BernieBorges.com Blog: Social Media and Web Marketing

Calling All Career Seekers

If You’re Reading This You’re a Career Seeker

Since I launched Career Central in June of this year, I’ve noticed that the people consuming my content and engaging with me on Career Central fall into four categories. So, let’s look at my definition of Career Seekers and the four categories they fall into.

“You are a career seeker if you have not made plans for your retirement party.”

Job Seekers

There are many active job seekers that span all age ranges. Recent college graduates are active job seekers. And, we all know talented people in various stages of their career that lost their job for one reason or another and they are actively looking for a new job today!

Entrepreneurs/Business Owners

If you own a business, no matter the age of your business, you are a career seeker. Even high profile entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook are career seekers. In Zuckerberg’s case he is financially stable for life, but you don’t see him riding into the sunset. He works hard everyday at building Facebook to be bigger and better. Facebook is his current career journey.

Small and midsize business owners who embrace (with enthusiasm) the career advice I provide through digital strategies strengthen their businesses tremendously.  As a business owner when you build your personal brand, your current business will benefit. And, if you choose to launch other businesses in the future, your personal brand will help you get them off the ground faster. As a business owner, your credibility in your business is an important element of success, even if you have thousands of employees.

Gainfully Employed

There are millions of people who go to work everyday that have a healthy mindset of improving their career options in the long run. Let’s be honest, in today’s hyper competitive world, few (if any) jobs are secure. I recommend all gainfully employed people seek to learn and leverage the career benefits of a strong personal brand and a strong network. Those who “get it” are immensely better off if or when they need to find a new job. Additionally, a strong network and personal brand can attract new career opportunities even when you’re not searching for it.

Executives

This is the category of career seekers I am most intrigued by… I’ll explain. To my chagrin, most executives I encounter don’t think they need to build their personal brand or use digital strategies to improve their career. Additionally, most executives think they are “too busy” to do so. There are some executives that can get away with this attitude. But, I argue it’s not more than 5% of all executives.

Executives are the most vulnerable in our hyper competitive economy. If an executive doesn’t perform according to the demands defined by their board of directors, or senior executives, he or she gets fired in one or two years on the job. An executive with a strong personal brand, supported by credible content is much better positioned to find their next executive job than one without these valuable career assets.

No matter which category you fall into, as a career seeker you should view yourself on a journey. Don’t allow yourself to use excuses to avoid building your personal brand like these common excuses:

• I’m too busy
• I don’t need a personal brand
• I don’t understand social media
• I’m too young
• I’m too old
• I don’t know how

These are excuses that will cause you to experience limitations in your career. Even if you’re not experiencing obvious limitations in your current career journey, you will likely experience them when you’re in competition with others whose personal brand eclipses yours.  And, then you’ll regret that you haven’t been working on your personal brand through content marketing and digital strategies.

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