Discover the secrets to standing out in a crowded job market with the power of personal branding. In this episode, Tom Powner, the visionary Founder and CEO of Career Thinker, shares his inspiring journey from corporate America to entrepreneurship, driven by personal challenges and a passion for helping others find fulfilling careers. He dives deep into the critical role of personal branding in today’s competitive job market, emphasizing the power of authenticity and value-driven content across all platforms, especially LinkedIn. Tom provides actionable strategies for crafting a compelling online presence that resonates with recruiters and hiring managers, ultimately leading to career success.

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Tom Powner – Personal Branding For Leadership Roles

We are here to dive into the critical role of personal branding in leadership development. Joining us is Tom Powner, the visionary Founder and CEO of Career Thinker. After a notable career, Tom has been shaping business development, operations and sales, so he’s highly proficient in branding and making sure that we’re selling ourselves. Tom launched his company in 2011, dedicated to empowering job seekers across the world with his expert resume writing and LinkedIn optimization.

He helps professionals hone their interview coaching or interview skills overall, so when you’re going through the interview, making sure that your articulate and you sound great. He’s a Nationally Certified Online Profile Expert. Tom is not only a respected leader in the career services industry but he’s also an influential educator helping professionals maximize their personal growth. His insights have enlightened many through workshops and seminars making him a trusted advisor.

For those looking to ascend into their roles, Tom is a key person that you need to have in your rolodex. In this episode, he brings a wealth of knowledge to us sharing strategies that can help you articulate and project your unique value as leader. Join us as we explore and sculpt a personal brand and show you how that’s done. In this competitive landscape, it’s important to stand out. Tom, it is so nice to have you here. Welcome.

Thanks for having me. I’m excited. I love speaking about this stuff is. It’s what I live and breathe every day. One thing you mentioned that I’m a national certified online profile expert. I created that certification course through the National Résumé Writers’ Association. I am an NCOPE for most of the teacher and the creator of that class. I bringing a lot of knowledge. To add to the description what I do, I have a recruiting arm to my business, so we recruit to four national company so we get to see the challenge is in both sides, the hiring and finding that right opportunity.

Helping People Find Their Personal Brand

Tom, I know you’ve done some sales in your career as well. What brought you into helping people find their personal brand?

A quick story, because there’s some reasons why. When I decided to leave corporate America, I was making a good salary. I loved what I was doing, but it was a lot of pressure to job. I suffered from kidney stones, a little personal information, for many years. I had 72 stones in five years. My doctor kept saying, “It’s stress.” I never believed him, and then when I decided to leave that year, my mom had passed away on my birthday.

Those two life events made me realized maybe time to make a change. I decided basically to co-quit corporate America. I had in my mind creating a business that would help people connecting a next career opportunity. Where that came from is in the ‘90s, I was a district manager for Caldor department stores and when they went out of business, I started these seminar or classes. I was in charge of 22 stores. How do you find your next job? The store managers and other district managers to help hundreds of people. I always loved that feeling from that time in the ‘90s. I just reinvented that philosophy and I started Career Thinker. That’s where I came from.

Why do you believe that personal branding is so crucial? I know that it’s not necessarily a new thing but it has more of an emphasis in modern days. Is that true?

Most definitely. It is sea of resume. Let me back up a bit. I don’t call it a job search anymore. I call it a career marketing campaign. When you’re ready to leave the nest, go out, and find a new opportunity, it’s not a job search. It’s a career marketing campaign. When we think of that way, we could think differently. What should be on your resume? What should be on LinkedIn profile? What message are you sending to people? What value are you showcasing right up front?

 

Those are the things we want to make sure the source of the conversation. A lot of that circles around what’s your professional personal brand that you bring to the table. It’s more important now than ever. I don’t know if anyone’s noticed but I do, because I’m in a business. Job postings are getting anywhere from 800 to 1,200 applications in a matter of 2 to 3 weeks. The competition has never been fierce as it is now, so how do you stand out? You’re professional brand is going to help you do that.

One thing that you mentioned, as far as everybody thinks about personal branding when they’re looking for a job. The important thing is we should give focus on this all the time because our personal brand can find us those opportunities while we’re in work and while we’re not necessarily in need. Also, it can help leaders better attract and retain people into their organization. Would you agree with that?

You shouldn’t wait to think about your brand. You should know your brand and a lot of people don’t. They come to me when we start talking about branding. What are your superpowers? What do you do better than most people? A lot of them don’t know that or don’t feel it. You want to know your brand. You always try to improve on it. Sometimes, that professional brand can shift as we get older. We learn new things. Different things matter to us more. Your brand is not locked into something that you discovered at 21 and now you’re 45 using the same brand. It could change.

You shouldn’t wait to think about your brand. You should know your brand. Share on X

Expressing Leadership Through Personal Branding

What are the best ways that leaders can express their brand? When you start an engagement with a client, where do you start?

We first start with a target on where you to want to go. If you don’t have a target, you might not hit anything. When it comes down to crafting a resume or LinkedIn profile, those branding tools, those marketing tools. What comes natural to them? What do they naturally bring to the table that they enjoy doing? When you tap into that and those become your main successful tools in what you’ve been doing for the past 5 years or 10 years or 15 years. That’s when a brand is coming out of them. You could just keep building on and creating a nice brand message that become your backbone.

For our readers, one of the key things we’re going to dive into is LinkedIn and going through the different sections. That is the dominant tool for personal branding, especially in the United States. Tom’s going to take us through the different things that we should be focusing on and that LinkedIn tool coming up. Before we do that, Tom, what are the other ways that people can enhance their brand? We know that there’s LinkedIn, but what are the other channels out there that they can leverage?

We talked about social media because LinkedIn is social media and social media in general. We can’t say, “I’m going to avoid social media.” You can. You can try to avoid it, but if you want to get your brand out and build it, there’s a lot of different types of social media platforms. You could do also professional ones and more personal ones, but your brand should weave through all those social media platforms. Social media has been around since the early 2000. I would say from 2010 to now, it’s just part of a culture.

There’s a lot of other platforms you could start building your brand on. What do you put out there? As far as articles, you write articles. Do you write post on social media platforms? A lot of leaders have their own personal website to share their brand. There’s a lot of different ways to share your brand. You can write a small a book. It doesn’t have to be 500 paged book. You can write a book about what you do or what’s your voice or your opinions. There’s a lot of different ways to build on your brand and get it out there.

 

One of the things I mentioned at the beginning of our talk, I mentioned the word Rolodex. For those people that don’t know what a Rolodex is, it is something that was used to keep your contacts in the old days. You twist it and go through with these little cards. We have our contacts online in a CRM tool and LinkedIn and so forth. The reason why I want on the highlight that is, what is the importance of leveraging your internal network. How does a person do that when they’re in their career and during the job search?

You have to be conscious of it. I call that Rolodex, too. Different people network differently. Sometimes, LinkedIn is the perfect place to build a network. Sometimes you want to go to your Rolodex because if the people, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t spoken in 5 to 10 years if you know the people. That phone call is so powerful. When you hear their voice, the conversation feels like you’ve only haven’t spoken to in a couple of weeks. Depending how well you know the people.

When I saw the Career Thinker, I had those business cards boxes where you get 500 cards in the box. I like five of them that I kept saving over the years or people I do business with, vendors and whatnot. It took me the first two weeks to go through all that and see who was on LinkedIn and connect them bring that world into the digital world. If you know the people, a phone call could be a lot more powerful. If you don’t know the people, sometimes digital networking will work better to start off that.

Getting In Front Of The Right People: Strategies For Leaders

The main objective here whether you’re in a job or you’re looking for one, is you want to get in front of those people that you want to influence. You want to influence, either for your next hire or in business and so forth. What are the best ways to get in front of those people, Tom?

You want to have a target. If you find yourself getting into job search or fall into one, you want to have a talk. I say target companies over job postings. We talk about leadership. That could be the leadership team or C-suite team. Have a target list of companies you want to work for and see who you should know what those companies and start building a network around that. Lots of times just looking at the old network. I do this in my class. I have a philosophy. Where are they now?

I go to my past company. I was very well liked and I was successful there. I could go back to that company on LinkedIn and see where they are now. I can look at people that used to work for that company and see where they are now. They could be someplace I might want to go. There’s a lot of different ways and philosophies to get in front of those people. You have to build that network and you have to have that network. Otherwise, you can be building a new network, which is fine but take a little bit longer sometimes.

Staying Connected With People: Networking Tips

Howard, I know that you’re good at keeping in touch with people overall in your local area and so forth. What are your favorite ways to keep in touch?

Face-to-face. It harder now giving people schedules and people work working from home but nothing beats that. Even though you can do Zoom calls and video conferencing, it’s not the same as when you interact with someone face-to-face. Grab a coffee in the morning before they start their day or grab a drink at the end of the day. It doesn’t have to be something that’s 2 or 3 hours. Nothing beats that face-to-face interaction, in my opinion.

To dig in that a little bit more, do you think that the face-to-face piece is more dominant and the pre-social media generation? What are your thoughts?

I think it’s fading and challenging. What I see is you can have much broader outreach. We’re leveraging technology but it’s a little bit harder developing those deeper types of relationships versus when you’re interacting with someone. I’ve tried to keep my network going from the past companies that I’ve worked with. I put myself there out as a guide and mentor to many people that worked for me and trying to continue those types of relationships and interactions. The younger generation has more challenges than maybe we had.

Sumit, I’d love to hear your perspective because you are networking on an international scale at a lot of times. You have people all across the world that you’re working with. What is your best way to keep in touch with people?

With so much of gray hair, it’s a little odd to be call it when you just mentioned younger people in the earlier sentence, but I’ll take a shot. I agree with Howard. It’s much easier to build deeper relationships when you meet face-to-face, even if you migrate that relationship online later. Breaking the ice in a face-to-face conversation, there’s still no parallel for that. The so-called virtual coffee is a very poor substitute, but it just comes with the territory when you’re working across the world. You got to take and make the best of whatever you’re getting.

I didn’t think those relationships are as deep or as meaningful sometimes. There’s no physical Rolodex anymore. What I do to ensure that they’re being nurtured is, I try and flip some of those cards in my head and think about people I haven’t spoken to in a while and have a few no contacts conversations with them just to say, “How are you doing?” “How are things with you?” “Is there anything that I can support you with or a help you with?” Not from a sales or doing some paid work perspective but catching up. It helps in keeping that relationship alive and going.

That’s a cute to what Tom mentioned. Tom was talking about adding value in a relationship. Sometimes, even in sales time, some of it is keeping in touch and making sure you’re retaining that relationship. Would you agree?

Yes. It’s like what I do in my clients. When they get a new job, it goes in the CRM. I don’t forget to send them a “Happy anniversary.” I try to send them a thank you card when they worked with me or a congratulations card and checking in. That was mentioned earlier. “How’s it going?” Three months after they start a new job, check in to see how it was going. Sometimes, we picked the wrong decisions. There’s a lot of different ways to say in front of it, but I do think it’s somewhat generational.

Even with the hiring process with all these AI video interviews happening, the younger generation is just, “No big deal. I get on my phone and do an interview.” I find the clients a little live through to careers and more reluctant type of interactions. I do think it’s generational a little. The TikTok generation and the future leaders. We have to make sure we adapt as needed.

Impact Of The Pandemic On Future Workforce And Networking

One thing about future leaders, Tom. There’s one thing that I want to dive into quick because there’s some anxiety I’ve been hearing from leaders about the next generation of workforce. This is nothing new. Everybody is always like, “The new generation.” The unique thing is that this new generation was impacted by the pandemic, being at home, their work style and their communication style, and developing relationships is different. How do you expect that to impact the future of networking?

I’ve had many clients that their last few years of college was in the basement at home. They worked for internship in the basement and then they go out in the world and start a career. A lot of people impacted in a lot of different ways, but I do think a lot of that will weed off as time goes on. We have to have a combination of networking. We have to be comfortable with video network and Zoom calls.

I think Zoom could be very effective or a video called. Getting out and going to networking events, whether you go with a friend or a buddy. I’m meeting people because I do agree with that one-on-one interaction, physically. We see the body language. We get to feel something different when we meet people in person. We need a combination and we have to be conscious of that and just make sure we get out there and do all kinds of networking.

Leveraging LinkedIn For Personal Branding: First Steps

I’m on Zoom all the time and I do a lot of traveling. When I do travel, I want to make sure that I’m meeting with people face-to-face when I’m in that location. I make that a priority but I leveraged Zoom a lot to ensure I’m keeping in touch with people and you can have these quick fifteen-minute meetings to catch up and maintain your network. I find that to be highly effective. Tom, as we talk about these tools, we mentioned LinkedIn. I’d love to dive in and get your thoughts on how people should leverage their personal brand using LinkedIn as the primary technology. What does the first steps there? How do you guide a client?

There’s a lot of components to a LinkedIn profile but typically, we won’t do a LinkedIn profile into the client’s resume is complete. The resume is going to establish the foundation of a LinkedIn, especially when it comes to the career experience section. As a recruiter, when I look at a career experience section, I need to see the value. I need to see to return in investment value they bought to that company, the improvements, outcomes, contributions, and the KPI, if they have any then we go into LinkedIn profile.

There’s so many different touchpoints in LinkedIn to get your brand across. The first touchpoint is your headshot. We want to hire people. We want to speak to happy people, so a happy headshot. Not a goofy one but a happy one, go the long way. We feel that positive energy. I’ve seen some people look like prison guards. It’s like, this is going to be a bad conversation and it’s not. It’s just a headshot what’s wrong.

Not a goofy one but a happy one Share on X

We want to take pride in the headshot. You don’t need to be wearing tuxedo or suit and tie. It’s just needs to look professional. That’s the first visual point. The second thing is, it’s sometimes the name. Unfortunately, there’s a stigma with a lot of different types of names. LinkedIn has that little voice button. You can activate through to mobile phone and you can pronounce your name. “Hi, I’m Tom Powner. Let’s connect in LinkedIn. I’m always looking to build my network.” As simple like that. It’s eight seconds. People can hear your voice before they speak to you.

The next thing we want is make sure you have a strong branded headline. That’s a 220-character position beneath their name. It needs to establish who you are professionally or where you want to go and then some key elements. Whether it’s going to be a quick brand tagline or some top main keyword that you’re proficient in that’s connected to who you are professionally. Before I clicking on your profile, I’m getting engaged. Happy headshot. I can hear you voice. I could read your branded headline.

If I decided to click on your profile, then the next thing that become the visual point of branding is that image behind your headshot. What is it saying? I’m a sunset guy. I have sunrise pictures but putting a sunrise picture on my LinkedIn profile, there’s no branding for me. Unless, it has some context to it. Making sure we have a brand image that’s visually brands us in two seconds. Those are the first initial things that we want to make sure every profile has.

I’d love to hear more. After we talked about the different components, I want to talk about showing your brand through posting and content in a moment. Are there any other sections in LinkedIn that we need to highlight on better?

There’s quite a few but the next thing is about page. They used to call it the summary page. They changed it to about page. LinkedIn wants you to talk about yourself. A lot of people don’t do that. They repeat the career. They have one large paragraph. I like to break the about page into subsections. If you have someone that leads teams, watch my leadership philosophy. You maybe have five short powerful bullet points explaining your philosophy and leadership.

When we write large paragraphs on social media, they don’t get read. No the matter how much you want to read them, we don’t read them. Recruiters, higher managers, and people in network just don’t have time to read. When you break it down, those are the things that will get read. If you’re a salesperson, what’s your sales recipe, how do you drive sales, and how do you build strong teams. I want to know more about the things you do around people.

 

That’s the way I attacked about page. That’s extremely effective, both from the recruiter’s point of view. As you network, people want to learn about you. The about page has a lot more value than people give it. Recruiters do read about pages, especially if they’re ready to engage with your LinkedIn profile. Your career history is another important thing. We like to mirror the resume or sometimes depending on your role in industry, you current position and company, you might be careful of what you share on LinkedIn. They might need to be warded down or numbers taking off or if you work on a new drug or a new program or a new software. You probably can’t mention it.

In your previous career history, I want to know not what you’re in charge of. I want to know what you accomplish and what are you proud of. Where do you make a difference? Most people don’t do that. I read LinkedIn after LinkedIn when we’re recruiting, nothing there. Those are the main key areas. There’s a project section. We get a little deeper dive into special projects you work on. You don’t need to be project manager to have projects. We can call any main function outcome of project. The skills section drive the algorithm. There’s so many different things you get a LinkedIn to get found. We have to remember, a lot of people get found or through network and find jobs. More so than applying for jobs.

Let’s dive into those algorithms you mentioned. You mentioned that the skills section of LinkedIn influences the algorithm and drives the right people to your page. Is that right?

I’m a LinkedIn recruiter and we usually recruit for two companies. For the two companies to recruit for, you can’t apply for a job unless you know someone of a job is opening. If we’re looking for a director of marketing, we go into LinkedIn recruit and we do a talent search. We reverse engineer the job posting. We go in. We enter everything we look forward. We have these search filters already set up. The best 60 different search filters in LinkedIn recruiter.

We turn them on depending what we’re looking for. For us, it’s typically an hour to fill that from 120 to 160 candidates at the end. If we put a job posting out there, we get 800 applications. We’re narrowing down a field that are stronger. A lot of that is based on a keyword, especially when I look for some of these skill sets. Now, we’re hiring a territory sales manager and they have to have two plus years of experience with Salesforce. If Salesforce is not on your LinkedIn profile, I’m not going to look at it.

The key word becomes crucial. Even when you apply for jobs with the ATS systems. It’s no different. We want to make sure we have the right keywords and the right language. Now, with AI, generative is coming into the play. It’s not there in that aspect yet, but with ATS systems and the LinkedIn town solutions, once generative AI gets into the play, we understand and predict content. We look at the content, the history and we can predict the future success depending on what they have on the LinkedIn. That’s going to be pretty amazing.

For our readers, Tom, I want to make sure that we define what an ATS system is. Could you define that for us?

It’s Applicant Tracking Software System. Basically, when you apply for job online, it takes your resume and it parses it. it compares it against the job posting and comes up with a relevancy score. It is that 200 different ATS systems on the market. They all built on 6 or 7 different social platforms. It’s trying to help their hiring team spend time and write resumes. If I get 500 applications, I will not read 500 resumes. It would be gross waste of time. ATS system helps me choose the resumes that seem to be a better match. That doesn’t mean the best person to that but it helps me filter through these resumes.

It sounds like that in the modern way of looking for work in between jobs, we design our resume to resonate with ATS systems. Not everybody’s picking up and reading. Having those graphics or fancy formatting may not be helpful on.

As long as you know what the ATS systems is reading. You can have a resume that looks stylus. A lot of those graphic resumes don’t work well in ATS system, but it doesn’t mean you to get away from having a styling resume.

Back to the LinkedIn factor, whether you’re looking for a job or you’re in your current position as a leader, we can use our personal branding to not just look for work or that future job but also help attract the right talent to your organization and retain your people through showing your personal brand. What are your thoughts on how to highlight that?

That could be how highlighted in all the things was just mentioned, the about page. If you comment in other people’s posts, getting your brand and those types have to have a comments because you don’t have to post to get found on LinkedIn. It gets them feedback from social media. You could piggyback other people’s posts. If a co-CEO of a company you know wrote a post or posted something, you could comment on that.

Making sure your brand is infused and everything you write and share. That’s a great way. Again, you want to build a solid brand because when people want to work for your company, a smart job seek would look at the leadership’s LinkedIn profiles. What type of people are working for the company? A lot of people might go to Glassdoor to find out what people are saying about the company. You could go to leadership LinkedIn profile and get a good vibe. Getting your personal brand throughout your LinkedIn profiles is important for so many different reasons.

Make sure your brand is infused in everything you write and share. That's a great way to build a solid brand. Share on X

It helps attract the right talent. If you leave one company, you go to another company and you have that strong personal brand and people are attracted to it. When you leave one company, you could bring a talent with you and that’s how most people move around in companies. The boss brought them on board.

I had to say, I believe that if you are a leader that has a team of people that are going to move with you no matter where you go as a leader. That is a powerful brand.

That’s golden.

As CEOs and founders that are reading, you should check and identify those leaders that have that power because if you end up losing those leaders and they can cause significant business interruption, it’s important to know the power of your leader’s brands overall, for sure. Now, one other thing I want to dig into a little bit is the posts and contacts. As a leader that is putting content out there, is there any benefit of having followers versus contacts? Is there any magic there that we need to know about as far as personal branding?

Contact the file is a different. Either you accept the connection request on LinkedIn or they accepted yours. There’s some type of sending you there. There’s a reason why you’re connecting. LinkedIn came out with this years ago, LinkedIn lets you follow people, especially people that you believe in. People that you might want to work for in the future. You followers can be extremely important. They may not be connected with you but they’re following you.

The brand message you put out there is equally powerful to both your connections and you followers. Again, LinkedIn maxes off the connection that 30,000. It seems like a lot but in this s world, maybe not but you have limited followers. I know people have too many followers that when they put a message out there, it gets a big reach. It depends on your purpose. If you are doing a lot of posting and sharing articles or writing posts, whether it’s on LinkedIn or any social media platform or even your own website. That can get people to understand you value and understand your branding message very quickly.

Pitfalls In Personal Branding And Posting Content

Let’s talk about some of the gaps that you’re seeing out there that leaders are doing when they’re posting content or trying to create a personal brand online using LinkedIn. What are some of the pitfalls you see?

Putting out content for the purpose of putting out content. A content should offer value and teach you something. When people read your content, they say, “That makes sense.” “I believe in that.” It doesn’t have to be the status quo. It could be your point of view about something. It needs to touch people. Many people just go out there. They go to ChatGPT to write something and they plop it out there. I even tried that if you times.

 

I felt good because I got something out quickly, but I didn’t feel good about it. It has to come from a place of importance to you. Something you want to share with people that follow you and know you. That’s one of the biggest mistakes, putting a content that’s poorly written. Sometimes less is more. A short post or a short article that doesn’t go into the nitty-gritty of things could probably get a lot more feedback and a lot more people reading and learning about it. Those are some of the pitfalls people do. By now, with generative AI, people are going on and popping things around. I could look at an article and I know AI and how it writes. I could say, “That looks like or feels like it was written by AI.”

The Secret To Authenticity And Engagement On LinkedIn

Sumit, I’d love to bring you back because I know that you have a wide following on LinkedIn and you’re known as the culture guy on LinkedIn. You have a ton of engagement. I know a lot of that has to do with the type of person you are. You’re very genuine and authentic, but what do you think is your secret?

The secret ingredient is more about staying away from AI when it comes to writing or expressing oneself. The second is not talking about everything under the sun but trying to double down the culture which could be what’s currently trending, what are some of the recommendations and writing for specifically in businesses with about 40 employees who are struggling to retain. People are struggling to unlock productivity. I will try to tune my messaging to them instead of trying to write more than what I value in is comments. I try and look at hosts that appeal to me.

As someone who reads your postings, I think they come across as very authentic, real, and emotional. You tackle some difficult situations. You put out maybe somewhat controversial opinions but that’s fine. That’s always good to have dialogue and conversations around those but it just feels, as I said in the beginning, very real.

Positive Vs Negative Mindset: What Resonates In Personal Branding

As we talk about posts and authenticity, Tom, there’s the positive and negative meaning that having a positive mindset and then there’s also a negative mindset. As we’re looking at branding and so forth, some people are attracted to a negative mindset because it can get more attention. From a personal branding standpoint, do you think that there’s a better or a way that resonates the best for personal branding?

You can talk about negative concepts in a positive way. I’m a Taylor Swift fan. I’m going to put that out there, but you look at what she’s been through all those negativities around who she is and stuff but she never loses focus, so she shakes it off. I believe in being positive and what Sumit said also, making sure you’re writing things that have value or bring value to people. It comes from your point of view but yet teaches them something.

It’s so easy to write something negative. Even have negative headline so people click on a posting. That’s very easy to do then our political climb in. That seems to be what we’re filled with, which is a whole different topic. Stay true to yourself. When you saw going on at rabbit hole or sharing negative and making a post very negative. I write a lot of negative things. It’s about in my industry but I write in a positive way. The hiring systems have been broken. I’ve been writing about that for years but I don’t use foul language. I don’t use nasty comments. I try to educate people how they could we make it better.

Key Takeaways From Personal Branding Discussion

Keeping it constructive and that good feedback. As we are approaching the end of our time, Tom, what are the key things that you want are readers to walk away with from the discussion?

Sometimes, don’t do everything yourself. If you want to improve your own brand or your leadership, get a coach. There’s a lot of different types of coaching. There’s career coaching, leadership coaching, and negotiation coach. A lot of different types of coaching. Get someone else’s point of view because sometimes we just don’t know at all. Once you establish that brand, make sure you understand a brand. Even post some notes around your mirror in the bathroom because it’s so easy to forget about what we want to concentrate on and keep building on your brand.

Once you know your brand, infuse it in everything. Infuse it in your conversation or in your literature in the company. A lot of people even write their bios on the company’s website. It’s so freaking boring. Even your bio on your company’s website, get your brand infused in that. If you have an old bio up there, create a new one. Get it interesting. People will read your LinkedIn profile. Everything should be around your brand. Again, our brands should develop and involved as we get old and we get more experience. What I cared about when I was age 21 is very different than what I care about now. Keep reinventing yourself.

Once you know your brand, infuse it in everything. Infuse it in your conversation or in your literature in the company. Share on X

Tom, tell them other way pitfalls to avoid when branding yourself so you don’t come across like too salesy or too pitchy.

It’s never about selling a product or service. You’re selling you which is different. You can be a product of service but you’re selling you call what you believe in your point of view and what people will feel when they do business with you. Concentrate on that. Not the product of the service. That will come later and you want to build that. In sales 101, people buy from people they trust and who bring value first and who they like. Work around that and then it’ll come naturally. I’m selling services but I never push it. I just tell them this is what I could do for you, so I’m selling my value. That’s one of the best ways.

I have a follow-up question from what Howard was asking, which is, if you’re present across different social media platforms like let’s say, you’re on LinkedIn and Instagram, which is a more personal platform and I’d say Facebook as well. How do you maintain a certain degree of consistency so you don’t come across as inauthentic? At the same time, I could be talking about anything, religion, politics, and various topics, which may not be appropriate for a professional brand. How do we make that distinction?

That’s a big problem and a great question. Visually, you’re having head shots that looks the same and sticking notes is huge with the branding but when it comes to what you share in Facebook. What I share in Facebook is different. I don’t care if people know my private life, but if they do have a problem that I’m a gay male who’s married to another man that’s their problem. I’m not afraid of that, but some people have totally different things.

When it comes to religion and politics, I never post anything about politics and religion on my Facebook page because I know that will have a deep impact. You have to feel comfortable with what you share and what people can know. As a recruiter, we check out if your LinkedIn page, Facebook page, Instagram page and TikTok page is available, we will look at it and most companies will especially when it get certain points. That’s a good question. Sometimes, keeping your personal profiles lock down a little bit more can be a way to escape that stigma. It’s a problem. When clients come to work for me, we’ll take a look at those platforms. We’ll give a submission on what we feel.

I fear for those poor young generation that put a lot of different things on their social media and to later regret it. Is this a true problem with the younger generation putting things that perhaps they shouldn’t?

It could be generational but I’m telling you, that’s just the young people. People think, “I’m going to put this. Forget it. It’s bad.” Maybe young people a little more free about the videos and stuff, but you have to see what people put out there. Even comes to elections, how people are so ingrained into it. My point of view in elections is right and things and the nastiest they share. Even in the comments. If I look someone’s Facebook page and I see the comment in a post and I see what they wrote. It’s so evil and mean. “I don’t want that person on my team.” I’m sorry. They can have conviction about how they feel about something but they don’t have to express in that way.

Handling Controversy In Personal Branding

There’s a case in India where an employee was fired for liking a LinkedIn post. They like to post about a toxic workplace and the next thing they knew was they’d been fired. They wrote about it and the employer ended up proving the point about the workplace being toxic. Again, as a coach, what would be your advice if you just put your head down and get right to work or you deal with the fallout in case stuff like that happens?

If you work in a toxic work environment, you got to get out of that environment. If you’re going to be in a job search, voicing your opinion at that point in time is probably not a good thing to do especially if the company has access to what you post. Get a strategy, get out of the company and then share with the company what they could do better. They should be an exit interview when you leave a company. I’m not sure how it is in India, but in the US, when you leave a company whether you fired or you quit, there is an excellent interview. That’s the proper place to bring up your grievances.

Don’t bring it online because it will come back. Again, no matter what the situation is, as a recruiter, if I see you bashing them and bashing a company and writing nasty things because the coach is bad. There’s truth in both sides and in the middle. I don’t know what I would think depending on the company. If I knew the company had a reputation, I might just ignore it.

If the company is a good company and you’re trashing the company, you might be a troublemaker if I hire you. Keep it quiet until you find a new home and then you could open up the doors a little bit and do it in a constructive way and a lot of grievances in a lot of negativity about companies. Sometimes, the leaders just don’t know because the other middle leaders aren’t sharing. I’m telling you, it happens all the time. You have an amazing leading company but you manager sucks or vise versa.

When we’re writing feedback like that, if we do it in a constructive way that’s not hurtful, then we can influence companies and leaders for the good.

That shows a good leadership skill right there.

Tom, as we close up, if we have our readers out there that want to know more about you, what you’re up to and how they can get some help. What’s the best way of contacting you?

My name Tom Powner is not common. There’s only one other Tom Powner in the US on LinkedIn, so good for that. Contact me on LinkedIn. Send me message. I’ll offer anyone of free review of the LinkedIn and resume so you get an understanding of where we feel as professional and then you decide if you want to team with us for more information or just revamping for yourself. I love doing those reviews and meeting people that way.

This has been a great conversation. I know it’s inspired a lot of interest in all of us. I can just imagine how would our readers are thinking. I’m sure they’ll come to you for with questions. Thank you so much for your time, Tom.

Thank you, Tom.

I can’t believe it went by so quickly. It was my pleasure. I enjoy speaking about these topics.

A lot of fun. I have a great time with these episodes and meeting people like yourself and talking about these wonderful topics. Thank you so much.

Take care.

 

Important Links

• Career Thinker
• National Résumé Writers’ Association
• Caldor
• Glassdoor
• LinkedIn – Tom Powner

 

About Tom Powner

Tom Powner is the Founder and CEO of Career Thinker Inc., a career services firm dedicated to empowering job seekers through professional resume writing, LinkedIn consulting, interview preparation, and job search strategies. With over 25 years of experience in business development, human resources, operations, and sales leadership, Tom transitioned from corporate leadership to career coaching in 2011, driven by a passion to guide others toward career success.

Under his leadership, Career Thinker has assisted clients across various industries and experience levels, enhancing their professional branding and job search effectiveness. Tom is recognized as a thought leader in the career services industry and holds multiple certifications, including Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW), Certified Employment Interview Professional (CEIP), Certified Career Management Coach (CCMC), Certified DISCstyles Communication Consultant (CDCC), and Nationally Certified Online Profile Expert (NCOPE).

In addition to his work at Career Thinker, Tom has shared his expertise through seminars and webinars, educating over 10,000 individuals on job search processes, professional branding, and the power of LinkedIn.

His commitment to excellence in resume writing was recognized by LinkedIn Profinder, awarding him “Best of 2017” for best in class in resume writing.

Tom’s dedication to helping others navigate the complexities of career transitions has made him a trusted advisor for those seeking to enhance their professional journeys.