This past weekend I spoke at The Women in Transition Conference at Hofstra University on Personal Branding in a Challenging Job Market. About half the audience indicated they were interested in transitioning into another career, but many of them were still pondering what that new work would look like.
Conventional wisdom would advise that if you don’t know exactly what you want to do, it’s hard to brand yourself. I understand that as a concrete idea, but what if we look at branding as an organic process of self discovery?
Branding ones self conjures thoughts of identifying your passion, skills, experience, intention and a visual association with that blueprint. The next step would be to articulate that. You can read more about these ideas in two recent posts:
Successfully aligning your passion with your personal brand
Personal Branding in a tough job market
Meantime, here are some pointers and anecdotes on the organic flow of discovering your niche. Some are from my keynote, along with a personal story which demonstrates the winding course of discovery:
- Home in on what gives you the greatest joy or ignites your passion through past experiences. From creative hobbies to childhood experiences, go back a few years even before you began your current career to examine what ignited a fire of creativity or satisfaction for you. A friend who is a television director loved to style his mother’s hair as a child. He plugged back into that experience and is now going to school to get a beauticians license.
- Take on a new project either at work or on your own that allows you to use creative skills you don’t normally make use of on a daily basis at work. A girlfriend from work loved to do yoga to battle the burnout from working as a TV anchor. She took yoga classes on a consistent basis for two years before deciding to open a yoga studio.
- Work part-time or freelance in an area that interests you. In this tumultuous economy in some cases it might be easier to work a few hours a week at a company that has scaled down – rather than dive into a full time job. A colleague who was pregnant with her first child worked in a busy newsroom. It was time for a change. She was able to find freelance work in public relations. Her move subsequently lead to a full time job with better hours and allowed her a more creative outlet for her writing.
- Take a continuing education course. A client of mine had always been interested in Feng Shui. She decided to take a course and found herself immersed in a new passion. Now she has a growing practice in addition to her marketing business.
- Try volunteering in a new setting using skills you already have. About 15 years ago I joined an organization which provided food and clothing to the homeless. I began doing PR and media, but it lead to volunteer work in hospitals and at an orphanage with children who were living with HIV/AIDS. I learned about terminal illness and eventually went on to be certified as a Hospice volunteer. During my volunteer experiences over the last two decades I studied meditation - one of my passions which lead to teaching.
There were plenty of wonderful lectures and workshops at Hofstra’s Women in Transition Conference. Here are some links to some programs and career coaches who I connected with at the conference:
Something Within Life Coaching
