Hello again. I'm Valeri Chukhlomin, professor of business at SUNY Empire State College, and today the topic of our conversation is career branding. To answer our questions what is career brand, what is brand equity, how we can built strong career brand, I'm joined by Dr. Rosalyn Rufer. Dr. Rufer is Professor of Marketing in the School of Graduate Studies at SUNY Empire State College. She is also a former President of New York Capital American Marketing Association. Dr. Rufer, welcome to the studio. >> Thank you Val. So I think the first question we have to address is, what is a brand? And career branding is like any other brand. If I say to you, what is the brand of a company like McDonald's? An image comes to mind. You hear the name, and you think of certain attributes. On the other hand, if I say to you what is the brand of Emeril Steakhouse? That has a whole different brand image and different brand meaning. And so when we think about brand we think of the image and the attributes that come to mind when you hear the name or you see a certain symbol. Career branding is much the same, if you think about President Barack Obama a certain brand image comes to mind. On the other hand, right now, if you think of Donald Trump, a different brand image comes to mind. And so in terms of career branding, we want to be able to establish the image that we want to have for our own personal being and our own career paths. >> Career brand equity. How can we measure it? >> Ok, so brand equity is the perception an individual has, could be a customer, could be any stakeholder has, and therefore, will give you preference over other brands. So, we think about brand equity, we can think about Donald Trump and his brand image, his career image. As opposed to former first lady Hillary Clinton, and her brand equity image. Why you have a preference for a certain brand, and how does that relate to the characteristics of that person? When I think about Career equity, I think about what I had to go through when I was at GE working in marketing, and we had to go through a step by step process called management by objective. And we would think about were we would want to be five years from now. And what skill sets were necessary to get there? Now, how do you as an individual try to create or identify those skill sets? Well the way that you do that, is you look at job applications and see what skills are needed to fulfil a certain job. Whether it’s a marketing or whether it's an operation management or information systems, you could look at those characteristics be looked for by employers and identify those necessary skill sets. >> Strong brands it is all about image or there is something else? >> Well it something else because brand, It has no meaning unless you can communicate the brand attributes to your stakeholders, whether it's an employer or a colleague or any professional organization, what do you represent. And so what you have to do is understand those skill sets and create a portfolio that will allow you to build your image and communicate that image to your stakeholder. >> So, it's all about creating a portfolio of marketable skills? >> Of marketable skills, yes. Correct. >> So, what about different, for instance, strategies individual can employee to communicate the brand, effectively. >> Okay, so when we're creating the brand strategies, we want to think about some very basic concepts that we have in marketing which is, how do we create preference for our brand. which is what you want to do in a career branding situation. And so you have to think about the steps. And the first step in creating a brand preference is to create awareness of your brand. And that's going to be a strategy that you will follow, and I think you'll learn about later in this course, but how do you communicate your brand. Once you create awareness of your brand, then you want to create evaluation of your brand. And so, those steps that you took earlier to create brand equity would be something that you would want to go back to and highlight your accomplishments, and what you've done, and why your brand is a preferred brand over other candidates perhaps for a job. Once you create that evaluation process, and then what you want to do is create preference for your brand, and that's the key step here. Preference for the brand has to do with what makes you special, what is unique about your career accomplishments compared to others? What do you bring to the table that others cannot bring? And so you want to think about your life skills. And your own personal attributes that will allow you to create this preference for your brand. Think a lot about what's happening again, and I hate to keep coming back to this, but what's happening in the upcoming presidential election, and what Donald Trump says about his brand why he's special, right? He basically says, he could make hard decisions and then, he goes to his track record. The brand equity is your track record to be able to make hard decisions is what makes you special and gives preference over your brand. Finally, the last step in creating a career brand is be able to say okay, now you know who I am, now you know what I've done, now you want to select me. And you've got to create the story, it can be done through storytelling, it can be done by having other ways that your making yourself visible to your stakeholders, saying, now you want me on your team. And that's what career branding is all about. >> Thank you Dr. Rufer, >> You're welcome. >> It was a nice conversation. And now it's time for us to engage in some career branding.
