Thinking out loud: personal branding

Somewhere over the past two years, I gradually stopped paying attention to my own positioning, growth, and profile in the job market. To give myself some grace, it’s been a busy and transformative few years, and I'm the first to admit my career is not always my top priority. But heading into yet another summer of change, I’ve started thinking more intentionally on what comes next, because frankly — I'm not sure.

I’m considering myself to be a resourceful person, someone who tends to think creatively about the situations I’m in, often reframing challenges rather than seeing them as problems even if they sometimes are. After getting my bachelor’s degree in 2022, I was quite abruptly confronted with what many of us experience at that transition: stepping into the “real world” and realising that opportunities often require experience you are not yet given the chance to gain.

That's when I started creating my own opportunities more actively.

Networking, offering my skills, and understanding what others actually needed — and how I could contribute — became a natural starting point. I helped friends shape strategies for early-stage businesses, took on freelance work in content creation, translation, and proofreading, and volunteered for organisations that both aligned with my interests and allowed me to build practical experience.

And then I got a job at a dream company and got stuck in the corporate hustle. I got dragged into building for others and forgot to intentionally build for myself.

Building a personal brand can be uncomfortable and sound both artificial and self promotional. But we can also choose to see it as reputation management over time, shaped by actions, consistency, relationships, and the ability to communicate your perspective clearly.

Simply put, it means to be more mindful in how we show up, how we are perceived, and how consistently we communicate what we stand for outside of our corporate roles.

As people working in communication and marketing, we already understand the mechanics behind this. We know how positioning works, how narratives are built, and how perception is shaped across different channels and contexts. If we're lucky we have operational skills that enable us to create websites, content, marketing flows and storylines across multiple touch points and markets. Yet we don’t apply that to ourselves.

Or at least I didn't. Until now.

Our personal brands are as sensitive to perception as corporate brands, but managing that is part of the process and if done right, what we build is ultimately ours. Our employers, clients, and communities can influence it, but they can't take it from us. Our personal brand exists in the space between intention and interpretation, shaped by peers, collaborators, conversations, and experiences.

Additionally, perhaps full control of your personal brand is not the point. It is not about perfection or rigid consistency, but about direction, clarity, and authenticity over time.

I'm not done thinking about this yet, but this is a first step on becoming more aware of how I show up, not only in my work, but in how I communicate my interests, ideas, and thinking outside of it.

This website is part of that process. A way to be more intentional about how I share what I care about, and to create space for ideas that don’t always fit neatly into a job description.

Because in the end, a personal brand is not something you switch on when you need it. It is something you build continuously, often quietly, over time.