Personal branding – You are the product!

Creating a personal brand is a difficult yet indispensable exercise to be competitive on nowadays’ ruthless job market. Social media have intensified exposure and visibility of our personal and professional lives, and accentuated the need for us to stand out.

As part of the events organised by the Career Services at the University of Glasgow, the students of the Adam Smith Business School were invited to a Career night, exposing them to key advice from successful professionals. On this occasion, MaRVL invited Adrien Kirschfink from Accenture, who shared his tips on how to achieve a successful international career, and build  a personal brand.

  • Create and nurture your personal brand. Know who you are and what you stand for. This is adjustable over time and contexts, but keep consistency in the way your behave and communicate, both in real life and online. Like Coca-Cola, you can have different flavours to adjust to local preferences and markets, but you need to maintain a strong and recognisable core brand.
  • Ensure that your employer’s values match your own. Enriching and satisfactory work experiences are highly dependent on the employee/employer match.
  • Network within and outside your company. Don’t be closed to new connections, and keep in touch with people that made an impact in your life. Be genuine in your relationships, and favor quality over quantity.

Adrien summarises his vision with the “3 As”

  1. Strive for Authentic growth. Trying to behave in a way that does not reflect how you truly are can only last so long.
  2. Allow yourself to take a risk every day. It is by taking risks that we evolve and surpass ourselves.
  3. Amaze yourself every day. Never forget the (little) things in life that put a smile on your face and make you strong.

Adrien is a Strategy Senior Manager at Accenture New York. He graduated from HEC-ULg in Belgium and has since then developed his personal brand of successful consultant. 

By Laurence Dessart

Author: laurencedessart

PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow. Interested in consumer behaviour, social media marketing and customer engagement. I am also the editor of this blog!

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