BEC中级真题阅读精讲:第2辑T1P3 怎样开发自己

HOW TO MARKET YOURSELF

We manage our own careers now. So knowing how to brand and position yourself in the market as Me plc at different stages of your working life is becoming an increasingly vital skill. At least that is what image expert Mary Spillane believes. Employment as we know it is decreasing. Jobs dont exist, work exists.In the next decade most of us will be suppliers, not staff. We will have clients not bosses. If you are under 30, you probably know that there is only one firm to join for life: Me plc. It promotes you and your potential to others.

re working in multi-national, multicultural, multi-corporate teams and its important to understand the implications of this. We need to create a personal brand that is unique, but complements the brand of the corporation we are working for. You have to find a way to do it so that you are not just a typical employee, advises Spillane.You have to decide what central values you want to project, and also what may need to alter from situation to situation.

Many people only remember Mary Spillane for the years she spent running a cosmetics company, but she actually has masters degrees in information science and politics.She used to hide that hard-hitting side, but is now eager to show it and forget about cosmetics.Now that Im working in the boardrooms of major plcs and global companies, Im playing up my degrees and management background so that the image side is seen only as an addition to the value side, says Spillane.

Some contracts take longer than others. The City law firms Im currently working for are really difficult because they dont have any idea of what their brand should be, and are still very traditional even when talking about becoming modern. Im showing them how to do everything from changing their reception areas -which tend to be very off-putting with their high-fronted reception desks - to how to make small talk that is less formal and rigid. Companies rebrand themselves all the time, spending millions on new office interiors and so on. But without an underlying change of attitudes, it can prove an empty exercise.

She argues that for individuals too, there must be more than a surface change, as rebranding goes deeper than a mere change of wardrobe. Beyond advice on appearance, she tells clients, Remind yourself of what you are selling: the personal values that comprise your brand. Learn to present yourself in a way that will project what you want to deliver. Lifelong learning is essential, together with the sort of discovery and adventure that promote personal growth.Always have an up-to-the-minute CV ready to print out, refreshing it every few months with your most recent achievements, just to remind others of your brand value.

She believes it is essential that you understand both your public self and your private self, as well as your blind spots and your potential, in order to create an effective brand. The public self is the image you project to the world, the private self is what you know about yourself but others dont, arid blind spots are those things that others see about you but you cant see for yourself.By deciding what image you want other people to see, emphasising more of your private self and sorting out a few blind spots, you will increase not only your potential to influence others, but also your self-esteem and self-confidence.