🍎 Changing careers? A new professional identity is critical to your success
Part 1 of 4: Inside look into the 12 Week Career Launch, designed to land you a new job in tech in 12 weeks.
Branding yourself during the job search is about creating a career identity for the purpose of landing a new job in tech. When you create a new professional identity, you learn to really ‘own’ the new role you are applying for instead of leaning into a narrative around lack of work experience.
Branding yourself acts as that special something that helps hiring managers see you as a better fit than other candidates. It’s that extra ‘packaging’ that makes your resume shine through the sea of sameness.
Creating a branded career identity allows you to:
Control the narrative of your career transition
Stand out from other candidates
Clearly highlight your transferable skills
Showcase your wealth of professional experience, even if you’re new to tech
How to create a new career identity
Branding for your job search is all about the image you present of your professional identity to companies through your resume, linkedin and interview conversations.
Every company has a job that they are looking to fill with a person who has a specific set of skills and personality. Become that candidate through the image you present, so you can be an obvious fit for the job.
Pivoting into tech requires maintaining confidence in your new skills and how they will contribute in a new role. Even if you don’t have direct work experience in the role, remember what you HAVE done: projects, courses, case studies, and more. You are NOT starting from scratch. In addition to the technical skills, you have years of previous work experience, which means you have transferable skills.
When you own the identity of your new role in tech (ex. Software Engineer) EVEN if you have less than one year of experience in that field, you effectively create an image of yourself as a potential fit, helping the hiring manager see you as a real candidate for the position.
There are endless ways to brand yourself based on domain, size of market, product type, sector/industry or even a personal interest or hobby that you’re passionate about.
The formula to creating your career identity:
Job Title + doing something specific with products/projects/people + company size/sector/domain.
A few examples:
Software Engineer who creates HR software for Edtech companies hiring in the Higher Education industry.
Product Designer with 10+ years of experience building interfaces for scale-up companies in the Property tech space.
Software Engineer with background in Medicine, excited to build products for mission driven Health-tech companies.
Data Analyst pivoting from supply chain management, with a deep expertise in retail, e-commerce and marketing. Excel at making data useable for product and marketing teams.
You can be as vague or specific as you want, but start somewhere to give yourself a specific image of your new career identity. If you have a strong background in a particular domain and are looking for your very first role, use that domain knowledge as leverage, don’t ignore it. You don’t need years of experience to have a personal brand when job searching! All you need are your personal preferences in specific companies or sectors.
Considering moving away from your previous domain expertise? Highlight your passion or hobbies that connect with the new domain you want to work in, while highlighting your transferable skills.
Example:
Product Manager excited to take on business and product challenges in the wellness space. As a former business owner with a passion for marathon running, looking to apply my business operations skills and knowledge of the wellness space to build products that serve the needs of the wellness community.
Your personal brand will evolve every year, so the first time you apply for roles in tech, is only the first of many times you will create a professional brand in your career journey.
As you move up from one job to the next, you will gain expertise in one or multiple domains. Domain expertise refers to knowledge in a specific industry or process area, such as finance, payments, healthcare, education, service industry, etc.
Early on in your career, your branding will take advantage of your past career experiences, but as you get more jobs in tech, you will naturally gain new domain knowledge in every job based on the company size, sector and product type (mobile, web, platform, etc) you work with.
How you brand yourself can get you the job offer.
Every company has a specific idea of the person for the role, so if you have the same experience as other applicants AND a background in Music or Teaching or Medicine, highlighting your domain knowledge will help you stand out from the others.
Let’s pretend you have a background in music production and you apply as a Product Manager at Spotify. Bringing up your background in music production can be that extra edge to have you be the ‘candidate that’s a better fit’ who is chosen over others. Keep in mind, if your domain knowledge or personal hobbies/interests align with specific tech companies, there may be a great match between the company and you!
To recap, creating a professional brand for your new career in tech will provide:
Better chances to stand out from other candidates
Allow you to highlight your transferable skills in a relevant way
Opportunity to talk about your domain expertise, passions or relevant personal interests (ex. running if you’re into wellness, teaching if you’re applying to edtech)
Creating a professional brand is Part 1 of 4 of the series that takes you inside the 12 Week Career Launch. Next up is Part 2: Communicating your career story
12 Week Career Launch is a program created to support people in tech to enter and stay in the tech industry in technical and non-technical roles. It’s designed specifically for motivated career changers to land a job in tech in 12 weeks or less. 🪴
Learn more about this course by reading all the details below👇🏼