, behaviours will be very different. One could be really over the top, loud, gregarious, lots of vitality about them which is fine if that’s what I’m looking for. Or one of them could be quite reserved, quite calm, quite thoughtful, may be quite empathetic. That’s great if that’s what I’m looking for. But you need to know, sort of, what your personality is to help other people understand it.

The fifth layer of your brand are your skills and strengths. This is the “what” you bring to the table. So, yes, I know you’ve got your degree and yes, I know what sort of qualifications you’ve got – that’s one thing – but what are your actual skills?   How do you apply that knowledge? What are your strengths, behaviourally? Are you someone who stays calm in a crisis or you’re someone who’s good at persuading people? It’s about you very much understanding what you do incredibly well.

And then the last, the bottom of the pyramid, the widest part is image. Now, when I talk about image I just don’t mean visual image. I mean, what I’m hearing from you, how you’re acting. Essentially — I should really call it packaging — it’s how your brand comes across to people through how you look, how you sound, how you act, that gives them clues to the rest of the pyramid that’s sitting above it.

James:  Excellent. When I started working for a graduate scheme, one of the things that I kept on being asked at each six monthly review period was, what do you want to be famous for? What do you want your brand to be?

Jennifer: Yes.

James: And it was something that I really struggled with during my entire time there.




So, how would you go about recommending people start to think about what their brand is and how to crystallize in their mind what their brand is?

Jennifer: I think that using the structure of the pyramid is a really good start because it breaks it down. And what I say to people is, give yourself the time and space to think about it. Often I work with people who have got jobs and they’re already like, Jennifer, I do not have enough time in the day to do my job, let alone to think about my brand. But then I’ll often say to them, well, you know, do you have a dog? Yeah. Well, how long do you walk your dog for? Well, 25 minutes. Well, there’s 25 minutes you can be thinking about your brand. You have a train journey to work? Yeah. How long? Forty minutes, right think about your brand. While you’re in the shower. Go wash your hair and think, okay, I’m going to ask myself one question. I’m not saying do your whole brand in 25, 40 minutes or whatever, but whenever you get a chance ask yourself one question. Start off with, what are my values? What does really matter to me? How do I decide what’s right and what’s wrong in the world and just let your mind go.

I mean, when I worked on my own brand, I’m not kidding you – I carried around a tiny little notebook, little spiral bound notebook and I used to have a 40 minutes journey from Skipton into Leeds and I would sit there on the train and write one question down like, what do I want to be known for? And I would just write down whatever came into my head and then you start. You almost end up with too much information at the end of this process.

So, then it’s about going back over it and thinking, well, when I look at these again, which ones really matter to me?   Which ones, if I didn’t have them as part of my personal brand, would feel like I was losing a big chunk of me? And just start putting it together. It is effort. I’m not kidding you. It’s time. It’s thinking. It’s brain-ache, but I tell you, you do it once, you get it down on paper, you get the essence of you in black and white, it makes everything else so much easier. So, you go for that interview, they say to you, so tell us what are your personal values? You’re not sitting there going, oh, ah, yeah, that’s a good question. You’re going, hey, I know what they are. Here’s what they are and here’s why they are. It’s when you’re in your appraisal and you’re asked, what do you want to be famous for? Your brain goes straight to the reputation line of your brand. Well, the thing that matters to me is I want to be known for… dot-dot-dot. And you’re writing your LinkedIn profile and you want to put some personality into it, you go to your brand pyramid, you take some key messages out and you put them in there. The good thing is because you’re taking all of your answers from one key place, you start to become very consistent and that really helps people buy your brand.

James: How important is getting feedback from other people about what they see your brand as? I know, again, when I was working, one wag I worked with described my brand as being tight.

Jennifer:  As in not giving of money, and not buying a round, type of thing?

James:  Well, I think it was just my northerness coming out, and the shock of the prices of pints in London.

Jennifer: I heard once that a Yorkshire man is basically a Scotsman with the generosity taken out. Is that true?

James: I wouldn’t like to comment on that one.

Jennifer: Feedback is— The serious answer to your question is feedback is incredibly important because it can work two ways. For the majority of people I’ve ever worked with, I would say finger in the wind statistic, 95 percent of people they work on their brand they decide, here’s my perception of how I see myself. When they go and they ask other people for feedback on how they see them, for 95 percent of people the feedback is pretty much backing up everything that you put. Yeah, I agree. You are this. You are that. There’s a couple of little bits here that could do with a little bit of polishing off but on the whole, yeah, great brand. However, and this does happen on about 5 percent of the occasions, the feedback people get is, no, that’s not how I see you. No, I see you like this. And then they come to realize, wow, hold on a minute. I’ve got a misconception here and if it’s just one other person telling you their opinion and it doesn’t match yours, well, that’s just one person.   But if you get 10 or more people saying to you, no, I’m sorry to tell you this. You are this way. You really need to start to listen because there’s no point in going out there with a brand that isn’t genuine, that people aren’t buying, because you think you’re selling one thing but they are not buying that because they don’t even see it as part of the brand.

James:  Thinking about areas of skills and maybe areas of weakness, how important is it to focus just on the skills when you’re thinking about your brand; or, to think about your weaknesses as well? Should you just be focusing on the skills and trying to take them even further forward or is about trying to bring the weaknesses up so it’s more consistent across the board?

Jennifer: Right. If you think of your brand as the best version of you, the answer to your question is you’re going to, obviously, be putting in your real strengths, the real cream de la cream stuff is what you want to go in there. Now, we all have weaknesses. We all have things where you think, if I’m honest I’m probably not so good at …..   You don’t really want to be putting them in your brand up front because why would you sell a weakness? Sugar Puff doesn’t go out there and tell me upfront, yeah. It’s got quite a lot of sugar. It might make your teeth fall out. It tells me how much fun kids are going to have fun eating it, et cetera, et cetera. So, brands are about the best version. However, when you know what your weaknesses are, it doesn’t mean ignore them completely. It means look at the positive aspect of those weaknesses because you might be able to play that into your brand. Now, that might sound a bit cockeyed. How is there a positive aspect of a weakness? But believe you me, 15 years in PR has taught me that for everything that looks immediately like bad news, you can usually find a positive element. So, if I give you an example, I’ve had people say to me, oh, a really bad thing about my brand is I’m really impatient. Okay, so there’s a negative. There’s a weakness. I’m impatient. But then I say to them, so, why are you impatient? Well, ‘cause I like getting things done. Well, why do you want to get things done? Well, because I believe in moving things forward quickly. Well, why do you want to move things forward quickly? Because I just think we can achieve so much. Do you hear those three answers? Those are all positive things. Impatient is not good but if you sell me as part of your brand, I’m someone who likes to move things forward and keep it going quickly because I want us to achieve great things, that’s positive stuff. And you can do it authentically because you’re not just making those things up.   That’s genuinely why you’re impatient. So you can still be true to your brand.

James:  Excellent. That’s really good advice. Not thought about it like that.




Jennifer: It’s a PR spin. That’s what it is. It’s rubbish? No, I’ll find a good story. It’s not spin. It’s just, like I say, about for every negative there’s a positive; but don’t forget as well, though, there’s times when you think it’s a positive can turn into a negative, if you’re not careful.   You know, is this someone who is confident or extremely confident, can see that as a positive but too much confidence seen by other people can verge on arrogance. So, you know, it’s getting the balance right.

James: And as you talk in the book as well, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Jennifer: No, and you’ll make yourself loony trying, quite frankly. It’s about the reason why you get yourself to that knowledge of here’s my brand pyramid, here’s the best version of me. It says that you have a sanity check to know that that is what you are going out there and selling. The best example I can give is, years ago when I was making these train journeys and I was working on my brand, I got myself to a final pyramid. I then – and this is in the extremely early days of my business ; back in 2008 – after I knew what my own brand was, I emailed a whole load of people I’d worked with; my ex CEO; some of my earlier clients; people who had worked for me; and just asked for some feedback on my brand. And I got a bit of feedback from someone whose comment was, Jennifer, the thing about your brand is, it’s double espresso, but sometimes I wanted tea. Now, at the time I got this feedback, I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t exactly in the best frame of mind and got somewhat upset thinking, oh, my goodness. This person doesn’t like me and I’ve been too over the top. Being described as double espresso? I’ve been too in-your-face and I’ve obviously been too opinionated. I didn’t even know he wanted tea. So, obviously I wasn’t good at listening. And I had a real crises of confidence and my initial thought, I’ll be honest with you was, Oh, my God. I need to become more tea. I need to tone things down. I need to be calmer. I need to be gentler. I need to listen more. And it was all, I need to change, I need to change.   But then I slept on it and I woke up the next morning and I reread this email and I thought, hold on here a minute. I’ve spent a month on a train working out what my brand is. This person has called it double espresso? He’s right. My brand is double espresso. It’s quite full on. It’s quite in your face. If people see me, I always have bright red lipstick, bright red nails. I have quite an expressive way of talking. I’m double espresso. It’s not up to me to give this person tea at the same time. You wouldn’t go into Starbucks and say, hey, could I have a double espresso and can you put it in with a mug of tea? No one wants to drink that. And I just realized then and there not everybody is going to buy my brand but the people who want coffee will and the people who want tea, won’t. And that’s fine.   It’s much better that I am the best coffee I can be than I try and become tea and I’m really bad at it.

James:   Excellent point. And one of the VPs I used to work with, when we were bidding for work, his philosophy was, we either want to be first or to be last. So, a lot of people aren’t going to like what we’re selling–

Jennifer:   Yeah.

James:  –which is great, they are not for us, but a lot of people, they’re going to love it and the worst place to be is in the middle.

Jennifer:  I agree completely, and I think, go out there. The thing is, say you go for an interview. You’re a graduate and you go for an interview and you are 100 percent yourself, the best version of you that you’ve worked out in your brand. If you put that out there and you say, hey, here’s what I’m selling and you are very clear about it, you are giving people the information they need to decide if they’re buying.   The people who are on the same wavelength as you will read all the clues you’re giving through how you sound, how you look, how you speak, everything, and they will love that and they will buy it. Some people will sit there. They’ll read all the clues you’ve given and go, that is so not what I want. But that’s fine because you know what? Even if you got the job you are never really going to be happy working for that person because you’re on an entirely different wave length. So put your brand out there honestly and let the people who are looking for it, find it.

You know, I have been— That guy did me a huge favour saying to me, you’re double espresso because I use it as shorthand now. So when I— I recently redesigned my website and in my head it’s always, is it double espresso? It is double espresso? When I write a blog, am I being double espresso? When I buy an outfit, is it double espresso? And it’s like yeah, because I need to be consistent. If I think I’m veering into tea, I suddenly stop and think, well, hold on a minute. It’s not my brand.   So, it’s so great, as you say, be one thing. You know the Marmite effect. You either love it of you hate. Well, Marmite is an incredibly successful product. So, it must be working.

James: Moving on then to sharing a brand. So, people listening have thought about it, yeah, thought about what their brand is going to be. How then can they begin to share it and how can they put it across, say, in a job situation? So, on a job application or in an interview, how can they begin to exemplify the brand that they want to be?

Jennifer:  Okay. So, if we can just take sharing their brand in general and then I’ll talk about the interview situation. So, the thing to understand is that whenever people come into contact with you, whether that’s an email they received or they looked at your LinkedIn profile or they speak to you on the phone or they meet you in person, they are picking up clues to your brand through. As I say, how you look, how you sound, how you act. So, they’re checking out the shoes you’re wearing, the state of the shoes you’re wearing, the clothes you’re wearing, whether you’re smiling, your eye contact, your body language, your personal space, you know, whether you turned up in a car or on the bus, or what bag you’re carrying. All of this is giving people clues. So, when it comes to sharing your brand, it’s about looking at every single way that people can pick up a clue to you and to ask yourself, right, what do I want that clue to convey about me? What’s my brand I want to get across and is this doing it? So, if you want to convey, say, gravitas as part of your brand, you know, you’ve got real experience and credibility and you know what you’re talking about, turning up with shoes that are completely un-shined and you know, a couple of days growth that isn’t a proper beard, it’s just looking a bit shaggy, and your hair is a mess and your tie is at half mast and everything, your packaging is not selling gravitas. So, I’m not going to buy it. But if you think, actually, hold on. I’m selling gravitas. These the shoes I want to wear. This is the outfit I want to wear. This is how groomed I want to be. It’s your decision, but you’ll be conveying what your brand is. So, it’s essentially thinking about all the different ways that you convey your brand and using those as opportunities to get clues across. So, that’s number one about how you share your brand.




In an interview situation, there is a situation where you are being actively asked to sell yourself. So, if there’s any place where you can be ramping up the trumpet blowing, that’s it. Now, in terms of how you do that, there’s a magic word — not really so much. It’s just a regular word that I turned into a magic work — that I like to give people and it’s the word “because”. Now, the best way to explain how to use “because” is, say you’re in an interview and they use, you know a great interview question that they always ask is, give us an example of a time when… dot-dot-dot. Okay? So you sit there and you have to come up with a practical example of, well, one time I was the project lead on a thing and we did this and we delivered that and here’s the answer. Most times when people answer that question, they will just give the factual stuff. Here’s A. Here’s B. Here’s C. That’s my answer to your question. If you’re clever what you do, though, is you don’t just leave it there. You say here’s A, B, C – here’s the practical stuff – you add on the word “because” and then you tell me something about your brand. So, for instance, it might be, I was able to save, knock a month off the deadline of a project I was working on because I’m someone who just picks up on all the tiny details and I noticed there was a key bit of information that had been missed and as soon as we had it back in we were able to move quicker. Or say that you want to get across from your brand that you’re very forward thinking. So, I was able to find a new market for a customer that I was working with and delivering new products to them because I’m someone who likes to spot the trends and see what’s coming up. So I can sort of talk to them about what their needs might be in the future.   Did you see, you used the word “because”— You can also use it in the beginning of the sentence. You know, because I’m someone who remains calm in a crises, I was able to take charge of a situation when… dot-dot-dot. So you’re still using those practical examples of things you always have to deliver in interviews but you’re just using this because to link it to an aspect of your brand, whether you’re talking to me about your values or your behaviours or skill, or anything like that.

James:  I love it. Again, I have not thought of that before and it’s a really powerful way to start bringing in the brand aspect, as you mentioned.

Jennifer:  And it’s subtle still because when you use the word “because” it just sounds like you’re just explaining part of the answer. You know, you’re not doing this big, ding-ding-ding, hello, personal brand bit coming up. You just sort of gently slip into it.

James: Can you give some examples of where people’s personal branding hasn’t worked as well as they thought it would or where it’s gone wrong?

Jennifer:   I think it’s when their own perception of themselves doesn’t match other people’s perception. So they have a view that they are one thing and they found out later that they’re not. Or, I can think of one person in particular, a guy who used to work in the organization I worked at who was renowned — I mean talk about what was said when you were not in the room — he was renowned for talking the talk but never walked the walk, not once. And for just talking himself into a job but then not long in people would realize he didn’t deliver, and so having to move on to the next job and the next job. So his personal brand was really not working for him.

I think the other time a personal brand doesn’t work for people is when they just don’t appreciate that they have one and they’re having a really negative impact around the place and they’ve completely blinkered to it. They have no idea, and it’s understanding just how far your personal brand can travel without you even realizing.

So, I’ll give you a true example. I do work with a grad scheme at a big bank down in London and every year they take on new grads and I go down and as part of their induction week I run a personal brand workshop, getting them thinking about their brand. Now, these people have been given a great opportunity and out of the 12 people that I have in my workshops I always find that the vast majority of them are great grads, right attitude and everything. But I’ll be honest with you, I usually find at least one person in the workshop… They saunter in. I can tell you one guy, he sauntered in an hour late — didn’t even apologize — sat there. His body language for the whole thing was, I do not want to be here. One of the exercises we did he was incredibly rude to another member of the team, one of his fellow grads; just the insolence. It was awful. And this guy didn’t seem to understand that when I finish those workshops, the person who hires me at the bank, the person who is in charge of the grad scheme always comes and sees me afterwards when everybody has left the room and says, so, right, give me a rundown. What did you think of them? Go around the table. Tell me what you thought. And I tell her my impression of them. I tell her what I think. And I will often say, that person, they are going far. They were brilliant. They’ve got the right attitude.   I think they can be a real star. This person here? No. They are a troublemaker. They are this. They are that. And that person will listen to me and go, yeah. You know what? I’m starting to find out myself. That also backs up something else I also heard from this manager over there. People are talking about you, whether you want to think they are or not; so, sitting there believing that your personal brand doesn’t matter or yeah, I don’t really care about personal brand, you know what? You should.

Actually, a year later I went back to the bank to do more and I said, so what happened to that guy?   You know, the hour late guy, the insolent, the rude guy? She said, oh, he did career suicide, she called it. She said at the end of the grad induction the grads are asked to do a bit of a presentation on what they’ve done over the six weeks, what they’ve learned and where they’ve worked but to the senior management team and this guy stood up and he basically went, this graduate induction has been the biggest waste of time for me. I don’t think I’ve learned a single new thing. Oh, well done. You’ve just said that in front of the whole management team. Do you think we’re going to be offering you a promotion any time soon? And he was oblivious to it. It’s about being— Don’t kid yourself. People are saying stuff. Use it to your advantage; get them saying positive stuff.

James: Excellent; very wise words. I saw a quote saying — in terms of your brand — “Be yourself because everybody else is taken.”

Jennifer: Yes, Oscar Wilde; absolutely true; yeah. Oscar Wilde -gets quoted a lot. He was a very clever man.

James:  So moving on to the quick fire round, Jennifer, could you recommend one book, could be any book at all, that our listeners should read?

Jennifer: Going back to that, how do you know what your strengths are, there’s a book that I often use with my clients called, Strengthsfinder 2.0 – that’s all one word — StrengthsFinder 2.0. It’s by a guy called Tom Rath, R-a-t-h, and I definitely recommend people going on Amazon and buy a copy. It’s about 10 quid. Always buy a new copy, though, and there’s a reason for that, because what StrengthsFinder gives you, it’s a book that was put together by Gallop which is a research organization. Back in the sort of late 80s early 90s they said, you know, people go about business in the wrong way. They spend their time looking at here’s A, we want to get to B, what are we missing and what are our weaknesses and how can we get better at things. They said, what people should be doing is, here’s A. I want to get to B. What are my strengths that I already have that I can apply to doing that? So, what they said was, the trouble is that people don’t know what their strengths are. So they came up with 34 different definitions of a variety of strengths from someone who is a maximizer, who makes the most of situations, someone who’s strategic, futuristic or a harmonizer. They gave all these words. But they then created this online profiling tool where you go on and you enter a code that is in a panel on the back of the book – hence why you need a new copy – and you complete an online survey. It takes about 20 minutes. And at the end of it it says, out of 34 strengths, here are your top five and it gives you a definition personalized for you as to how those strengths come across. It gives you really great advice about how you can make the most of those strengths, how you can improve those strengths, and it’s just fantastic. If you’re really at a loss for, what am I really bringing to the table, this is a great place to start.

James: I completely agree and it’s a book that I’ve used in the past.

Jennier: Oh, great.

James:   It’s illuminating to see the, what the strengths that you come out with.

Jennifer:  Yeah.   The other thing it does is if you’re trying to put that brand pyramid together and work out how to word what your brand is, I mean, it’s sort of the individual report. It’s a personalized report and you think, well, yeah, it’s a computer that’s generated this, but I find that the language that is used in the report is actually really good. And, even picking out actual sentences from there and using it yourself. It’s fantastic.

James: Yeah, I completely recommend that one as well.

Jennifer: Good.

James: So, moving on then to one website that you’d recommend.

Jennifer: I have fallen in love with photofeeler.com, which is photo as in p-h-o-t-o and feeler, f- double e-l-e-r. And PhotoFeeler, it’s a great website. It’s linked to your brand as well. So, essentially what you can do is you go on this website and you can upload photos of you that you are thinking of using. Say you’re doing your LinkedIn profile and you’ve got a few different photos and you go, I don’t know which one looks best and which one should I use? What you do is you go on PhotoFeeler, you upload your pictures and complete strangers from around the world give you a critique and mark your photos on a scale of how likeable you look, how competent you look, and how influential you look. And you can then decide, well, do I want to come across as likeable, or influential, or competent, and you can then chose the picture that gets the highest score for that.

The reason why I love it as well is, it doesn’t — To get your photo critique you need 20 credits on the site and the way you get credits is by critiquing other people’s photos which is the most fun that you can have sitting at your desk because you get to see—- It’s good, actually, because you get to see, well, actually, that’s a really good photo. I like how they’ve done that. Or, oh, my goodness! What the hell was this person thinking? Not good at all. So, it’s a great site and it gives you insight into how people could be reading clues into your photograph.

James: I’m going to have to upload a picture up to there.

Jennifer: It’s good fun.

James: And start rating then later this afternoon.

And finally, what one tip would you give listeners that they can implement today.

Jennifer: I would say, LinkedIn. I have to be honest, I was never a fan of LinkedIn when I was in corporate life but I’ve done a complete 180 on my view on it and I’m a huge fan of it. LinkedIn is a great way for you to build a network and stay in touch with them for a relatively little time in your day and if you are thinking about getting a job anywhere in business. Do you know what? I know LinkedIn— Some people say, some graduate said to me, oh, LinkedIn its so yesterday. And I think, well, actually, the people who are hiring you are still very much using LinkedIn. So get yourself on there, but make sure if I am going to go on LinkedIn and find you, I’m seeing a great photo, a very instructive profile that you have definitely spellchecked and copy-checked, that you’re getting some of the “who” out there and some of the “what”. I mean, it’s prime advertising space for your brand. So do not miss out on it.

James: And make sure it’s all linked in with the brand that you want to get across.

Jennifer: Absolutely.

James: Super. It’s been amazing. Thank you, Jennifer.

Before we finish, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you and the work that you do?

Jennifer:  So, my website is Jennifer-holloway.co.uk   I recommend going to it, not least because I write a blog every fourth night, just about different aspects of personal brand and that’s absolutely free. You can sign up to more blogs. You can put your email address in and all my contact details are on there. Genuinely, anyone that gets in touch with me I always reply.   If someone does want to work on their brand, Personal Branding for Brits; you can get it on Amazon or you can get it for your Kindle. I’ve written it, as I call it, as a practical guide because I read so many books where at the end of it I thought, well, that was interesting but how do I apply what I’ve learned? My book is right, here is what you need to know, here is what you need to do, practical, practical, practical. So, you know, if someone wants to do that or if they’ve got any questions for me, drop me a line and I will get back to them.

James: And I definitely recommend Jennifer’s book and also her blog. Check out her— If you are a recent graduate or soon to be graduate, definitely read her post, Why do Grads Think They’re So Special.

Jennifer: Someone said to me, I can’t believe you wrote that.   I said why? I’ve had loads of grads write right back to me and leave comments — I put it on LinkedIn and on my website – saying, I totally agree with you. I’m a graduate and I see other graduates doing this and it drives me mad. So, yes, we shall see.

James:  And also the post, Do You Suffer From BRF.

Jennifer: Yes.

James: I’ll let you read that one. I’ll link both of them to the show notes but they’re both well worth the read.

Jennifer: Thank you.

James: Jennifer, thank you very much.

Jennifer: Cheers. I’ve had good fun and best of luck to all of the grads listening. I hope you have the careers you want.

James: My thanks again to Jennifer Holloway, wow, what a public speaker. I’ve certainly got a lot to learn. We packed a lot into that episode but in terms of my top 3 takeaways. The first for me is that your personal brand is something which you need to start thinking about……now. It’s not a wishy washy concept but something which fundamentally is about you who you are, what you stand for, your values, what you are passionate about. We’ve touched upon these concepts in previous episodes such as episode 6 on the transition from university to work with David Shindler, and episode 4 on career planning with Steve Rook, and fundamentally you need to think about what your values are and what you want from work if you are going to set yourself on the path to a fulfilling career. As Jennifer said though, this isn’t something that you can bosh out in 10 minutes, it takes a lot of brain power and thinking, but if you do it properly and use the structure of her brand pyramid, then you only need to do it once and it will stay with you for your career. Because if you’ve done it properly, your brand will be consistent to who you are and it’s not going to change

Which leads me to the second point for me, which is, developing your personal brand is about knowing who you are, so you can be confident in yourself and what you stand for. Getting a job is a two way process, and too many graduates forget this and focus too much on them being right for the company, but forgetting that It’s also about the company being right for you. If that means by being true to yourself some companies say no then as Jennifer said that’s fine, because you wouldn’t have been happy there anyway.

Finally, I loved Jennifer’s magic word ‘Because’. Slip this into your arsenal of interview answers, add it to the end of the STAR methodology, in fact a new acronym for you STARB, you heard it here first. Adding in a because lets you finish an answer on a high, leaving them with a taster skills and brand, and nifty little trick.

Right episode 12 on branding all sorted. You can find a full transcript of everything that we’ve talked about and all links at www.graduatejobpodcast.com/branding. Please get in touch with us on Twitter @gradjobpodcast, and also if you’ve enjoyed the show please leave a review on Itunes or Stitcher radio, we will love you forever, so big shoutout to ‘Grimsbytothemax’ who left a 5 star review this week and said ‘not just helpful for job hunting but great tips for improving your productivity’, so thanks to the listener there from Grimsby. If you’ve not already subscribed via Itunes or Stitcher radio, you need to sort that out, it’s the easiest way to get each episode delivered to you for free and to make sure that you don’t miss a thing. Join us next week when we speak to author Elsa Sharp and cover the topic of how to get a job in TV. I hope you enjoyed the episode today, but more importantly I hope you use it and apply it. See you next week.

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