11.4: Practical Communication

In this OER Textbook we will cover a lot of different areas of communication studies that all play a role in how you present yourself and how you can market yourself in the future. We will also explore a number of communication skills that will be useful for you to highlight as you move on in your future careers and aspirations. Now we are going to focus on how you can package yourself through some personal branding techniques to promote yourself and your personal goals in the future in a very practical way.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): "Personal branding dilemma" by stefano principato is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

You also need to think about the communication spaces available for you to use, both paid and free as part of your personal brand. Please note we do not require or recommend paid-for sites for this project, but you should consider whether they will be needed in the future. LinkedIn is an obvious choice for job seekers, but what other spaces can you use effectively to promote yourself and your goals? Many people today choose blogs, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook...consider how your presence in each of these spaces could help to promote you, or hurt your future goals. When you go online and utilize the spaces there, you are conforming to the rules and structures of those spaces. They encourage particular behaviors and identities and build aspects of what we call your digital footprint. This footprint reaches much farther out than most of us realize, and we are not capable of controlling everything about it (Cerrillo-i-Martínez, 2018; Davidson & Martellozzo, 2013; Golder & Macy, 2017; Lingel, 2016; Orzech, Moncur, Durrant & Trujillo-Pisanty, 2018). Therefore we need to figure out what it is that we can manage, and what we need to avoid.

This is trickier than we might think. After all, while some of us are convinced the best way to go is to avoid putting any of our personal information online, in today's world we need to use those spaces effectively to survive. And the movement toward digital identities is getting stronger all the time (Weisgerber & Butler, 2016). So while it's imperative to understand and control as much of our digital footprint as possible, the key is control and appropriateness of platform and content, not avoidance. People are going to find out about you whether you want it or not, so why not be the first to generate your personal narrative.

Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): "New LinkedIn layout" by Mario_T_ is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

There are several basic steps to getting a job that today's job seekers need to utilize. It's a tough market out there with the challenges facing our economy and overflow of job seekers. Each of these steps reflects the goals of self-presentation and personal branding discussed in this module. Among these steps three are key:

1. Mobilize your resume: get that resume online and make it visible. Use job search sites and digital sites like LinkedIn to start the networking processes you need in order to secure that job.
2. Brand yourself: design an awesome tagline and build your personal brand in social media and web search engines. Start by Googling yourself--you might be amazed at what you find. And increase security on sites you mean to be personal rather than professional so potential employers don't see your own "Beercules" moments. And make sure that everything easily visible in a Google search fits the personal brand you have developed for yourself
3. Look the part: Make sure photos of yourself visible in those public spaces show off you "good" side and not your "party" side. But along with this, you need to make sure that your data image is also adding to that package. Use plenty of "white spaces" in blogs, online, and print resumes. This means don't crowd in tons of text and images that make your page distracting (remember those way too crowded MySpace pages some people had?). Keep things clean, well organized, and to the point. And be sure to run spellcheck. Poorly written resumes are one of the fastest ways to lose out on a job.

Part of selling yourself effectively is also promoting your own knowledge base and critical thinking skills. Think about what other aspects of communication you've learned in this would be beneficial to highlight in your own personal brand. Will it help you to promote your analytical and critical thinking skills? Are there identity or gender scripts that will help you market your brand? Are there intercultural skills or cultural knowledge that you should highlight? What about relational processes--are there communication styles or key terms you should list in your personal branding spaces?

Many scholars and personal brand experts today recommend that you have a one sentence personal brand statement. This replaces the older "career goals" statement on a resume. Think of this statement as a "tag line" or the statement that will get you noticed. Remember also that most employers today use Human Resource "robots" to scan through hundreds or even thousands of applicants. What are the key terms you can use to highlight your own skills and ambitions? How can you make yourself stand out in the marketplace?

Begin the process of thinking through your own personal brand by taking a look at this Personal Branding Worksheet.

Being able to see how a full understanding and ability to communicate will not only benefit your personal but professional life as well. Knowing what to do and when, what can be said and the potential impact of that message, and being able to foresee possible problems will give you an advantage in any and every career and lifestyle commitment in the future.

References

Cerrillo-i-Martínez, A. (2018). How do we provide the digital footprint with eternal rest? Some criteria for legislation regulating digital wills. Computer Law & Security Review. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2018.04.008

Davidson, J., & Martellozzo, E. (2013). Exploring young people's use of social networking sites and digital media in the internet safety context: A comparison of the UK and Bahrain. Information, Communication & Society, 16(9), 1456-1476. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2012.701655

Golder, S. A., & Macy, M. W. (2014). Digital footprints: Opportunities and challenges for online social research. Annual Review of Sociology, 40, 129-152. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043145

Lingel, J. (2016). The case for many Internets. Communication and the Public, 1(4), 486-488. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047316681573

Orzech, K. M., Moncur, W., Durrant, A., & Trujillo-Pisanty, D. (2018). Opportunities and challenges of the digital lifespan: views of service providers and citizens in the UK. Information, Communication & Society, 21(1), 14-29. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2016.1257043

Weisgerber, C., & Butler, S. H. (2016). Debranding Digital Identity: Personal Branding and Identity Work in a Networked Age. International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies (IJICST), 6(1), 17-34.