Personal branding is the art of making a statement. By what we are worth, we should not mean " how much can I expect in this or that market ?", but " what added value do I have to offer in this or that environment ? ". An important nuance: "marketing " is not about turning into a product, it is first of all becoming aware (and then acting so that others become aware) of the value that one represents.

A few tips for aligned and effective personal branding.

1/ Map your value

The first target of your " self-marketing " is yourself ! That person who doesn't always suspect himself of so many skills and abilities. Reread your story in the light of the achievements you have gained, in all the environments you have crossed : associative activity when you were a student ?

You undoubtedly have the power to influence, communication skills, a sense of logistics, the beginnings of expertise on one or more themes ! Food job in your first years of professional life? You have a sense of the field and service, you are humble and open-minded, you know how to build camaraderie wherever you go !

Disappointing professional experience? You have been able to identify what you no longer wanted, you have been able to bounce back by finding support, by shaking up your network, by possibly starting from scratch, you are indisputably capable of resilience. Conjugality and parenthood ? You are an ace at organization, you have a sense of priorities, you know how to negotiate compromises on a daily basis ! Make a list of everything that life has taught you...

2/ Highlight the transferability of one's knowledge

… And that you will be able to transfer to a professional context. It is difficult a priori, in a culture that still separates spaces and times of life, to argue directly that his past as a babysitter has deeply anchored a sense of responsibility or that his commitment to the parents' association has usefully strengthened his mediation and negotiation skills.

And yet, it's there ! And without necessarily knowing it, you have already transferred these skills to a host of professional situations. As a manager, you know that if one of your employees is not at ease because he or she does not trust the person who looks after his or her children, he or she has trouble performing at the top of his or her game.

As a project manager, you have intuitively become accustomed to considering that the resistance of others is not sterile opposition to your point of view, but the expression of a need to be secure in relation to other interlocutors. As a mission leader, you naturally have in mind that a delay here disorganizes the work there, which puts other stakeholders in difficulty, etc. In short, you are armored with soft skills. All that remains is to put words to it: resilience, emotional intelligence, empathy, relational ecology, sense of situations...

3/ Enhance your "situational intelligence"

Let's talk about situational intelligence! Because there is no point in having a heavy backpack of skills, if you do not know how to implement them in context. Your very first quality is to understand what is happening in your environment. What are the challenges ? Why don't people (apparently) act rationally ? What are the liabilities of the environment in which you are working ? What power games are being exercised ? What is the weight of " local culture" ?

There are no taboo questions! And no simplistic answers, either : show that you are not afraid of complexity, that you know how to take into account a multiplicity of parameters, that you do not need to be in collusion with people to trust them and inspire them with confidence. You're a pro ! For you, situations are not a framework that imposes itself and against which you would fight, it is a playground on which you demonstrate your relevance and your effectiveness.

4/ Embodying what you put forward

However, you are not a machine. You are a person, who has your own personality. Do not try to hide (what you consider to be) your flaws, do not try to hide (what seems to you to be) failures.

Assume that your temperament pushes you to avoid conflict to calm the atmosphere or, on the contrary, to put your foot in the dish to speed up the resolution of problems ; assume that you are a person of conviction who needs to be aligned with his values in all circumstances or that you have more of a " mediator " soul who likes to make divergent opinions converse to seek consensus ; Assume that you need things to be done quickly or the opposite, that you prefer long-term projects where it is good to know how to be patient...

Play fair ! There's no need to force your nature : learning is not about upsetting yourself like a left-handed person who is forced to write with your right hand, it's about taking ownership of both hands (and your whole body, as well as your mind, your past, your desires, your needs...) to feel as skilled as possible according to the circumstances.

5/ Take care of the form, in the service of the content  

Now that you have taken stock of who you are and what valuable skills you represent, you will have to communicate. On social networks, starting with professional platforms, but also whenever you need to talk about yourself (in a recruitment or evaluation interview, in a situation of defending a project you are piloting, in the context of defending your interests, etc.).

So you're going to need a " pitch of yourself ". Imagine yourself in extreme conditions: telling me in 3 minutes to someone who knows absolutely nothing about my job and my environment ; Say why I'm there at a party I wasn't invited to; explain in a language other than my mother tongue what I know how to do ; convince passers-by that I am legitimate to intervene in a dispute between road users, etc.

Normally, at the end of these exercises, you know how to present in a simple way, in a few words, who you are, what you are capable of, how you go about dealing with all kinds of situations... All you have to do is write it in your LinkedIn profile!