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Mashable Awards 2010

Using Ratings to Enhance your Personal Brand?

Do most of your colleagues and acquaintances have a good understanding of your workplace skills? Do they appreciate the unique value proposition that you bring to the table? How marketable are you to companies and recruiters? Are you positioned well enough to find a new job or opportunity without going through an extremely tedious process? If your answer to these questions is no, Personal Branding might be the solution for you. This article explains current marketplace trends, the idea of Personal Branding and some of the mechanisms that are available to enhance your marketability.

Career Marketplace Trends

It is not news that the job market has changed drastically over the past two decades. Outsourcing of not only manufacturing jobs, but, white-collar jobs as well has become commonplace to most companies. Companies are often driven by the need to maximize shareholder returns, but for a professional to use this as an excuse to not stay competitive is of little value. After all, government policy towards outsourcing is often driven by the theory that it is in the long-term interest of the economy to get the work done in the most economical and efficient way possible. Many agree with this approach as it motivates the workforce to transition to higher value skills and jobs.

Career and workplace trends highlight the need for professionals to constantly update their skills and be increasingly flexible, and open to short term work. Yes, the days of staying with the same employer for even a decade, let alone for a lifetime, are long over. These trends have been documented by the likes of BusinessWeek [1], NewsWeek [2] and Gartner [3].

Personal Branding

Personal branding is defined as understanding one’s own unique value proposition, creating messages that highlight elements of the value proposition and packaging these messages in a format that is easily accessible and understood by others. The idea is that anyone that knows you, hears about you or comes across you, easily understands what your value proposition is. This is advantageous to all – the employers that need the skills that you have will have an easier time finding you and it will be easier for you to find them as well.

The idea of personal branding is generally known to have been first promoted by Tom Peters in 1997 in a FastCompany article [4]. LinkedIn, the professional networking web site, has experienced mainstream adoption as a platform for both personal branding as well as professional networking. The social networking site, Facebook, is increasingly used by professionals to define and promote [5] their personal brand among acquaintances. Some professionals also promote themselves by expressing their views on various topics through personal blogs.

Solutions

There are newer social media tools to help enhance your personal brand like never before. LinkedIn’s recommendations allow professionals to provide further details on their capabilities to viewers of their profile.  However, the size of LinkedIn user base makes it hard for an individual to stand out. Is that positive recommendation from your buddy at work really that valuable to a recruiter or employer? Not so much. Now there are other opportunities to merchandize yourself to potential employers while enhancing your Personal Brand.

Most of us leverage product ratings when buying from Amazon and Seller/Buyer ratings when buying from eBay. Companies like BazaarVoice have created solutions by which internet storefronts can easily incorporate ratings mechanisms to their web sites. We think that having ratings for individuals enhances their personal brand. But, who will rate you and where? Online expert marketplaces like eLance and oDesk provide platforms where businesses can find professionals, typically in the software arena, and rate the experts based upon the quality of work that has been delivered to them. These marketplaces cater to fulfilling low end business needs by providing access to experts from low wage countries.

Entreave is a new entrant to this space and is promoted as a social marketplace for professional services. Entreave differentiates itself as a US-only professional marketplace where white-collar professionals of all kinds can deliver short term services. Professionals, including job-seekers and freelancers, can participate in their spare time and make extra money. Publishable ratings for work delivered will enhance a professional’s Personal Brand. Further, the diversity of work that they deliver will allow them to fine tune and enhance their skills. Companies and recruiters that need short term professional help benefit through the access and ease by which they can work with high quality experts.

[1] http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_03/b4163032935448.htm

[2] http://www.newsweek.com/id/181935

[3] http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=138172

[4] http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html

[5] http://www.macworld.com/article/145527/2010/01/socialnetworkbiz2010.html

The authors Vamsi Mohun and John Gardner recently launched Entreave, an Austin, TX based startup. They can be reached at vmohun@entreave.com and jgardner@entreave.com respectively.

Event tomorrow

NetworkInAustin's Happy Hour is 5:00 PM tomorrow (Sep 23, 2010) at Casa Chapala, 3010 Anderson Lane - Sponsored by Entreave

Entreave on Facebook

Talk to us on Facebook. We are quite active.

http://www.facebook.com/Entreave

MECA Career Expo

MECA Career Expo is on Aug 6, 2010. 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Swing by our booth.

Austin Technology Council

Entreave won a complimentary one-year ATC membership at the Door64 Tech Fair drawing. Super excited !

Austin Technology Council

Interview with Austin Entrepreneur Network

Entreave founder Vamsi Mohun's chat with AEN is here

Say goodbye to full-time jobs with benefits

Say goodbye to full-time jobs with benefits

Article on Austin Startups

Wherefore Art Thou, Austin Investors?

SXSW Pics

Now on Entreave Fans page on Facebook

New Landing Page

Just in time for SXSW Interactive 2010 :) Say hi to us at SXSW !

Join Entreave at SXSW Interactive

SXSW Interactive

Follow us on Twitter

https://twitter.com/entreave

Freelancers: America's New Workforce

Freelancers Union provides support services for freelancers. Here's the founder on CNN.

http://money.cnn.com/video/news/2010/02/05/n_cmr_freelancers_union_jobs.cnnmoney/

Brand New Entreave Tour !!

http://www.entreave.com/tour/

Gartner Reveals Five Social Software Predictions for 2010 and Beyond

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1293114

Using Ratings to Enhance your Personal Brand?

See http://entreave.blogspot.com/2010/10/using-ratings-to-enhance-your-personal.html

Rise of the Temporary Workforce

The temporary workforce is increasingly important in the US. Additional insights here.

Welcome to 2015

Good insights here.

Future of the Global Workplace

PowerPoint presentation authored by Dr. Peter Saul.

Leverage US based experts, and/or be an expert.

Check and see if this might be of any help to you.
http://www.entreave.com/
http://www.entreave.com/tour/

Entreave is Live !

Check out the product tour http://www.entreave.com/tour/. Pass on to your friends !

Entreave Public Release

The first public release of Entreave is scheduled for December 2009. Stay tuned for exact dates.

Entreave Site Launch

The http://www.entreave.com/ site has been launched. Currently, only the registration portion of the site is active.

Please take a minute to register. This will enable us to keep you informed on product launch dates and other information.

Entreave on Facebook

We now have a group on Facebook. Join us to get the latest.

Entreave on Facebook

Google App Engine

Seems like a good platform to host web based applications in the cloud. Scalability is one of the key factors that would prompt one to engage a platform like the Google App Engine. Some of the applications that use this platform can be found here.

Featured Applications

The Brand called You

This is refreshingly sensible. Considering decades of career-related articles that mislead individuals into not focusing on this aspect.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/brandyou.html

The New American Job: Are freelance and part-time gigs the future?

The Newsweek article is here.