Want to lure top talent to your company and have the best and brightest report directly to you? That starts with building an attractive personal brand. That’s right. Most personal branding articles are written through the lens of promoting yourself for the purpose of future employment and/or for the lure of hiring your services.

But when it comes to attracting great talent to work for you and your company, it is equally important that you build and nurture your personal brand.

Unfortunately, most hiring managers place all of the recruitment efforts in the hands of HR. In doing so, they inadvertently make it extremely difficult for candidates to really get a taste of what it’s like to work somewhere prior to making their decision.

Instead of relying solely on HR to handle the entirety of recruiting, managers would be wise to have a visual personal brand outside of their company. This enables job seekers to get to know their would-be bosses before coming on-board.

The stronger, more approachable, more desirable personal brand you have, the more likely you’ll be able to attract top talent.

Personal Branding Roots

Having spent 11+ years in the recruitment advertising space at Monster/TMP Worldwide, the importance of employer branding has always been a well talked about topic especially as it related to attracting talent. In the early 2000’s Monster was viewed as a dotcom success story, people knew the brand which made it easier to attract talented candidates.

As a hiring manager, that changed for me 2006 when Monster divested its North American advertising business TMP Worldwide. As part of the senior management team, I headed up technology and product development. TMP was a very known brand among the HR recruitment advertisement industry, however it wasn’t known by technology job seekers (as Monster was).

My candidate pipeline was thinner and I knew that in order to attract top talent I couldn’t solely rely on just the company brand and the HR department. It was time for me to take ownership and work my personal brand to help aid in recruitment efforts. This meant getting my name out there, speaking at conferences and to reporters. I wanted to provide perspective candidates with information on what it was like to work at TMP and work with me.

It’s good to see that many of the talented individuals I recruited are still thriving at TMP now.

The Importance of the Hiring Manager

You may have heard the phrase before, but it bears repeating: Workers don’t quit their jobs—they quit their managers. According to a recent report, nearly half of employees who leave their jobs do so to get away from their bosses for a number of reasons, including:

• A lack of respect and gratitude
• No clear job expectations
• No room for career development
• Micromanagement

The list goes on.

Prior to agreeing to take a new job, prospective candidates want to know whether they will be able to work well with their new manager. There’s not much sense in agreeing to start a new job only to find out three weeks later that you absolutely cannot stand your new boss.

We hear all the time about how hard it is to attract top talent—and for good reason, because it’s true. There’s a finite amount of extremely talented workers who are looking for jobs.

Still, hiring managers need to understand that talent attracts talent.

In this light, building a personal brand is incredibly important to the hiring process. You can’t expect to land the best workers—the kind of people who do their due diligence prior to landing a new gig to the point they rigorously search the internet to find information on their potential new bosses—if you don’t spend any time promoting your personal brand.

How to Build Your Personal Brand

Now that you understand the importance of building a personal brand with respect to attracting and on-boarding top talent, it’s time to look at three concrete ways to jump start your personal brand:

• Solicit feedback and recommendations. 

  Try to get people who work for you or have worked for you to provide authentic recommendations about what it’s like working with you. As a hiring manager looking to attract talent, these kinds of compliments are much more appealing to job seekers than ones coming from your prior bosses.

• Get your message and opinions out there. 

  Start publishing your thoughts on blogs, LinkedIn, etc. What better way is there to share your story, your ideas, and your philosophies than by picking up your digital pen and start blogging? Share your thought leadership pieces on your blog to generate discussion and prove to your would-be employees that you have a lot to say—and a large audience that engages with your ideas.Another great way to engage in conversations is to use Quora, it allows you to share your thoughts, opinions and expertise on a variety of topics and the content from Quora performs very well, that is, it shows up in Google search results.

• Seek out interviews and speaking engagements. 

  It may be difficult to become the person that’s called for insight whenever a story in your space is being written. But keep an open mind and say yes to any interview or speaking engagement that’s thrown your way (within reason, of course). The more you get your name out there, the more momentum you’ll build for your personal brand. It won’t be long before reporters start calling you regularly. And even if they aren’t, luckily you can still use services like Help a Reporter Out (HARO), ProfNet, or SourceBottle to get relevant content and thoughts circulated more broadly.

Final Thoughts

Today more than ever it is important to build and nurture your personal brand. It may take time, but once you’ve built a strong foundation, your brand will take on a life of its own. It’ll only be a matter of time before people read your blog, see an interview you were in, or hear you speak— thus ultimately helping potential candidates decide if they want to work for you as well as helping you with future employment opportunities.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you have any tips of your own; please share them in the comments section.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Michael Iacona has  20+ years’ cross-industry experience within large multinational companies, works with start-ups and earned dual Masters degrees – an MBA from Columbia Business School and an MS in Information Systems from Pace University.  Having built, led and managed small and large teams, Michael continual evolves his management style. He leads by example and fosters open communication and enjoys coaching team members, capitalizing on their unique talents.