Developing a personal brand at a new company by Sarah Brummitt

LinkedIn is a wonderful thing. Not only can you build your professional network, but it provides an opportunity to collaborate and learn from others.  On the Linkage Women in Leadership LinkedIn page, a newly hired employee asked the group for advice: how could she build a brand for herself outside of her immediate team? Group member Sarah Brummitt, an award winning image consultant from the United Kingdom, quickly jumped to her aid, offering advice, which she has agreed to share with us here at the Linkage Leadership Blog.

Ten Ways to Network Yourself

1. Take care of basics—define your personal brand. If someone asked your new colleagues (inside or outside of your team) to use 3-5 adjectives to describe you—what would you want them to say? Most professionals are branded accidentally. To build a personal brand takes both intention and consistency.
2. When you’ve decided on your brand values, make sure that how you look, behave, and sound aligns with it consistently.
3. Be curious—the best advantage of being new is that you should be firing out lots of great questions not to try to be clever; but rather to be curious about the business.
4. Build your allies—these should start with people within your team; but also your internal customers. Who will you be supporting? Get time with them (or their team) to find out what their current key priorities, issues, and challenges are.
5. Look for quick wins—don’t feel obliged to change the world overnight!!
6. Develop a great elevator pitch for what you do. You’ll be asked (especially because you’re new) what your role is—craft and learn an answer that is positive, impactful and dynamic—definitely not long, waffling, downbeat, or apologetic.
7. Share best practice from your expertise to date—not as in ‘well in my old job we did it this way and it’s better’, but rather in the spirit of offering more ideas, choice, and value to the discussions.
8. Network continuously—not just because you’re new.
9. Accelerate your learning—ask for a mentor and/or formal training/coaching if necessary.
10. Be yourself—that’s why they hired you.

About Sarah Brummitt MFIC AICI CIP

Sarah Brummitt is an award winning image consultant who runs her own business for both corporate and individual clients. As a qualified executive coach and trainer, Sarah has worked with professionals at all levels in the UK, Europe, North America, the Far East and Australia to help them achieve their professional development goals. Learn more at www.sarahbrummitt.com