I’ve received a few questions back on the last WorkPuzzle I published.  Apparently, the concept of an “employment brand” is a new idea to many of you.  

Simply put, your employer brand is the image of your organization in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key stakeholders).

So, employer branding activities are the sum of a company’s efforts to communicate to prospective and existing staff what makes your company a desirable place to work, and the active management of a company’s image as seen through the eyes of its potential hires.  (Definition Source)

When we think about this concept, our mind naturally drifts to the large businesses that have prominent brands.  Take a look at AT&T’s career page and you’ll see a great example of how the branding efforts of a well-known consumer brand now naturally crossover to the realm of employment branding.

Of course, this type of implementation would be beyond the reach of most local or even regional real estate companies.  And I would argue that it wouldn’t be very effective either.  While many real estate companies certainly spend money on building their image in the mind of consumers, the crossover to employment branding is not as natural.  Why?  Because the business model of most real estate companies is such that each local office tends to have its own culture.  And this culture (and in essence its brand) is largely driven by the owner or manager of that local office.

For real estate offices, the employment brand tends to be heavily influenced by the personal brand of the manager of a particular local office. 

When you’re attempting to recruit new individuals to your team, the first questions that go through the minds of candidates have to do with the brand of the local office (What is the office about, and is it a place I can see myself working?) and the brand of the manager (Is this the type of person I want to work with?  Does his/her team of agents have characteristics that are intriguing to me? ).

Much of our discussion about employment branding is going to focus on the personal brand of the manager or owner of an office.  And, this is where things get interesting. 

The concept of personal branding was perhaps initially discussed in Tom Peter’s classic article “The Brand Called You,” first published in 1997.  As social networking has exploded in the last 5 years, so have the tools that equip a person to develop and promulgate a personal brand.

So, what’s it take to build a personal brand as a manager?  Here are 4 steps that you should consider:

1.  Discover Your Brand
2.  Create Your Brand
3.  Communicate Your Brand
4.  Maintain Your Brand

We’ll discuss how to Discovering Your Brand today, and then cover the remaining topics in upcoming discussions. 

Branding expert and author, Dan Schwabell, offers this advice on discovering your personal brand:

“The single biggest mistake people make is that they either brand themselves just for the sake of doing it or that they fail to invest time in learning about what’s in their best interests. The key to success, and this isn’t revolutionary, is to be compensated based on your passion. In order to find your passion, you need a lot of time to think, some luck and you need to do some research online to figure out what’s out there.

Brand discovery is about figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life, setting goals, writing down a mission, vision and personal brand statement (what you do and who you serve), as well as creating a development plan. Have you ever been called intelligent or humorous by your peers or coworkers? That description is part of your brand, especially if you feel those attributed pertain to you. To know if you’ve discovered your brand, you need to make this equation equal:

Your self-impression = How people perceive you

Before you enter the next step in the personal branding process, you’ll want to select a niche, whereby you can be the master of your domain. When I say domain, I mean an area where there aren’t many competitors Once you sort this all out, now it’s time to create your brand.”

I encourage you to take some time to put some thought into Schwabell’s suggestions and develop a clear vision of what you want those in your close geographic are to think of you and your office.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.