Statistics show that having a strong personal brand can significantly improve career satisfaction as it provides numerous benefits when it comes to finding a new job and staying relevant in one's career. With the right personal brand, individuals can stand out from the crowd and attract potential employers who align with their core values and goals. Building a personal brand, then, has become increasingly important for both new and experienced professionals in Canada.
In this article, we learn more about the discussion that our hosts and our guest, Ari Weinstein, have discussed in our newest Caring Support Podcast episode. In this episode, we learn more about the importance of personal branding to set you apart from other healthcare professionals and build a lasting impression, especially to recruiters, or how it can also be used to show your unique skill set and take your career to its next step. We also learn more about how social media (Facebook, X or formerly Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn) can be used to build connections within the industry.
Specifically, here are the things that they've discussed:
Ari Weinstein is the head coach of his own company of his namesake, Ari M. Weinstein. He has years of experience as a brand developer and corporate hiring manager. He eventually transitioned to become a branding coach where he incorporated all the skills and knowledge he learned from his previous careers.
Ari Weinstein not only has years of experience but good credentials and qualifications as well. He gained his Masters in Business Administration from New York University and Advanced Certificate in Coaching Practice from Mindful Talent. He's also a proud member of organizations relevant to career coaching for building an effective personal brand, such as The Association for Coaching and Professional Association of Résumé Writers & Career Coaches.
To explore more on the benefits of branding and brand coaching for your healthcare career, it's important to understand what branding and brand coaching are. Ari Weinstein was able to comprehensively discuss these in the podcast, and here are some of the tidbits from his discussion.
Ari Weinstein defined branding as "...the impression you make on others for professionals in health care and other industries. We make those impressions through both formal and formal interactions, whether it's with patients, with colleagues." Individuals are constantly making impressions, which means they already have a personal brand.
When it comes to career advancement or starting a new career, there are specific brand assets that can assist them. For instance, their resume is more than just a document; it serves as a branding tool. Similarly, a cover letter and the way they present themselves in a job interview are all integral parts of their personal brand. These brand assets play a crucial role in showcasing their skills, experiences, and unique value proposition to potential employers.
As Ari Weinstein puts it, "Brand coaching is what most people call career development coaching, also sometimes called career mobility coaching, with a focus on personal branding." It involves working closely with individuals to help them develop a unique brand story that highlights their strengths, skills, and values.
The goal of brand coaching is to assist individuals in gaining clarity, confidence, and strategy in order to effectively showcase their personal brand to potential employers or clients.
Brand coaches provide professional guidance and support to help individuals realize their full potential and achieve their desired career outcomes. This type of coaching is particularly beneficial for individuals seeking to enhance their personal brand assets, such as resumes, cover letters, and job interview presentations, which play a significant role in impressing potential employers.
It's important to note that personal branding is a key life skill. This is because when you develop your brand, you learn to make a specific impression on others, in the sense that you start being considerate of them and thinking that these are the people you'll work with. In other words, you aim to become intentional with your brand.
When it comes to healthcare professionals, brand coaching helps healthcare professionals understand that they're more than a combination of credentials, specialties, and experience, and to be more comfortable talking about themselves. According to Ari Weinstein, "...discovering and developing your brand helps you frame all of that experience and all of your knowledge in a way that makes it easier for you to introduce yourself with more than just your title and your credentials."
This is especially important because credentials are sometimes hard to understand for non-healthcare professionals. For Ari Weinstein, "Focusing on your personal brand helps smooth the interaction between you and non-healthcare professionals and other people whom you might want to interact with outside of your field."
In the healthcare industry, there's no doubt that adherence to strict standards and regulations is important for ensuring better patient outcomes. However, for healthcare professionals who want to distinguish themselves, it's important to remember the following:
There are a couple of ways healthcare professionals can demonstrate their expertise, and Ari Weinstein enumerated two:
Embracing opportunities to teach can pave the way for career advancement and highlight your ability to lead effectively. This is because, by stepping into a teaching role, you not only showcase your expertise but also contribute to the growth and development of others.
One way to take on these roles is to connect and contact the educators and medical professionals you already collaborate with and be a guest in one of their classes. You can also offer training to junior colleagues in your workplace.
It's important to note that healthcare professionals, in particular, are limited with what they can legally share especially due to laws about patient confidentiality. However, there are still many ways that a healthcare professional can share their experience, skill, and expertise on their specific niche, such as by doing the following on a regular basis:
Before long, people will see you as valuable and inspiring, and you'll be considered one of the most influential people in the healthcare industry that they look up to.
Ari Weinstein considers himself an advocate of LinkedIn for personal branding because of the extent to which you can showcase yourself and your work on that platform. This is because other social media platforms require you to post videos or photos to grab attention, which may take up time from busy healthcare professionals.
With a LinkedIn profile, on the other hand, according to Ari Weinstein, "you have an entire profile page that showcases you. You can tell a story about yourself in the About section. You can list all of your work experience, skills, educational credentials, and recommendations from others and endorsements for your skills." He really considers LinkedIn as a great opportunity for healthcare professionals to build a personal brand, especially as it's becoming more social.
Being restless and feeling stuck at work, even at something you genuinely love, can be considered to be one of the biggest challenges for mid-career professionals in several industries including healthcare. Ari Weinstein says that there's nothing wrong with being unhappy at work, even if it's objectively a great job, and this is where professional help from career coaches comes along.
Career coaches help their clients recognize exactly what's going on, what could make them feel more fulfilled, and how they can break through to find even better work and more opportunities. They can also help their clients find ways where they can coach them and make them feel greater.
One good example is Ari Weinstein's case study about an NHS worker in the UK who was one of her mentees in coaching. This mentee discovered her gift of listening, which made her reinvent herself and overcome her tendency as a healthcare professional to always offer help especially when someone's telling her a specific problem.
By exploring and building a successful personal brand, she discovered that what she really values the most is listening, so she learned to hold back, to listen, to give the people she coached space to talk, and for them to explore and discover what it was that they really wanted to work on. So that's helped her maintain her reputation and give her credibility with NHS workers who might want to work with her in a coaching capacity.
This episode of the Caring Support Podcast is a great way for healthcare professionals to start building their own personal brand to enable them to further their careers. Ari Weinstein provided comprehensive explanations of the basics of personal branding and its importance and also offered ways on how they, as career coaches, can help provide sound career advice.
At Caring Support, our innovative platform enables you to increase visibility in the healthcare industry by building meaningful connections with other professionals within the same niche. Our platform enables you to build more online presence and become more visible to prospective employers, all while helping you highlight your expertise in an easy way through our resume builder. Sign up with your free account and start your journey to a successful career with us today.
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