A Communication Strategist, Mr. Yao Kuwornu, has urged the youth to be conscious and deliberate about building their personal brands.
This, he said, will help make them more prepared for job opportunities and be successful in their careers.
“Whether consciously or not, you are building some kind of brand; so being conscious about it means looking at the different elements of the brand and paying attention to them,” he stated.
Mr. Kuwornu was speaking on the on the weekly CoRe Hangout programme hosted by Mrs. Comfort Ocran. The virtual hangout is part of the COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Programme (CoRe), an initiative of the Springboard Road Show Foundation in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation and Solidaridad. The programme is supporting over 692,000 young people across the country.
He was speaking on the theme ‘Job-readiness; personal and digital branding for career success’.
“Personal branding is what identifies you and what makes you unique and stand out. It entails everything from how you look to how you speak, to your thought patterns to even your demeanour. Your brand is who you are, and branding applies to all facets of life.
“Building your own brand starts right from childhood: what you like, what you do, how you think; and society also plays a big role in building a personal brand. Where you were raised and your thinking philosophy also constitute part of your brand,” he explained.
Digital branding
Also speaking on the programme about digital branding, the Founder of Eazzysocialb – Mr. Gad Ocran, said digital branding is a composition of two things: “Who you are, which is having a complete profile about who you are on social media; and also what you want others to know about you”.
On how the youth can attract job opportunities digitally and through social media, he shared a personal story about himself on how he has been using LinkedIn to get jobs right from Level 300 in university.
“There is a framework that I use, and it is comprised of three things: When you are going on social media as a job-seeker or career professional, you need to have in mind that you are going to engage and connect with other people, so you need to define the kind of people you want to connect with. And for a job-seeker, obviously, in going to LinkedIn you are basically targetting top companies that you want to connect with or aspire to work with.
“You are also targetting the key influencers within this organisation that may be involved in the hiring decisions. It’s not always about seeking a job, but also about learning and development; so you need to define the kind of personalities you engage as well,” he stated.
Focusing on groups to join
Mr. Ocran also urged the youth to be conscious about the groups they join on social media.
“Once you identify the people you want to engage, you need to focus on groups that you want to join. Social media is community-driven and groups are sub-sets of communities, so when you go on LinkedIn or Facebook there are groups; and you need to find a group that is active and there is a lot of engagement.
“This is very key, because in joining groups on social media you don’t just use the group size; you also want to know the number of active conversations that happen. In any community or environment where there is a lot of interaction, information flow is higher – and this is key because while you participate in conversations within these groups, there is a high possibility that you will be notified,” he explained.
