Arruda William - Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand

Copyright 2007 by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Arruda, William, 1961

Career distinction : stand out by building your brand / William Arruda,

Kirsten Dixson.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-470-12818-3 (cloth)

1. Career development. 2. Success in business. 3. ProfessionsMarketing.

I. Dixson, Kirsten, 1968 II. Title.

HF5381.A828 2007

650.14dc22

2006039541

I have lived and breathed career management for over 30 years, and in that time I have seen seismic changes in the world of work and consequently in the field of career management. The biggest shocks have all come in the past 10 years. The coming of the Information Age, and the tsunami of the Internet engulfing our daily lives, has rendered most beliefs about career management, for those who ever held any, obsolete.

Becoming credible and visible in your career is more than just the reward of doing a good job; it is the result of working consistently over the years to make a difference to those you serve and to those with whom you work. The more you work toward credibility and visibility in your profession, the quicker you enter that inner circlein your department, in your company, and ultimately in your industry. One of the many rewards for this effort is that you get to know and be known by the most committed and best connected in your profession. That is how I got to know William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson. They have become valuable members of the leadership community on career management thought.

One thing that links the most successful professionals at all levels is that they take a proactive approach to managing their careers. People who are ahead of the game dont wait for a career emergency to activate their network or update their resume. As Arruda and Dixson explain, you have to make career management a habit. Their innovative, step-by-step approach focuses on personal brandinga new concept for most of us that is largely misrepresented in the media. In this book, Arruda and Dixson dispel the myths and demonstrate that if you get personal branding right, you will attract your ideal opportunities rather than having to seek them out. Like them, you can increase the success and enjoyment that you bring to your work by making the most of who you really are.

The future is bright for those who are able to manage their careers the way that companies manage their businesses. Like companies, people must be incredibly clear about what they uniquely offer and who benefits from it. People must engage in ongoing communication activities to keep their personal brands in the forefront. And they must ensure that everything that they do delivers on their brand promise.

Arruda and Dixson are two pioneers in building and managing online identity; in fact, they improved mine. What they do is becoming more and more vital as we are all Googled before meetings and interviews.

Adopting the Career Distinction mindset and integrating the ideas from this book into your career strategy will have a positive impact on your career. Listen to what Arruda and Dixson have to say; it could make a real difference in your professional life.

MARTIN YATE

Author of Knock em Dead: The Ultimate Job Search Guide

In the new world of work, your reputation is the only accepted currency. Whether you are looking to move up the corporate ladder in your current organization, find a position at another company, make a major career change, or start your own enterprise, you will no longer be hunting for your next role. Instead, opportunities will come to you. Colleagues, hiring managers, clients, and recruiters will use search engines like Google as well as social and professional networks to find out about you and reach you. To thrive in this new environment, you must identify your personal assets and clearly communicate your unique promise of value. Your credibility and visibility will drive demand for your services. You must use who you are to affect how you earn. Thats where Career Distinction: Stand Out by Building Your Brand comes in.

This definitive step-by-step guide enables you to determine how others perceive you, reshape those perceptions to achieve your goals, and communicate your message about your personal brand clearly and consistently. In this book, you learn how to become the must-have professionalby being yourself. We demonstrate the power that comes with being yourself by providing examples of people (some names have been changed for privacy) just like you who have achieved professional success and fulfillment by living their personal brands. But before we introduce you to these fascinating people, let us introduce ourselves.

Who are we, and why did we join forces to write this book? William is the perfect example of someone who initially had no career strategy whatsoever. When he was deciding on a major in college, he chose to go into engineering. He selected this discipline because he knew he would find it difficult, and he thought university had to be hard. And it was. He was thankful for the electives and humanities courses that kept his grade point average in an acceptable range. William had no awareness of his own passions or motivationsyet they were clear to those around him. For example, he had a deep interest in advertising from a young age. Over the years, he built up a large collection of TV advertisements on VHS and watched television more for the commercials than for the programs. In his words: