Winning in a Competitive Job Market - Part 1: Mastering your Brand

Tried and tested strategies to let your LinkedIn profile shine bright like a diamond

If you are job hunting right now, I know how you feel. Scouring LinkedIn on a daily basis, only to find out that there are already hundreds of applicants for the role you got notified about last night.

We know we must stand out to land interviews, especially in the competitive market that we are in today. That’s easier said than done when you’ve just been made redundant and the last thing you can think of is selling yourself. Or when you’re in a role that makes you really unhappy and all you want is to get out of there. It’s hard.

I’ll share a few strategies that have worked for me. I cannot guarantee they’ll get you the job, but they'll definitely make you stand out from other applicants. These strategies not only helped me secure interviews with companies where I cold-applied, but also tipped the scale in my favour: companies and recruiters started reaching out to me with job opportunities.

What started as one newsletter quickly turned into a novel. So here is part one of three in the series: Winning in a Competitive Job Market. Part 2 will cover the application process and part 3 the interview stage.

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Your Brand

Before we dive into actual applications, let’s talk about your brand. “What's your brand?” can be a pretty hard question to answer. Perhaps you don’t like the word ‘brand’ and it feels a bit too show-offy. I get it. Try not to place too much weight on the semantics. Your brand means nothing more than who you truly are and what you stand for. It’s how you show up every day. Once you’re more aware of it, your brand will help you to better communicate your authentic self and the value you bring to your network and anyone you encounter.

Something that may help you in this process is a book that a good friend recommended to me called TIP: A Simple Strategy to Inspire High Performance and Lasting Success. Through fun and engaging storytelling, the book discusses the significance of crafting your own personal brand as well as strategies to do so and the importance for your personal growth. It lays out four principles that can help your career growth:

• Enhanced Self-Awareness: Understanding your strengths, values, and unique value proposition.

• Confident Communications: Effectively conveying your personal brand through clear and consistent messaging.

• Commitment-Based Actions: Aligning your actions with your brand promises to build trust and credibility.

• Fulfilment of a Unique Value Promise: Delivering on your commitments to reinforce your brand’s authenticity.

Your Online Brand

Before applying for any role, take a moment to assess your current online presence. Do you have one? What does it look like? What story does it convey?

For me, LinkedIn was an easy choice to start building my brand given that I’ve been on the platform since the beginning of my corporate career. As a result, my profile wasn’t entirely blank when I began refining it. I suspect that’ll be the case for most of you. If you haven’t joined LinkedIn yet, you should strongly consider it. LinkedIn has over 1 billion users, alongside other impressive statistics on their website. Don’t be discouraged if you’re not on there yet: it's never too late to join and it’s super easy to get started.

Here’s a framework that I created for myself as I became more deliberate about building my brand:

Curate Your Profile

Your LinkedIn profile is your online business card. It’s what people see when they want to learn more about your professional achievements. To make your profile shine, consider the below components.

• Ensure that your Headline and About section reflect your brand as those are some of the most visible items.

  • Your Headline might include the following elements:

    • Your current role or expertise: “Founder of Brava | Empowering Women Through Public Speaking Coaching”

    • Your value proposition: “Equipping Women with the Confidence to Speak, Lead, and Inspire Change”

    • Industry specific keywords: “Founder | Public Speaking Coach | Project Manager”

  • Your About section can have the following elements:

    • a career summary that showcases your super powers and achievements

    • your passions and motivations

    • where you’re headed, where do you want to be in 1, 3, 5 years from now

    • a personal touch.

A great tip I once received when I was working on my About section: check some profiles of people that you admire. What do they write? Let it inspire you!

My About section has developed over time. It started out quite lengthy and recently I’ve actually made it significantly shorter. I’ve set myself a reminder to update my bio every 6 months — or whenever something big changes for me professionally.

• Add your superpowers as Skills to your profile.

• Request Recommendations from colleagues and clients. This will back the superpowers that you stated yourself, which is much stronger.

• Update your Experience and provide 1-2 lines of context below each role.

• Once you have posted some content (see below), make sure that you pin important and popular posts as Featured Posts. These will always show at the top of your profile.

Share Valuable Content & Activate your Current Network

This is a strategy I started implementing even when I was with my previous employer. Developing your voice on LinkedIn can open up a lot of opportunities. All of us have something valuable to offer to the world and you’re not different. This is all part of your brand. What are you really passionate about?

As you share your insights through Posts or Newsletters, your network will be activated and engaged. This may feel super awkward at first. Thoughts like: “What if no one likes my posts?” or “I don’t want to be cringe.” may go through your head. I know the feelings all too well and still have those thoughts daily.

Earlier this year, I attended a session titled ‘Pivoting Your Career & Reinventing Your Public Image’ by Tash Jamieson. My key takeaway: Just post the thing! It does not matter what people think - just do it!

The worst that can happen is that your post doesn’t get as much traction as you would have hoped. Keep in mind: the Linkedin algorithm initially will only show your post to limited people. So if you don’t get many reactions, not many people will know if your post has flopped.

Something that worked for me to get my posting habit started was to find a meaningful reason to get started and a topic that you can cover over multiple sessions. It could be anything, such as a big project that you will be involved with at work over the coming weeks or months. For me, the trigger was when I joined the Startmate Women Fellowship – which I discuss a little more below. Back then, I made a commitment to myself that I would post a wrap-up of each week on the program. Sometimes that meant that I was frantically bringing a post together on Sunday night. It was challenging, however this really got me past all those feelings of self-doubt. It has become one of my habits. Now, whenever I find something interesting, it’s easier to craft a short post and publish it.

Expand your Network

Of course you can grow your brand simply by posting and engaging with people through the platform over time. It is important though, that you physically put yourself out there as well. Investing in yourself by attending conferences or joining networks of like-minded people can be both very rewarding as well as increase your network with quality connections. In every networking opportunity you will craft at this stage, you should be adding those people to your LinkedIn connections.

In my case, I took the step to join the Autumn24 cohort of the Startmate Women Fellowship. I have to confess that at the time I thought it was a huge commitment of both time and money (especially when I quit my corporate job mid-way through the program). It was worth every single dollar, though. It convinced me to pivot from corporate to entrepreneurship and also gave me access to the enormous Startmate network. A network that keeps bringing me awesome connections and new friendships to date. The next cohort kicks off in March, keep an eye out for the applications to open if you’re interested and send me a message if you have any questions about the program.

Every career journey is unique, with countless ways to navigate it. I love sharing the lessons I’ve learned along the way. What strategies have worked for you?

If you’re on the job market right now, I hope these tips will help. Or perhaps you know someone who could benefit from it: send it their way!

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What’s next

In part two of my series, Winning in a Competitive Job Market, I’ll share the strategies I used to stand out during the application process.