Determine who you are and what your brand is, and what you're not.
The rest of it is just a lot of noise.
Geoffrey Zakarian
In this day and age, there's a brand for everything, comically ostentatiously flared logos for companies you've never heard of and judging by the quality of their products and services, may never hear of again.
The proliferation of so many brands makes so many of them into just background noise.
And for many of us, trying to develop our own brand of living and usefulness to the world, there is a steady fight to make our little offering stand out.
Most people don't think in terms of brands, or marketing. We just "are", even comfortably so. "What is my brand?" becomes a proper question only if you are actively trying to market yourself or your product.
I'm finding that in interviews it does help enormously to be able to articulate your brand and allow the interviewers to view your career through its lens. Thinking it out ahead of time, you stumble less over failures and know exactly why you succeeded by understanding how your patterns fit your brand.
You have a brand already, what others see in you, good and bad. So define it for yourself, and then stay true to it.
It doesn't have to be enormously complex. It just needs to explain why you succeeded and why you failed and give a sense that where your work stays close to your brand you are likely to be the success every employer should need you to be.
Having defined my brand, I can now look back at the roles in which I did brilliantly and understand why, as well as those roles where I was less than spectacular without regret. If much of my success depends on the environment, then I need to be targeting optimal environments where I will succeed and not spend time looking for what won't work.
