With the entertainment industry in a period of constant change, job security is at a premium. As a result, Promax is offering workshops and sessions to help members find their next job or take their careers to the next level.

At this year’s Promax Conference 2019, Cecilia Gorman led about 40 attendees in a day of workshops to help them build their personal brands as they consider what’s next in their careers.

Here are six tips to take away from Gorman’s sessions:

1) Make your headline as powerful as possible.

When you are creating a profile on social media, it’s tempting to just fill in the blanks without giving much thought to what you are saying. But that space on LinkedIn offers an opportunity to tell potential employers more about you than just your job title.

“The headline is all about being outstanding,” Gorman told attendees. And by “outstanding” she literally means “standing out” – grabbing people’s attention and keeping it.

To help craft this, Gorman recommends jotting down what you consider to be your four top skills and then folding those into a pithy headline. And all of those things don’t have refer back to your professional abilities – if you are a great cook or a master sailor or an amateur potter, this is the place to mention it and set yourself apart.

2) Tell your story in the bio.

Underneath the headline is a box for your bio. When faced with empty space, the immediate reaction is just to move your mouse somewhere else, and figure you’ll come back later. Now’s the time to go back and craft that bio.

Like the headline, the bio is not a spot to just recap your resume. Instead, write it in the first person and tell the reader some interesting facts about what you’ve done and where you’ve been. Some of those facts might be career-oriented, while others might touch on your off-work interests.

To help structure this, Gorman recommends writing down seven facts about yourself.

“You want to create a fertile environment where you can tell a story about you,” said Gorman. “The goal is to walk away with a bio with a commanding hook to it.”

And here’s the thing: it’s not like the printed edition of your bio is going out and can never be changed. It can be changed and tweaked whenever you feel like it so that it represents your most current and accurate representation.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” said Gorman. “You can always be finessing it.”

3) Leverage your LinkedIn profile by keeping up with changes.

LinkedIn is constantly adding new features, Gorman said, and it’s important to keep up with those changes in order for your profile to work its hardest for you.

One of the ways to best do that, is by adding details to your list of accomplishments, which falls further down on your profile. Here, you can add publications where you’ve published, projects you are working on or have completed, and other special skills and talents.

“Adding things here allows you to add color to your profile,” Gorman said.

4) Post articles to help build your brand as a thought leader.

It’s fairly easy to post an article in LinkedIn – usually that’s one you’ve read and found interesting, but it can also be something you’ve written yourself.

“This is where you keep your brand top of mind,” said Gorman.

Posting articles puts your name into other people’s feeds and helps them see that you are following industry trends and, ideally, offering interesting thoughts and ideas about those trends.

“In a recruiting environment, the more that you show that you are ideating around your industry, the more you will stand out as a thought leader in your field,” said Gorman.

Also, clicking on articles populates your feed with more of the same, so the more active you are on the platform, the more content – meaning the more knowledge, experience and connections – you will be served, helping you stay that much more engaged.

5) Keep making personal connections.

The main point of a platform like LinkedIn is to expand your networking base. Gorman advises people to think a little before rejecting connection requests from people you don’t know.

“Think through the connection requests that are coming to you,” said Gorman. “It’s like six degrees of Kevin Bacon. If it’s not the person in front of you, maybe they know someone who could help you get the next thing that you want. You don’t know what might come up by digging deeper into those connections.”

6) Always be cultivating your brand.

This was the idea that Gorman wanted the group to take away from the day of sessions.

“Walk away with this word ‘cultivation’ in your brain,” she said. “It’s an action verb and it’s quite active. It’s like cultivating a plant to grow in the garden. There’s an intentional and purposefulness that goes with it.”

Cultivating your brand means keeping your headline and bio updated, fresh and current. It also means remaining connected with your industry peers.

It might seem like a lot, but Gorman’s just asking job-seekers to take one step: “We want you to shift and do one thing differently because you were here.”

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