How to Build a Personal Brand as a Recruiter
Contents
- What is a personal brand?
- How does having a personal brand help you do your job?
- How to build a personal brand
- 5 steps to build your personal brand as a recruiter
What is a personal brand?
Having a ‘personal brand’ means presenting yourself to the world, showcasing your experiences, skills, and personality, to shape how others perceive you, especially in professional contexts.
Showing your values and relatability through platforms such as LinkedIn can be incredible impactful when it comes to connecting with people in your industry and for recruitment in general.
How does having a personal brand help you do your job?
Having a strong personal brand on LinkedIn can be more impactful than making 100 sales calls. It drives inbound leads, leads you to have normal conversations with people who are relevant in your industry, and most importantly, it shows that you’re human and not just another recruiter.
How to build a personal brand
Be relatable
Post unique content that your audience can relate to. Develop your own online voice through which to share your life experiences that people reading will identify with. Keep your content tonally consistent and find the specific qualities that set you apart from others in your field.
Be vulnerable
Don’t be afraid to share your failures with your audience, as well as your successes. It’s well known that the best marketers are storytellers, and marketing yourself is no exception. Be vulnerable, genuine, and thoughtful with the content you share.
Add value
Share your knowledge with your audience, putting out content that is genuinely valuable to people you’re connected with. If you’re not sure where to start, try out a couple of content themes and see which posts resonate most with your audience. Use interactive features on LinkedIn like polls to gauge your audience’s interest in a certain topic.
Don’t post rubbish
It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised! To grow and maintain a strong personal brand people need to know that they can come to you for quality content. This means not posting rubbish just for the sake of posting something. GIFs can only get you so far!
5 steps to build your personal brand as a recruiter
1. Identify your niche and your goals
The first step to building your personal brand is identifying and establishing your niche. What kind of companies do you recruit for? Which roles? Where? It might seem counterintuitive, but it’s much easier to establish yourself as an expert in one small area.
With your niche identified, think about your goals. Are you trying to grow a following so that you always have a talent pool at your fingertips? Are you trying to connect with and influence other recruiters?
2. Create valuable content and post it consistently
Once you know who you’re catering for, it’s time to create some valuable content to share. Think about what your ideal audience wants to learn from you and answer any questions that usually crop up in your day-to-day life as a recruiter.
Most importantly, stick to a consistent upload schedule. Your following will know what to expect from you and LinkedIn will see you as a regular contributor to the platform.
3. Network with relevant people
Whatever your goals, LinkedIn is a great place to network with individuals. Don’t think of it as growing a list of connections, but rather as an exchange of value. Freely exchange information with the people you want to get to know and use the search features to find new people.
4. Keep conversation casual and human
Avoid sounding like a robot churning out LinkedIn posts – there’s enough of that going on with the availability of AI! Encourage casual conversation in your comments and DMs and make sure you strike a suitable balance between human and professional.
5. Always be authentic
Never copy other people’s content. It’s not a good look! If you’re in a niche that you’re passionate about, you should have no trouble thinking of lots of topics to post about.
If you’re struggling to come up with unique, use your day-to-day to write a list: What kinds of conversations have you had with candidates? What questions did they ask? What are your clients interested in? What are the key trends in your niche?
We encourage consultants to build their personal brands now just to make their lives easier by driving inbound leads, but also so the people they work with can put a face to the name; they can show that they’re not just another recruiter.
