Insight Interview with Alessandro Di Pasquale,

People Development & Talent Acquisition Specialist – RDS

Personal Branding

1) What does Personal Branding means?

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, defines Personal Branding as “what people say about you once you leave the room”. Personal Branding, in my opinion, is nothing more than the effort and strategy set up to try to influence what people might say about us that position us as a real authority within our reference sector.

2) Why is it important?

In an increasingly digital society, where there are no more borders and competition is global, Personal Branding plays an increasingly key role. Knowing how to differentiate yourself from others and knowing how to build your brand in a credible way, can open foir your doors that were previously hidden or invisible. Considering that 70% of HR professionals use Social Networks for work, that 78% of Recruiters find the right candidate within their Network and that in 85% of cases in a selection online reputation plays a key role, it is essential to be able to build your own visibility by structuring real strategies.

3) What are the main steps to build an effective Personal Brand?

The Personal Brand construction process is divided into 5 basic steps:

• Define your goals: it is essential to start by defining your goal (“Start with the end in mind”), the target you want to hit and the most suitable communication channels you would like to use.
• Maximize your strengths: starting from an analysis of yourself, it is essential to highlight what are your weaknesses, or improvement areas, and what your strengths. Once this exercise is over, emphasize your strengths, they will be the focus of your communication plan. But be careful: don’t leave out your weaknesses but start working on them immediately, setting a short-medium term improvement plan.
• Develop a narrative: Start to set up a communication plan and storytelling around your strengths, interests and passions. Your communication plan must be both online and offline and must absolutely consider what is the target chosen in point 1. The most important thing is to always be honest, lying about your skills or knowledge will not bring you any advantage.
• Re – Introduce yourself: introduce your new image to the world and allowing your network to actually know who you really are.
• Demonstrate your value: Be prepared to work hard on this point. Not even the most prepared and valid Personal Branding strategy can obtain any result without your commitment and determination. Be constant, for example, is the most important value to consider in Personal Branding, if you are not accurate and constant in applying your strategy, you might risk to obtain counterproductive or not very credible results.

4) How important is your image and professional profile on the job market?

The job market is evolving more and more, the competition between Job Seekers is getting higher and candidates often have access to the same resources. For this reason, one’s image and professional profile can often make a difference. The Personal Brand is essential for any type of profession and seniority. Obviously for a generational question, the members of GenZ and Millennials pay more attention to the construction of their Brand but this now makes the difference also for the more senior profiles (Gen X and Baby Boomer) that increasingly clash with the importance of these issues.

5) Can Personal Branding be the winning card during the job search?

Personal Branding can not only be the winning card when looking for a job, but it can even make a difference. This is such a powerful tool that it can create opportunities even where there are none.

6) Turning to you, how did you build your professional image?Since university, I have always tried to build my professional image by telling about my passions and my interests as a professional and as a person. I am lucky to do the job I love and to live every day in the office as if it is still my first day. My goal, therefore, has always been to tell and share my passion for the HR world in all its facets, always deepening all aspects. What helped me the most in building my professional image was certainly my strong curiosity in discovering something new every day and the determination in wanting to make my passion known to my entire network, not just within the working environment.