SPOILER ALERT: This post is how I'm redeveloping and executing my brand in personal, academic, and business settings, while marketing myself for the career I want.

The Why.

As I'm approaching a critical point of my doctorate program, I was having a conversation with a close friend on what I wanted to do after I became a Ph.D. So I told him I wanted to teach, do research, and have a consulting business. But then I was on social media and came across a post by my academic sis who challenged her followers on marketing themselves in academia and marketing themselves for career positions. These two events clicked and I had a lightbulb moment where I realized I needed to get it together, and here we are!

The Benefits for Your Academic and Professional Career

1. Not everything is meant for social media

By this, I mean cleaning up your social media accounts ESPECIALLY the ones that are public! You never know who's creeping on it and making decisions based on what you post, regardless of your qualifications. What I decided to do was go through my personal accounts (which are private) and remove anything that I felt didn't represent me properly. Believe it or not, employers do bring up social media postings and accounts, and it's happened to me before. So if you're portraying the image on social media you'd like, time to revise.

2. Benefiting your career opportunities (corporate and entrepreneur)

With how you market yourself on social media and in-person, you never know who is noticing you or have decided that you provide a skillset and experience that they do not have. Remember, perception is reality, so make sure you make the right impression.

3. Highlight your transferable skills

I'll be honest, this took longer than it should've for me to do this in my current role. At school, I am a qualitative researcher, but how my full-time role developed, I'm quantitative. I found myself getting frustrated with reporting or being asked to point out any correlations. So I had to take a step back and really think about what skills I may have learned in school that may be beneficial in my current role. Another lightbulb moment, the quantitative courses that were required to take at the undergrad, master's, and doctorate levels. So my challenge to you is, really think about previous coursework that focused on developing certain skills and what scenarios you use them in. For example, you can state that information processing is "learning quickly," information and data collection are "researching, information and data analysis is "identifying problems or gaps," developing actionable conclusions aka "problem-solving," along with your work ethic. You'd be surprised by what you reveal to yourself.

I say all this to really challenge yourself on exposing what you bring to the table and more. Show the businesses, universities and colleges, and individuals why you are one-of-a-kind and why you're the best for the job!

You got this!

@TheStudentForLife