Personal Branding for Engineers
The world of work is changing fast, and one important way to keep up is to build a “personal brand†for yourself and your career. A brand is, simply, an image in people’s minds that makes something memorable and different from other similar things. When it comes to you, a personal brand is what people think of when they think of you.
A strong, positive personal brand can help you get the work you want, the salary you deserve, and the opportunities for training, growth and development that you dream of. In short, a personal brand makes you more valuable to employers, and opens doors.
How do you create a personal brand? First, you need to come up with a way to differentiate yourself. What sets you apart from the pack? Where do you shine?
Your point of differentiation can be professional, like a subject-matter expertise, or personal, for example, based on such factors as your personality, your background or your location. Whatever point of differentiation you choose, it must be:
- Valuable and relevant in the minds of your target audience—such as your boss, your prospective employers, and your colleagues.
- True and demonstrable. Don’t pick something you can’t really deliver.
- Unique, or at least relatively distinct from what everyone else has to offer.
As an example, you may have a special interest in telescopes, you could develop your brand around adaptive optics. If your company is active in this area (and it is thus valuable), if you get extra training in that subject (demonstrably true), and if few other engineers in your area are focused on this (unique), then you may have hit on the right niche for your brand.
You may think that being a generalist makes you more broadly valuable than focusing on a specialty. But, paradoxically, the narrower the niche you choose, the more powerful a brand it will be, based on memorability and uniqueness.
Once you have selected your point of differentiation, it’s time to promote it. In the engineering world there are many ways to make your brand known. Begin with the tactic that feels most comfortable to you, and add more tactics over time.
Volunteer. Join the top professional associations in your niche, and volunteer to serve on a committee or two. Help out. Speak up. Take a leadership role.
Write. Submit article ideas to editors at your industry publications. If your company has a PR department, let them know you are willing to write for the industry trades. Andrew Lynch, a solutions engineer at Edmund Optics who has written articles for SPIE Professional, Photonik, and NASA Tech Briefs, says “I have received lots of positive feedback from my writing within the industry. In addition, people at Edmund Optics know, and appreciate, my work.â€
Speak. If you have some new results or research to share, submit session proposals to conferences in your industry.
Online visibility. Raising your profile online is essential to building awareness about your personal brand. Create a detailed profile on LinkedIn, emphasizing your points of differentiation. Be sure to go clean up any indiscretions there may be in your old Facebook presence. Start a blog about your subject-matter expertise, or build your own website with your name as the domain.
Networking. Do whatever you can to keep in touch with colleagues, bosses, customers, competitors, past and present. Email and Twitter are useful tools for reaching out.
Craft your elevator speech. You need to have a quick and vivid answer to the inevitable question that comes up when meeting new people: “So, what do you do?†You want to be able to describe yourself—and your brand—in fewer than 50 words. So write up some descriptors and try them out in public. You’ll get a good sense over time of what captures people’s interest, and what falls flat.
I’ve found that converting your elevator speech into a 2-part story can help. The first part begins with the phrase, “You know how….†and sets up an interesting problem. The second part begins with “Well, I…†and explains how your unique point of differentiation delivers a solution to the problem. For example, when asked, “So, what do you do, anyway?†an optical engineer might say, “You know how doctors are looking for new ways to close wounds without sutures?†The questioner nods. “Well, I design laser systems that allow surgeons to bond cuts with practically no scarring.â€
To help you strategize about personal branding, I recommend you pick up The Potato Chip Difference, by Michael A. Goodman, which shows you how to apply classic marketing techniques to building your career. (www.potatochipdifference.com)
Don’t worry that your personal brand will be static for the rest of your life. You can continue to refine your brand image, and guide its evolution as your interests and those of your industry change over time.