by Akiti
Skills are important insofar as the individual wielding the skillset has the competency to apply those skills effectively in a manner that brings value to an organization. Skills alone do not make you a great candidate in today’s job market even though 2024 told you otherwise. How you have applied those skills and how you’re able to communicate their value as a cohesive brand speaks louder than the skills themselves to get the job you desire with the pay you deserve.
Skills-Based Hiring: A Narrow Approach
In 2024, there was a mad-dash towards skills-based hiring, coupled with AI prompted job descriptions that left companies struggling to hire and skyrocketing unemployment rates. Human Resource (HR) trends spoke of the value of skills-based hiring over traditional methodologies in order to hire pre-qualified individuals for the roles and create more career progression clarity for HR teams managing these resources. But the proof is not in this pudding! Between 2024-2025, leaders have been complaining of the difficulties of hiring due to candidates’ resumes not appropriately being captured by recruiting parameters, AI recruiting bots, and a true understanding of what a role entails.
Employers are increasingly understanding that most role require quality within soft skills like teamwork, communication, and leadership before hard skills. An individual with hard skills like coding can of course be of value for a developer role, but if they are not strong on the aforementioned three soft skills they will struggle to develop quality code that aligns with company expectations. Absurd? Not really. Development is not just about being able to write code well, it’s also about understanding the end customer experience and how to align code with that context. Therefore, a resume with an engineering or computer science degree may qualify, but an individual with proven communication of the application of those degrees and a personal brand that communicates this understanding is far more valuable to any company. What value is your ability to code if you cannot explain it’s value to the company or the consumer in practice or even an interview?
Brand-Based Hiring: 360° of Quality
Creating and communicating a personal brand that expresses the value of your overall skillset is far more valuable (and successful) in the job search process than presenting your skills alone. A personal brand incorporates hard skills with the finesse of soft skills to effectively present the overall package a company is investing in by hiring an individual. When evaluating job candidates, 80% of recruiters consider personal branding important. In fact, personal branding has increased in value over the years with 70% of employers now stating that a personal brand is more important than a resume or CV. Companies are not only looking for someone that can do the job, but someone who aligns with their values and represents the company while doing the job well. This stems from companies learning that their employees are their biggest customers and their biggest marketing asset since 84% of consumers believe a company’s brand is influenced by the personal brands of its employees. As social media has further propagated the value of a personal brand, employers are more likely to hire someone with a complete LinkedIn profile – 40x more likely!
Compare your personal brand to a product: you don’t buy a product purely for the features, you validate it’s quality by observing the benefits and overall branding. If you have two products identical in functionality on the shelf but one has packaging that is falling apart and the other has enticing packaging that shows the effectiveness of the product in it’s design, which one will you choose? Of course the enticing product that is showing it’s effectiveness from the moment your eyes landed on it. The branding convinces you that it’s a quality product before you’ve even checked the list of features, and then the features further supplement your first impression. Similarly, your personal branding should qualify you for the role in the first impression and your skills should supplement that impression with certified validation. You have to communicate the quality of your value as a whole individual from the first touchpoint in the application process to prove your worth from every angle – all 360° of it!
3 Steps to Personal Branding
Building a strong online presence – personally and professionally – can enhance your chances of getting the opportunities you desire by spreading awareness of your worth, increasing trust in your capabilities, and communicating the value you can add towards a company’s success. Here are 3 steps you MUST take to build your personal brand today:
1. Identify who YOU are and Your PURPOSE
Your personal brand is a reflection of YOU. You have to start by being authentically you and understanding what your purpose is. These are foundations of who YOU are and what you bring to any table. Use the link below to set up time to discover where you are today what your purpose is:
2. Understand Personal Branding
Learn personal branding and storytelling techniques to design your personal brand on top of the foundation of who you are and what your purpose is. Use these resources to get started:
3. Update Your Profiles
Update your LinkedIn and social profiles to present a cohesive brand across your online presence. Use these resources to guide this process:
Don’t just highlight your features (skills). Highlight the benefits (value) of YOU as the product.
