What entrepreneurship and job hunting have in common
AKA the importance of differentiation on the job market.
Some of you might know that I was a solopreneur for ~ three years before deciding to shut down my LLC and pivot from communications to IT.
(I really need to get down to writing that “here’s my story” article these days.🤷🏼♀️😅)
Aaanyway… I love entrepreneurship. It brought me so many lessons! On how to craft your offer, how to be authentic when communicating your key messages online, how to define those key messages, how to get over the feeling that every time you talk about your offer you’re bothering people (ever had one of those?).
And there’s one specific lesson that I bring from entrepreneurship to job searching that is very valuable since I’m going into an industry where I know zero people and have zero previous work experience. The lesson is: personal branding is your best friend.
Let’s talk personal branding as a job seeker
These days, I’m thinking intensively about the presentation of ‘me’ in the job market.
It’s slightly different than the ‘me’ who was an entrepreneur. This doesn’t mean that I’m a two-faced B, though (😁) - it’s simply that different roles ask of us to display different sides of ourselves. Switching to a different sector (non-profit/business/government) or a different industry will do ask that of you too.
There’s one thing that remains the same whether you’re an entrepreneur or a job hunter: the fact that building a personal brand is an asset.
Here’s what I mean:
In business, everyone tells you to be the niche.
When job searching, you need to be that too! Think about it: if someone is contemplating whether to hire me or person X, they can refer to me as something simple like ‘the one with the glasses’ or ‘the one who talks fast’. But, if I build a brand for myself, it can be…
… the one with an interest in green IT and previous work experience in sustainability;
… the one who brings her communication skills to the team;
… the one who chronicles this whole career pivot thing in her newsletter…
… and oh so many other things, depending on how I’d like to profile myself.
Capitalism sucks and is exhausting our planet of resources and humans of elan vital and precious time (which are, again, resources). However, the thing that many people working in sustainability understand is that to get things better, we need to know how to function under capitalism. *sigh*
To rebuild things in a better way working from the inside.
One part of it is building our personal brands and advocating for what matters to us while finding a way to intertwine the stories about those values, previous work experiences, and current expertise.
It’s not only for the entrepreneurs or the ambitious among us. It’s for everyone and it’s (mostly) for free.
Here are some questions to help you start:
What is the industry/role you’re pivoting to?
What are your key values in life? How would aligning with them look like in the workplace?
Optional (but recommended: What field of advocacy is the closest to your heart? If you’re not sure, take a look at UN’s list of 17 Sustainable Development Goals here. I know many people who are
What do you sound like in everyday life? I like to keep things funny and informal while allowing room for depth and nurturing. I also can’t resist a good pun. Some people I came across online bring their sharpness, cynicism, or sarcasm, their love for poetry, talking in pop culture references… The sky is the limit. Ask a few people close to you how they’d describe your way of talking or put a few paragraphs of your previous written work in ChatGPT and ask it to describe your own writing style. A mirror can come from many places. :)
Choose a platform: LinkedIn, Substack, a blog, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok… There are so many ways in which people chronicle their career pivots and job searches online while putting their personal touch on the subject. They call them ‘No Plan B diaries’, ‘Plan A diaries’, ‘Becoming the Higher Me Project’, ‘Project Job Hunting’… or ‘Career Pivot Diaries’ (🙋♀️).
My plan re: personal branding
I could write about this for hours and I will in future articles. Since this is only the first time I’m mentioning personal branding on this Substack and I come from a communications background, tell me:
What would you like me to write about in the future to help you get clear on your personal branding as a job seeker even further?
And since I believe that the best lessons come with *an abundance* of examples, here’s an example of how I’m planning to craft a personal brand in IT once I get down to it (probably starting from April onwards):
Leverage my love for the written word: I love writing and I love reading. They are among the oldest hobbies I have and the most cherished ones. To channel that love into the process of building a personal brand might look like: choosing a text-heavy content platform (like Substack or LinkedIn) rather than one that’s primarily about videos (YouTube, TikTok, etc.), doing book reviews on specific subjects, creating written tutorials, checklists, and other types of useful resources.
Leverage my sustainability background: I’m preparing a separate article that’s all about why I believe that once you work in/on sustainability you can never go back to… not working in/on sustainability. I want to work with green IT companies and explore concepts like low-carbon internet and green IT. I want to learn more about how the AI craze is not only helping us get things in an increasingly speedy way but also speeding up the expenditure of Earth’s resources which are needed for powering all the machines that need to work for us to be able to have all the chatbots and image generating AI and text to speech AI… And I want to chronicle my learning on LinkedIn.
Leverage my playful curiosity: if you’ve been here for at least two articles, you know that I like to keep things casual when it comes to my tone (which doesn’t mean that I don’t work hard 😁). I’m curious and I take learning seriously… while intentionally not taking the learning achievements too seriously. It means that I don’t let myself get tied in some weird obligation-type relationship with my learning accomplishment (e.g. having a Master’s degree in PolSci for the field of Environmental Policy) but allow myself to be carried toward the next place I want to explore trusting that, at some point, I’ll be able to make connections between the previous and the future field of exploration. As soon as I get my first job in IT, I plan to learn automation. And then to start studying Korean. And gluten-free baking. And then to take up dancing again. At some point, I want to enroll in a permaculture course. Depending on where my work takes me (you can’t plan for the industries you’ve never been a part of, where new jobs get invented each year), maybe I’ll explore certifications as a Scrum Master, or a PO, or something else entirely. Naturally, I’ll write about that too. 😁 I want to be one more voice staying on the sides advocating that it’s okay to change your mind and lane and that there are multiple paths to a fulfilled life, not just the path of a single-industry-forever expert (although I commend those people for their diligence and always will).
My point is this: when we put all the things that interest us - and those that have interested us in the past long enough for us to get some good ol’ transferable skills - we see that we have options. (*breathe*)
Let me say that one more time: breathe. 💜
There are hours and hours of free webinars and masterclasses on YouTube.
You can use ChatGPT and its colleagues as sparring partners that can help you pinpoint which aspects of You to focus on as you build your brand as a job-hunting newbie/expert in your field of work.
Here’s an idea, dear reader: try copying this whole article into ChatGPT and asking it to ask you 10 personal brand-building questions to help you decide which 3 aspects of You to leverage in your job hunt.
(I tried it. It works!)
I hope today’s article inspires you to sprinkle some playfulness into the whole thing, no matter how infantile it might seem on the outside.
Yes, there are bills to be paid and deadlines to be met.
Yes, you’d like your next job to start yesterday rather than in 10 weeks.
Yes, you’d rather not create content on top of everything else you need to do to find the said job.
But if this personal brand thingie seems helpful, why not give it a try? Treat it as an experiment, for a month. Or three. Or six.
I find that playfulness helps me evade taking myself too seriously in that negative ‘I’m spiraling… I’m spiraling… Aaand I’m gone into full panic mode.’ way.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that once you get down to brainstorming about your personal brand as a job seeker, the fruitfulness of that process will bring you the same kind of playfulness.
Happy exploring!
Your neighborly ‘I’m a mental pirate and I sail the waters of insecurities’ scribbler,
Andjela
🌊
Welcome to the Career Pivot Diaries where I chronicle my journey from sustainability communications to QA testing! This is where we’ll cover all things career change, such as going from entrepreneurship to 9-to-5, exploring new professional identities, and *finally* updating that dusty CV. Most importantly, we’ll explore how to see ourselves as more than our work and find a sense of safety in choosing a new path while allowing room for creative play.
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