Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future

203 Pages·2013·0.79 MB·English

by  Dorie Clark

Advance Praise for Reinventing You
“As the corporate ladder morphs into a corporate lattice, where there is no single
climb toward career success but rather a multiplicity of ways to grow, personal
branding becomes your calling card. Reinventing You presents effective ways to
help you develop your brand proposition.”
—Cathy Benko, Vice Chairman, Deloitte LLP; best-selling author, The
Corporate Lattice: Achieving High Performance in the Changing World of Work
“The days of reliable, lifelong careers—complete with pension and gold watch
—are over. With Dorie Clark’s clear, practical, step-by-step approach to
reinvention, the reader comes to see this fact not as daunting, but rife with
opportunity and possibility. Enriched with riveting examples from the worlds of
business, politics, and nonprofits, this indispensable guide will help you take
control of and shape your professional life.”
—Meg Cadoux Hirshberg, author, For Better or For Work: A Survival Guide for
Entrepreneurs and Their Families
“Necessity may still be the mother of invention, but today’s relentlessly
changing world necessitates reinvention, sometimes sequential reinvention. I can
think of no better guide through that daunting process than Dorie Clark’s
wonderfully readable and informative book.”
—Robert Cialdini, author, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Reinventing You is a must-read for anyone who wants to expand their career
horizons and become more authentic—in work and in life.”
—Chip Conley, author, Emotional Equations: Simple Truths for Creating
Happiness + Success; founder, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, Inc.

Copyright
Copyright 2013 Dorie Clark All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior
permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to
[email protected], or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business
School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.
First eBook Edition: April 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4221-4413-8
For my mother, Gail Clark, with love
Contents
Copyright
1. The New Branding Landscape
2. Recognize Where You’re Starting
3. Research Your Destination
4. Test-Drive Your Path
5. Develop the Skills You Need
6. Who’s Your Mentor?
7. Leverage Your Points of Difference
8. Build Your Narrative
9. Reintroduce Yourself
10. Prove Your Worth
11. Keep It Going
Epilogue: Make Your Reinvention Work
Appendix A:
Your Professional Reinvention Self-Assessment
Appendix B:
Classroom or Book Group Discussion Questions
Notes
About the Author
Acknowledgments
CHAPTER 1
The New Branding Landscape
Are you where you want to be professionally? Whether you want to advance
faster at your company or change jobs or even careers, one thing is clear: no one
wants to spend a lifetime doing a job they hate. To succeed in today’s
competitive job market and build a career that leverages your unique passions
and talent, it’s almost certain that at some point you’ll need to reinvent yourself
professionally—and ensure that others recognize the powerful contribution you
can make.
After all, it’s clear that the era of gold watches and lifetime employment is
over. How many people do you know who are lifers at a company? For better or
worse, people today skip around professionally, forced by layoffs or seeking a
better title or salary. Even for those who would have wanted to make a career at
one company, the options are limited. Harvard Business School Professor
Thomas DeLong attributes this, in part, to a precipitous decline in professional
mentorship over the past several decades. As senior executives were forced to
take on increased responsibilities, they stopped making time to cultivate rising
talent. The result, says DeLong, is executives who “start to be suspicious about
the organization and see themselves as free agents rather than saying, ‘I can stay
at this firm for the next thirty years.’” Rapid job turnover has now become
standard.
Even if they stay with the same company or industry, professionals still need
to reinvent themselves to keep up with the rapid pace of corporate change. “How
are you adapting and approaching your next reinvention curve?” asks Steven
Rice, the executive vice president of human resources at Silicon Valley
powerhouse Juniper Networks, of job applicants. “How are you staying relevant
and competitive? People have to reinvent themselves to fit into the new context
of work.”
Amid this new landscape of frequent job and career changing, people are
increasingly working later in life. Sometimes that’s due to preference, and
sometimes to necessity. (Between the recession years of 2007 and 2010, the
number of working Americans fifty-five and over grew by nearly 8 percent—the
only group whose workforce participation rates increased.)1 As AARP’s policy
director told the National Journal, “the resources they were counting on to retire
just aren’t there.”2 That means even more opportunities, or requirements, to
reinvent yourself over the course of your career.
The lengthening careers of baby boomers also have an impact on their kids,
millennials struggling to find their way in the workforce and hitting a wall of
more experienced candidates eager for the same jobs. In 2011, the percentage of
employed young people hit a sixty-year low.3 If your early jobs don’t reflect
your desired future path, it’s essential to be strategic about how you’re
positioning yourself and your experience in order to maneuver to where you
want to be.
As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow noted, “we judge ourselves by what we feel
capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.” So when
you’re a finance guy who moves into marketing, a venture capitalist who wants
to become a career coach, or an executive trying to win a promotion to the next
level, your path may make perfect sense to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s clear
to everyone else.
Reinvention, and overcoming past perceptions, can be a daunting process. Not
everyone needs to rebrand himself professionally, of course. If you do have a
long-term career at your company and are happy with your trajectory, you may
not need to worry about it. But for many of us, that luxury doesn’t exist.
This book is intended to help executives at all stages of their careers who want
something different and better in their professional lives—and know there has to
be a more strategic way to do it. You may be struggling to find a toehold in an
inhospitable economic climate, like Johnna, a young professional I’ll profile
later who was forced to bide her time with retail jobs instead of hopping on the
career fast track. You may be facing a crisis in your industry that’s forcing you
to consider new options, like Tom, who was laid off after more than two decades
as a newspaper reporter. You may, like Dan, have to fight back against
misconceptions about you in order to succeed at your company. You may be
looking to build new skills and explore new interests, like Karen, a corporate
attorney who realized she desperately needed a change. This book is an
invitation to ask what you want out of life.
When Should You Reinvent Yourself Professionally?

You’re at a new phase in life and you want to be known for something
different.
You’ve been laid off and need to ensure you’re in the best position possible
to land a new job quickly.
You want to move up in your company, and you need to take control of
your reputation.
You’ve been trying to win a promotion, but feel you’re being held back by
misconceptions about what you’re capable of.
You’d like to move into a different area of your company, perhaps from
legal to human resources, or from sales to finance.
You’re just starting out in your career and haven’t built up a powerful
résumé yet, so you need to find another way to stand out.
You’re changing careers and need to make a compelling case that your
unusual background is an asset, not a liability.
The Perils of Reinventing Your Personal Brand
“Hi Dorie,” read the message in my inbox, from an executive I’d been hoping to
interview for this book. “I’d be happy to talk with you, but I’d prefer to remain
anonymous. I’m afraid it might hurt my personal brand to be seen talking about
my personal brand!” His message was only half-joking (I did eventually
interview him), but it highlights an important truth. Again and again, as I’ve
talked about the book in business school classrooms and corporate boardrooms
across the country, I’ve heard from professionals who recognize the need to
reinvent themselves, but still have qualms. Won’t it look calculating to think too
hard about my reputation? Shouldn’t I just focus on doing good work?
The idea that it’s somehow sleazy to manage your reputation is, of course,
what the anonymous executive who e-mailed me was getting at. We can all think
of examples. I know one executive who is legendary for her ability, within
minutes of meeting any new person, to inform him or her that she’s the graduate
of two Ivy League schools, drives a BMW, and makes six figures working at a
prominent firm. Sometimes, if several months have elapsed and she’s forgotten
she’s already met you, you’ll get to hear her spiel again. No one likes her.
I am in no way suggesting you should start spouting your credentials to
passersby or puffing up your résumé. This book isn’t about spin or presenting
yourself as something you’re not. It’s not about “foghorning” your way into
other people’s consciousness and telling them how great you are. Instead, it’s
about taking control of your life and living strategically. Who do you want to
be? And what do you need to do to get there? This is a book about defining your
goals, working hard and ethically to get there, and then making sure that people
notice once you do.
I come from the world of media relations and marketing, so I’ll admit, I’m
biased. But I’ve also seen firsthand that there are always plenty of talented,
qualified people out there. If you aren’t strategic about getting the word out in a
thoughtful way that adds value, then other people will win the accolades instead
of you.
That’s why, unfortunately, it’s no longer possible to sit back and count on
getting noticed for your hard work alone. Years ago, the successful Wall Street
investor (and former US Treasury Secretary) William Simon declared, “I have