Pro Tip: Your Brand Has Almost Nothing To Do With You.

I've got a little tough love for you: if you're not getting hired, it's not because they don't like you. It's because they don't care about you. They don't care about you because you haven't given them reason to. And the only reason they would care about you is because you are the solution to a problem they have.

It's basic human psychology. We all have this story in our head, and in this story we're never the supporting character. We're the main character.

Let's revisit Frosted Flakes and Axe Body Spray? In their commercials, how much screen time is given to the product? Not much. It's all kids playing soccer or making the jump shot. It's some dude running from a rabid pack of beautiful young women. The product gets maybe the second at the beginning of the ad, as the Hero's secret weapon, and three seconds at the very end of the ad.  The brand is all about life after the solution to your problem. The product is simply the means for you to solve it.

When you submit a resume and cover letter, it's generally two pages that say “Me, me, me, me, me.” Those two pages don't gel with the internal stories of either the gatekeeper or the hiring manager.

Your personal brand should not be about you and how knowledgeable and experienced you are. Booooorrringgg! No, your brand is about their problem and how they can fix it. They are the hero. You are the sword in their hand. You are the trusted sidekick. You are the Merlin to their King Arthur.

Your brand is about how they can more easily slay the dragon, with you by their side.

Go back to the beginning of this blog. Those posts when I was defining my brand were not “look at what an amazing copywriter I am!” No, it's “here's how you can create great content!”

“Make sure you’re using your social media effectively!

“Use my knowledge and experience to solve your problems.”

My brand was about the problems facing marketing managers, and how they could solve them.

Yes, it seems counterintuitive to give away your knowledge so they can do it themselves. Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime, right? If you give them the answers, why would they need you? 

Here's a secret: most of the time they still just want you to give them the fish.

So show them that you know how to fish. That you know where the fish are likely to be and when they'll be there. You know the right bait to catch the best fish. You have the best recipes for cooking the fish once they're caught.

They are hiring someone to fix a problem they have. So give them great information about their problem, and give them more than they can process. Show them how much goes into doing it right. Become the trusted guide.

Once they trust that you know how to do it, you become the obvious choice to be the one they hire to do it.

This is why you set up a site and create your content. This is why you sprinkle that content throughout your social media to bring them back to the site: your site ends up being about their problem and how they solve it.