Linked-In wants to help you with Your Personal Brand

You have to be careful with the phrase “personal brand” – if you use it too much, people will think you’re a wanker. Especially in phrases like “I can’t just tweet about ‘Marley&Me’, it would damage my personal brand”.

But whether you like the comparision to advertising or not, the idea of putting yourself across well and having a set of things that make you distinctive is a useful thing in this time of financial instability.

Linked-In – the business social network has just set up a survey called BrandYou which aims to analyse people’s networking behaviour and then
“In today’s competitive business environment, personal branding has never been more important. The way we present ourselves, our experiences and aptitudes is integtral to career success.”

It’s all a tick-box survey, and makes me feel like I’m on the Apprentice. Questions include: “How often can you be found networking live in a personal capacity?” and “Do you talk about current affairs on your social networks?”. Already, I found myself lying to make myself sound better. To a computer…

It doesn’t feel like the most comprehensive survey ever, but it’s fun and I think you’re guaranteed to get a pretty badge at the end, so go for it. In fact, even if you click the worst option for every question going, you still get a nice badge which says “Alternative Thinker” – I guess that’s a nice way of saying “Antisocial Wastrel”.

Take the BrandMe survey

See our related story: Making a CV stand out in this digital age
also – Put your CV on a T-Shirt why not?