There’s just one problem. No matter how great the contents, your resume looks and feels like every other of the millions of resumes out there. It’s text on a standard letter-sized or A4 page. Bullets, bolding, dates, words. Average review time (assuming you are lucky enough to get past the automated Applicant Tracking System filters) is between 20-40 seconds.

So how can you supplement the great contents of your standard resume with something a bit more eye-catching?

Enter the infographic resume
An infographic resume is a visual summary of your value proposition bundle: career highlights, education, strengths and skills. In my opinion, this type of resume should be used to supplement, not replace, your standard resume. You choose which parts to emphasize; there is no need for strict chronological or functional orientation, and you can get across design, communication, and data visualization chops in a compelling fashion by actually using those very same skills to make your infographic ‘pop.’

Infographic resumes have enjoyed a surge in popularity recently and several services (such as Vizualize.me, Re.vu, and Kinzaa) have sprung up to convert your LinkedIn or resume data into an infographic. Personally, I feel that the use of such “infograhic mills” is a good start, but ultimately you won’t give you much of a differentiation advantage as everyone’s infographic resume will start to look like it was generated from the same template.

Infographic Resume Bjorn Austraat

For my own personal infographic resume I decided to start from scratch in Photoshop and highlight the most important skills and value propositions applicable to a management consulting environment. Click on the preview version to the right to get the full, high-res image. As you can see, the three most important “value prop snippets” are featured very prominently while important, but secondary info about individual skills is de-emphasized on the right side of the graphic.

Information about vertical expertise and general “value boosters” such as educational achievements and cultural fluency at the bottom of the image correspond to data typically found at the end of the resume.

Would an infographic resume work for you? What would you include? How would you emphasize your core value propositions visually?

For help with creating your own infographic resume or to schedule your personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

In all of these situations, I recommend using “linguistic micro-targeting” to further boost the effectiveness of your personal value proposition and overall brand communication. This process starts with a close look at the types of words, phrases, and references that will most likely “resonate” with your target audience. In combination with an effective hook, value proposition, and tagline, this form of audience targeting powerfully leverages existing linguistic and cultural references to boost brand recognition and memorability.

Linguistic micro-targeting, Part I: Organizational culture and mythology
Every company, from the smallest startup to the most established Fortune 500 giant, has a unique culture and set of shared stories (the “corporate mythology”). The culture expresses common values, the mythology contains stories of great successes, spectacular failures and subsequent recovery, or significant details of important people in the history of the company, such as the founders or other memorable team members. Conversations with individuals working at the company in question, the official website, the 10K report, and other forms of electronic and printed collateral can be valuable sources of insight into these shared cultural elements.

In your research, take a closer look at what type of qualities are emphasized when members of this organization refer to the company as a whole, individual teams, goals, or other unifying aspects of the group. Do people pride themselves on their level of informality and egalitarianism? Do they emphasize hierarchy and order? Are they proud of being an agile and nimble organization? Are there names that are often referenced in a positive light, such as the names of the founders or members of the current leadership team?

Using elements of corporate culture in your micro-targeting
Create a list of attributes, events and names that you can then weave into your own presentation and messaging. For example, you may want to emphasize examples of previous projects and professional success stories that are in alignment with the declared vision and values of the target company. When giving examples of hypothetical customer stories, you could choose the first names of notable company luminaries, past or present. Also highlight how your educational or professional experience have prepared you to actively participate in the corporate culture of the target organization.

Linguistic micro-micro-targeting, Part II: Individual language adaptation
For one-on-one conversations, you may want to take your micro-targeting efforts even further and subtly adjust your language to the individual word choices, interests, and values of your conversation partner. Start by taking a close look at the educational and professional background of the person you will interact with. It may also be instructive to get a hold of a publication authored by this individual to get a feel for their linguistic style and preferred metaphorical tools. Do they frequently paint visual pictures, prefer the bang of auditory expressions, or get their point across by using kinesthetic or tactile examples? In addition to preparatory research, you should use the first few minutes of your meeting to actively listen to their word choices with an eye towards the linguistic preferences mentioned above. If the meeting takes place in a personal office, scan the walls for sports memorabilia, college diplomas, or any other artifacts that may let you build a proverbial bridge to the personal background and culture of this person.

For much more in-depth look at the role of language in corporate culture and communication, please see my paper on Resonant Value Communication in Business-to-Business Sales.

Here’s are two quick exercises to practice corporate and individual linguistic micro-targeting:

1. Take a look at your value proposition, tagline, and hook. Now imagine that you are applying for a position at one of the four companies below. How would your pitch change? What are some of the most interesting cultural elements of each company? What do they stand for? How could you resonate with their culture,  from the hundred-year-old industrial titan to the scrappy startup?
   • Google
   • Oracle
   • Ford Motor Company
   • Square
     
2. Imagine that Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, has invited you over for dinner. What would you talk about? Take a quick look at his professional biography, information about his youth, and any other biographical snippets. Can you find an article written by Mr. Bezos that would give you any indication as to his preferred communication style? If you were interested in a job Amazon.com, how would you change your value proposition to make it even more appealing to Mr. Bezos?

To help you craft a custom micro-targeted pitch or to schedule your personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

Creating a mental connection between your (personal) brand and the environment can similarly boost recall and recognition at a later point and – ideally – link positive emotions associated with place and time to your brand. This is one of the many reasons why advertisers pay big bucks to prominently feature their logos and brand elements along the sidelines, on sports equipment and uniforms at (emotionally charged) athletic events.You are elated that your team scored a point, your brain ties the strong emotion to the blended visual cues of athletes and brand-riddled backdrop.

Ties that bind – Creating a connection between your personal value proposition and your surroundings
Imagine you are enjoying a coffee break during a trade show and strike up a conversation with a fellow attendee – let’s call him Joel. In response to your “so….what do you do?” question he says “I make sure that the plane you’ll take back home won’t run out of fuel.” Upon further probing, you find out that Joel is a specialist in implementing large-scale supply chain systems and has just completed an engagement at a major domestic airline. Having used both emotion (who wouldn’t want to make sure there is enough fuel in your airplane?) and place (the conference location as well as your home base), he has effectively leveraged the most powerful components of episodic memory. It doesn’t really matter whether or not Joel’s enterprise supply chain solution was actually deployed at your preferred air carrier…the implied relevance and value of the services rendered to this or any other airline are clear.  Consider for a moment if he had simply given a typical response of “I work in logistics” or “I am a supply chain consultant.” You might have nodded politely and forgotten both his name and occupation about 7 seconds later.

How can you leverage time, place and emotion to tie your personal value proposition and hook to your audience’s episodic memory? By trying out a “location-aware” messaging strategy at upcoming social, industry, and company events. Once on-site, consider items in your environment that you can reasonably link to your value proposition. This could include things like hotel amenities, furniture, art work, well-designed posters, the interpretation / translation staff, beautiful natural surroundings, transportation options, and many more. Develop a small number of contextually specific tag lines and try out a few iterations. Practice makes perfect, and exercising your creativity in this way will dramatically boost your memorability and “brand recall.”

For help with situational value propositions or to schedule your personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

Throughout the editing process, you should also keep in mind the “Meaning” dimension of your brand as it reflects your core values and “moral compass.” This will help you build and communicate your personal brand in a truthful, open and sustainable way.

Word clouds for fun and profit
An easy and intuitive way to “brand check” any piece of personal branding collateral is the creation of a word cloud from the raw text of the item in question.There are several free online word cloud generators that will help you build this more “right brained” view of resumes, brag sheets, and brochures. Two of my favorites are Tagxedo - Word Cloud with Styles and Wordle – Beautiful Word Clouds.

Word Cloud Resume

To your left you’ll see the word cloud version of my management consulting resume. I repeated the word cloud generation process several times throughout the editing pass the last time I updated my resume. This helped me ensure that I was indeed bringing out the aspects of my experience I wanted to emphasize while not repeating too many keywords from a more distant (and technical) past.

This technique also works great for quickly analyzing large amounts of data from a company’s annual report, magazine articles or any other piece of text you want to scan and evaluate on a single page.

Try it out with your resume and see what the “cloud tells you” about your positioning and written personal branding.

To schedule your free personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

As a first-time visitor, you’d probably appreciate the help of a seasoned – ideally bilingual – visitor to Tokyo and Narita who’s “been there before.” Such an individual would be able to provide you with an incredibly valuable good – Peace of Mind.

Your ultimate Personal Brand Promise - Peace of Mind

A new client, a prospective employer, a new team member – they all find themselves in a similar situation to the befuddled traveler in a strange airport I described earlier. What are the rules? What does this sign mean? What are the expectations? Will the brochure live up to the expectations?

The Peace of Mind Business 
Ultimately, we are all in the “peace of mind” business.  Your customers, clients, employers, and team mates want to trust that you will deliver the experiences and results that let them sleep at night instead of worrying about what you let fall through the cracks. As mentioned in a previous post on the value of emotional branding, these “feeling dimensions” of your personal brand can serve as a critical differentiator and make you more memorable while also boosting the perceived value of your services.

Here are some example value proposition snippets that specifically highlight “peace of mind” qualities:

• I deliver large scale project management that lets you sleep at night
• With me, you get “no worry” professional HR
• You’ll see the results of my personal training in your mirror within two weeks – or your money back
• I’ll hit the ground running – I will be productive from day one

The Peace of Mind Check
To perform a quick “peace of mind” check, try the following thought experiment:
Put yourself in the shoes of the hiring manager at a company you’d like to work for or those of a potential client. What are this person’s worries? Fears? Is their primary concern around hiring a good team player? A skilled technical resource? A person with enough leadership potential? Too much leadership potential who will be gunning for their job?

Now take a quick look at your resume, email signature, LinkedIn profile and other messaging elements: are there any phrases, value propositions, proof points or other components that address these worries, either directly or indirectly? As mentioned before, a mere listing of skills may not do enough to give your personal brand the “peace of mind” edge. Check out the 4M Personal Branding summary slide deck for additional ideas on how to weave unstated client needs into your value proposition to preempt worries and overcome objections before they even arise.

To schedule your free personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

By focusing on concrete results, resume writers can avoid the temptation of speaking in generic terms about activities and job descriptions and instead highlight the value provided by their actions. Today’s article will focus on taking results a step further by adding a – memorable – feeling dimension to them.

Translating abstract benefits into easily accessible and concrete terms is a critical step in giving your value proposition(s), hooks and elevator pitch a memorable edge. This is especially important if you work in a field that either doesn’t directly produce tangible work products or whose outcomes may be difficult to mentally translate from one customer to another - e.g. the healing arts, personal training or coaching.

Step 1: What’s in it for them?
As in all effective value communication, it helps to take on the perspective of your customer rather than seeing your product or service from your own (functional) angle. What’s in it for them? Why are they buying your services / why would they want you on their team? Remember, it’s never about the fact that you are great at coding / HR / graphics design / electrical wiring, it’s about the outcome and benefit that your customer derives, for example
- coding = great apps that customers love
- personal coaching = leading the life you want
- HR = happy employees who are great at what they do and can focus on their jobs

Step 2: What do you want your customers to feel?
Even more compelling than customer outcomes are brand promises that focus on the way the product or service will make you feel. Almost all large commercial product brands deliver at least some aspect of this “feeling” dimension.
So, let’s take the benefits above and  add the “feeling dimension”
- coding = great apps that customers love and won’t keep you up at night worrying about tech support
- personal coaching = leading the life you want…you’ll be happy and satisfied with what you see in your mirror, wallet, and home
- HR = creating a workplace that makes you feel welcome and at home

Thinking about what you want your audience and customers to feel after you have delivered your pitch (or presentation) is a great compass for aligning the entire communication around a central, memorable, and effective goal. What’s the “feeling dimension” of your personal brand?

To schedule your free personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

This article will introduce the MAC technique of checking your tag line against important criteria that ensure successful delivery and retention of your one-line mini-resume. The three-letter acronym MAC stands for

• Memorable
• Approachable and
• Concise

Memorable – Using ancient brain filters to stand out and be remembered
The human brain has an amazing ability to filter environmental inputs for things that are critical to our survival. Moving objects receive preferential attention over static ones, things that are colorful draw our attention more so than drab items, and anything that threatens or potentially aids survival of ourselves or our genes is given top-shelf priority. How can we use these evolutionary facts in personal value communication? Adding elements of color, motion, personal and property risk and survival all boost memorability and retention.

Compare the two value propositions / tag lines below

• “I deliver comprehensive telecommunications solutions, including expert cabling, end point configuration and user training”
         vs
• “I make sure my clients never miss that million dollar phone call”

The thought of missing a million dollar phone call is pretty scary (and memorable) as it sets off alarm bells related to the survival instinct. This makes it a powerful agent to arouse the natural curiosity of the listener and provide an opportunity to  explain how – exactly –  the telecommunications expert could provide similar peace of mind to other prospective clients.

Approachable – De-jargonify your pitch
Management buzzwords, acronyms and technical jargon can make your tag line and hook ineffective as they may distract, confuse or even turn off your audience. As previously discussed in my post on the differences between written and spoken communication, you should carefully evaluate your tag line for its “authenticity factor.” If it sounds too stilted, overly slick or rehearsed, the listener may question your motives and wonder about the authenticity of your communication.  Excessive use of industry jargon and especially acronyms can lead to a feeling of exclusion and intimidation in the uninitiated. So, drop the buzzwords and jargon and replace them with common, everyday words.

• “I provide expert advice on the implementation of IPv6 smart devices with a special focus on low-power NFC for smart grid peak-shifting and peak-shaving as well as OSS/BSS integration”
         vs
• “I can make your power and water meter really smart to save you tons of money in utility bills and cut down on global warming”

Credible – If it sounds too good to be true…
I recently met a very gregarious individual at a business mixer who had clearly spent a lot of time preparing his networking pitch. His opener (or hook) was short, clear and to the point with a seemingly compelling value proposition. There was only a small problem with it: it sounded way too good to be true. It went something like this: “I show people how to collect valuable assets – like gold and silver – for free.” Needless to say, alarm bells went off in my head as picking up free gold and silver (short of using a metal detector) seemed simply too farfetched and a bit sketchy. Our conversation was brief and I never did find out how to perform this magical feat.

For your tagline to work, your audience has to have a reason to believe that you can actually fulfill your “brand promise” and deliver the results you advertise. This sometimes leads to creative tension with the imperative for Memorability and you should carefully balance the M and C in MAC. Going overboard in either department can make the tag line either excessively flamboyant (raising alarm bells) or overly drab (inducing boredom).

So, the next time you refine your value proposition for a new target audience or update your tag line or hook, don’t forget the MAC. By the way, Memorability, Approachability and Credibility also work great as guidelines for other settings, such as a sales presentation, company overview or investor pitch.

To schedule your free personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

In addition to the invaluable assistance in overcoming language boundaries from several bilingual colleagues, I found that a few innovative ground rules were able to turn cultural differences and obstacles into workshop performance boosters. These rules gave participants “permission” to step outside their workplace persona and – temporarily – adopt a much more informal and creative personal brand for themselves. My instructions included the following points

• There are no bad ideas
• This seminar room is in New York (not Tokyo)
• Pick a name that is easy to pronounce for the instructor (me)
• Relax and have fun. (And it’s okay to take off jackets and ties!)

The combination of the the temporary pseudonym and the (visually) informal and relaxed workshop environment helped bring out a strong creative streak in almost all participants and fostered very lively and productive discussions. Feedback on the workshop was quite positive and many team members remarked how this type of structured exploration of strategy had helped them understand coworkers’ needs better, especially across business unit boundaries.

Cultural awareness and personal branding
You may wonder how the workshop tips and tricks above apply to personal branding? For me, it all boils down to using cultural awareness productively: acknowledge the core norms and tenets of the target culture and comply with the essentials, but don’t lose sight of the fact that creative differences can create unique benefits.

For the workshop, I could have used a Japanese interpreter to explain everything in flawless Japanese and adopted a more traditional format aligned with organizational hierarchies and role expectations. This would have resulted in a comfortable, but poorly differentiated experience for the audience. Instead, I chose to respectfully prod participants out of their comfort zone. This allowed them to have a hands-on and productive learning experience that I hope will stand out in a sea of forgettable corporate seminars.

Applying these lessons to personal branding, I would encourage you to consciously explore your target audience’s or company’s culture in order to find opportunities for productive and memorable differentiation. First, find out as much as you can about shared visions, goals and beliefs. Cultural expectations also include dress code, the level of formality in personal interactions and things like expected work hours and effort. Next, figure out where your personal value system / brand and your target audience’s corresponding beliefs and assumptions already align and where they differ. Can you use areas of difference (and differentiation) to safely create a memorable advantage? Examples may include

• Using a non-traditional, but effective presentation opener in a normally staid and boring quarterly business review readout
• Re-arranging a cubicle landscape into a bullpen layout to foster team work
• Declaring casual days (or even weeks) for your department
• Creating mini-incentive schemes for your project team

You’ll have to make your own decision which elements of the target culture are flexible – gross violations of expectations and norms certainly create the wrong type of memorability! Also pick the right starting point and timing for your experiment: I was wearing a tie at the beginning of the workshop so I could not only make a public show of taking it off but also to establish a familiar and non-threatening baseline when I first met the seminar participants.

Carefully executed, these small and intentional deviations from the cultural status quo can be great brand builders and help you stand out and “become memorable for all the right reasons.”

To schedule your free personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

3-Circles Model by Urbany and Davis

It uses a simple Venn diagram with overlapping circles representing “customers,”  ”competitors,” and “company” to comprehensively describe a series of important factors in your competitive environment. Some of the most important elements of the model include intersection areas that represent the points of difference setting apart your company, points of parity that afford no competitive advantage, points of difference giving your competitors an edge, and undiscovered or unmet needs of your customers. There are several additional drivers represented by the intersection areas in the diagram to the left. For a complete discussion of these elements and an overview of the 3 Circle model, please see 3-circles.net.

Applying the 3 Circle model to personal branding
Simply replacing the word “company” with the word “you” allows you to apply many of the lessons for effective competitive differentiation from the 3 Circle model to the task of building your personal brand.

3-Circles Model for Personal Branding

In this case, you competitors may be people with similar backgrounds or résumés that are competing with you for a job or a promotion.Your customers are hiring managers or supervisors who can grant a promotion.

For maximum effectiveness, your value proposition and especially your hook should come from the area marked “Point of difference for you” in the diagram to the right. Unfortunately, simple descriptions of capabilities and skills (“market research,” “C++ coding,” “telecom equipment installation,” etc.) often fall squarely into the area labeled “Points of parity.” These are the table stakes that are required for a job, but won’t set you apart from the other contenders.

In a previous post, I described the technique of exponential differentiation. These overlapping value propositions will allow you to grow the area marked “points of difference for you” which in turn increases your chances of “closing the deal.” Take a moment to go through your resume, executive bio, LinkedIn profile, and any other piece of messaging collateral you may have. Yes, including the right (undifferentiated, descriptive, bland) keywords is a critical search engine optimization technique in today’s world of automated applicant tracking and large-scale human resources management systems. But your summary and value proposition statements at the beginning of these documents should avoid wasting space with points of parity. A useful “gut check” technique is to ask yourself “how many other people can make the same claim?” Continue refining your summary and value proposition statements until you have narrowed down the pool of competitors as far as possible. In addition, the exponential differentiation value proposition may help your customers discover unstated or “tacit” needs they may not have realized they had.This simultaneously shrinks the area of “points of parity” and grows your “points of difference.”

To schedule your free personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.

You may even have tried to keep up with the slides and “spoken” words, but after a few minutes your brain threw in the towel and decided to let your mind wander on to other topics or give in to the temptation of  a little impromptu nap.

Don’t make them read with their ears – Differences between spoken and written language
What makes the typical, read presentation so annoying? Speakers who rattle off prepared remarks while seemingly ignoring the audience’s listening needs are disregarding the simple fact that written words are meant to be read, not heard. Written language differs in several important ways from the spoken word. It is much more dense (or less redundant) than spoken language. When talking normally to friends or colleagues, we typically repeat the same concept a few times, but slightly change the way we express it. This makes our thoughts more accessible to our listeners and allows them to catch up with our train of thought in case they missed something or couldn’t follow our logic. In written business communication on the other hand, such redundancy may come across as sloppy style or poorly edited writing.

In the setting of a verbally delivered conference or business presentation, reading prepared remarks forces the audience to keep up with the dense style of the written word and will have them struggling “to keep up” without the normal fillers and repetition that make human communication work.
Other important differences between written and spoken communication include the level of formality, the type of technical language used, and the length of sentences. Also keep in mind that the reader of a piece of text has the option of pausing, re-reading, and generally consuming the printed word at their own pace. In presentations, none of these “throttles” are available, which can quickly lead to stress and emotional disengagement when the pace exceeds the listener’s ability to process and understand the material.

Lessons for personal branding and your value proposition “tagline”
So, how do these important insights into the differences between written and spoken language apply to personal branding? I’ll provide some more details about effective presentation techniques in another post, but wanted to focus today’s article on applying the lessons of the spoken versus written word to your personal hook, tagline, and value proposition.

Using overly polished, carefully tuned sentences in the context of spoken communication comes across as insincere and sets off alarm bells in the listeners’ heads. They may begin to wonder if your verbal “barrage” is hiding an ulterior motive and if you finely crafted pitch is meant to confuse them rather than communicate effectively.

To be effective, your personal communication,value proposition and hook may need to be tweaked slightly to fully account for the differences in context and delivery. These tweaks consist of fillers, repetition, and other elements normally found in everyday language.Your written tagline as a project manager, for instance, may be short and to the point
   ”I provide peace of mind to customers and colleagues through outstanding project management” or
   ”Peace of mind through outstanding project management”
Perfect for an e-mail signature or business card, but you’ll need a slightly more conversational form for use at business mixers or parties. For example:
“You know, what I really love to do is to make sure that I provide peace of mind to my customers and my team by doing an excellent job as a project manager.“
These fillers add a bit of variety to your value proposition and make it much more friendly, approachable, and natural. Delivered in combination with an authentic desire to be of service, you will move towards your goal of being memorable for all the right reasons – in short you will have applied positive personal branding, not slick salesmanship.

Stay tuned for upcoming posts on building your personal brand through outstanding conference and business presentations.

To schedule your free personal branding discovery session, please check the Personal Branding Services page.