Charles R. Swindoll wrote, “first impressions never have a second chance”. The first time you interact with an individual they will form a perception of you. Although this opinion may be biased and untrue, once established it takes on a life of its own, and will require a lot of time and effort to change. This is the nature of personal branding. Your reputation precedes you.
One of my career goals is to build a brand for myself. To make progress at a top consulting firm, networking is non-negotiable. However, creating a personal brand is another way to gain visibility and respect. To achieve this goal, a key question to answer is, “What do I want to be known for?” You could focus on a specific skill, becoming a subject matter expert, or becoming known for your charitable work, community leadership, or sporting prowess. To be a great consultant your professional skills, experience, and contribution to your firm are absolutely necessary, but at the same time there are many hard working and talented professionals who get habitually overlooked. Branding is about how you are perceived.
One of the lessons I learned as an analyst working for a top consulting firm is how easy it is for an individual to go unnoticed and get lost in the crowd. Your professional journey and success as a consultant is dependent on your ability to problem-solve, network, and gain visibility. It doesn’t help you to do the “bare minimum”. Either you stand out, or it becomes difficult to succeed. When I joined consulting in 2020, there were at least fifty graduates joining the firm at the same time. Everyone wanted to be noticed and to be rolled into a project. Joining during the pandemic made things more challenging. Since everyone was working remotely the new batch of graduates had no opportunity to network in-person. As a result, many of the firm’s managers preferred working with the graduates from the year prior who they had already formed working relationships with.
Although networking and personal branding are often viewed as two separate endeavours, my experience as a graduate at a top consulting firm showed that these two activities are inextricably linked. Networking is a way to build credibility and visibility on a one-to-one basis, and as such, it is the first step in building your personal brand. If managers know you, they can put you in client-facing roles. They are also able to mentor you and assist you in your career progression.
It is important to develop your personal brand in the early stages of your career in order to showcase your knowledge, capabilities, and unique skillset. You can think of this as a process of establishing your unique value proposition in the minds of your managers. This is an important undertaking, and one which shouldn’t be left to chance. If you are an aspiring consultant or new graduate, ask yourself the question, “How do I want to be perceived?” Networking and personal branding are not merely about having your managers know that you exist, but are about marketing yourself as a product. You are packaging yourself as a product that has specific skills, competencies, qualifications, connections, and experiences that will help to add value to your firm and its clients.
Taking the time to establish a personal brand can help you to define the purpose of your career, the direction you want to take, areas where you could improve, and the best approach to thrive within your organization and the overall consulting industry. Successful consultants find purpose in assisting clients, seeing a project come to fruition, and becoming subject matter experts. Consulting is more than just a job, it is a way of life. On the majority of the projects I have worked on, I have become the consulting team expert on the client. At the same time, I would connect with managers and team members outside of normal working hours to relax and build rapport. Consulting tends to overlap with your personal life. In my case, it has always been important to establish myself as both a reliable professional as well as an individual with other interests. The more you get to know your manager and team outside their professional roles, the easier it is to create boundaries, understand each other’s schedules, and share in each other’s interests and hobbies.
The bottom line
Personal branding is important because it influences what people think of you in your absence.
Consulting is about more than just completing projects and being good at your job, it is about finding and creating meaning in what you do.
What are you known for?
How would you like to be perceived?
Thanduxolo Love Mtsweni is a Management Consultant Analyst at Accenture in South Africa. She holds a Bachelor of Administration in International Relations and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management (PDM- Business Administration). She is passionate about empowering the youth, and advocating for better youth employment opportunities.
Image: Pixabay