Finding the ‘gems’ in your resume

Posted on June 15, 2015 by brandaudits

I have been conducting corporate brand audits for over 30 years and more recently concentrating on personal brand audits. Audits are conducted for those in mid- to late-careers especially women looking for Non-Executive Directorship roles. Conducting personal brand audits is fascinating as I work with clients to peel away the ‘standardised’ content of their resumes to enable me to reveal the ‘gems’ of information to reveal a personality that makes each client unique. These gems are used to highlight the client’s point of difference and to ensure they are remembered and stand out.

These gems are used to highlight the client’s point of difference and to ensure they are remembered and stand out.

It also inspires and informs every element of the brand identity toolkit—from resume to business card. By creating a suite of customised tools for their toolkit—brand story, business cards, photographs, resume layouts, and graphic elements—to create a unique and personal resume. Each element is just as important as each other—the content, the layout, the photography etc. A customised toolkit for your personal brand doesn’t guarantee you the job/promotion/board role—that’s your job!—but they do help you stand out and be remembered.

Here are some useful resources on ensuring that your resume (digital or paper versions) makes it through…

Inc.com

10 resume tweaks to help you get a job now x Susan Lucas

“Time moves in a different dimension when you’re job hunting. Managers say they will make a decision “soon,” and you don’t hear from them for three weeks. Recruiters say they’ll get back to you “tomorrow,” and they never, ever contact you again. It’s a weird and frustrating position to be in. Finding a new job is pretty awful, but there are some things you can do to your résumé to help speed up the process. OK, they won’t get you a job tomorrow, but they will increase your chances of getting one.”

Forbes

Eight surprising rules that will get you the job x Susan Adams

“At 76 years old, Bill Ellermeyer is an elder statesman of the job search world. He founded an Irvine, Calif. outplacement firm in 1981, which he sold to staffing firm Adecco in 1990, then ran that office as a division of Adecco subsidiary Lee Hecht Harrison until going out on his own as an independent coach in 2004. He specializes in what he calls “career transitions” for people who have lost their jobs at the executive level, mostly from the c-suite or as vice presidents. Some of his clients have been out of work for more than a year when they come to him. He pushes them until they find a new position. After three decades in the career coaching business, he’s come up with eight rules, some counter-intuitive, that he says promise to land his clients a job.”

Fast Company

Nine resume mistakes that may cost you a job x Christine Ryan Jyoti

“While good old paper may seem passé in the digital age, LinkedIn hasn’t completely replaced the old-fashioned résumé.Résumés are the heartbeat of a career search,” says Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter, a career and workplace adviser at Glassdoor. “If done well, your résumé will tell your story and sell you.”

*Christine Moody is one of Australia’s leading brand strategists and the founder brand management consultancy, Brand Audits. With more than 30 years’ professional experience, Christine has helped a diverse client base of local and international brands, including Gold Coast City Council, Hilton Hotels, and Wrigleys USA, to develop, protect and achieve brand differentiation.

What’s your brand story?

Posted on June 14, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody

Everyone loves a good story

Whether your brand is a start up or an established organisation, every brand has a good story to tell. A brand story gives your products and services context, meaning, and emotion. It also allows you to tell a unique story to your stakeholders—staff, potential and existing customers, and suppliers.

Writing the brand story is the first thing to do when you are creating a new product or service. For example, when I have an idea for a new product or service the first thing I do is buy a new Moleskine notebook. This notebook serves as the main repository to capture my thoughts, research, clippings, and notes all in one place. It also serves as a place to start documenting and writing the brand story.

It is one of the most important things you will do as it forms the framework for any future decisions.

Only after the brand story has been written do I talk to a range of trusted advisors about my idea. The feedback and insights from this process helps inform the prototype. The brand story influences everything I do and say around the new product, eg, it informs my narrative on social media as well as the content of the brief to the photographer. It is one of the most important things you will do as forms the foundation for any future decisions.

Here are a selection of articles on brand story creation and why creating your brand’s story is so important.

Forbes

Disney proves that profitable marketing is about brand stories x Will Burns

“Disney’s “content marketing” strategy goes in reverse compared to most brands. Meaning, where most brands start with a

physical product and then build a story around it in the form of “content marketing,” companies like Disney do exactly the opposite. They create a brand story – a movie – and then build products around that story.”

Inc.com

How to tell stories that make your brand x First Round Review

“A startup’s story needs to be a shapeshifter. You need a version that will convince people to give you money, another to persuade star talent to join your team, another for those first customers taking a chance on you. These stories live in different places and have different purposes. One may never be written down, one may only be emailed to select people, one may live at the top of your website in the form of a video. But they should all stem from the same core.”

The New York Times

Quenching consumer’ thirst for ‘authentic’ brands x Matthew Hutson

“Knowing where their products come from allows them to keep tabs on the way many of their products are made. The narratives also connect consumers to other people and places, adding a personal and experiential component to a tangible good and giving it an aura of authenticity.”

Does your brand behave badly?

Posted on June 11, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody*

Corporate brands often forget that they are judged by their customers on every level and on every touch point. How they handle themselves when things don’t go to plan is where every brand has an opportunity to shine and show their true colours. An authentic brand’s reaction is to put themselves in the shoes of the customer. How would you feel if the company treated you a certain way? As way of an example, how every little transaction matters here is a story about a luxury car company.

Recently a friend of mine found themselves in a dire financial position. She was very proactive communicating with her financial institutions and was able to negotiate a change in arrangements early on so to avoid any penalities or reports to credit agencies. This included banks and credit card companies et al. This process took time, energy, and patience but it really paid off. However there was one organisation that she had the most difficulty with. It to her surprise a luxury car brand that she had been loyal to all her working life. While effort was put into selling the car to my friend—glossy brochures, showroom demostrations, loan cars for the weekends, and tickets to corporate events—when it came to negotiating a better finance deal it was completely the opposite. Big brands—expecially luxury brands—need to remember that paying attention to every little detail is just as important during the entire journey and relationship with the customer—not just during the sales process. It is how you treat your customers at every single stage of the ownership of that vehicle that makes or breaks the customer’s loyalty.

Big brands—expecially luxury brands—need to remember that paying attention to every little detail is just as important during the entire journey and relationship with the customer—not just during the sales process.

In a lot of cases, companies not understanding this means that the staff in the accounts department, for example, are too removed from the customer or don’t understand that how they treat customers will have a direct affect on the next sale and ultimately how that customer feels about the brand. The customer experience is an entire journey that starts long before they enter the showroom and does not end with the signing of the sales document. All the glossy brochures and slick advertising will not help overturn a bad customer experience. But being human and having empathy will go so much further.

Here are some other articles with brand stories that every company can learn from.

Forbes Companies behaving badly: When good services goes bad x Jabez LeBret “At the heart of great communication is the ethos that you communicate to those around you the way they want to be communicated to. In the moment that your customer is contacting you with an issue, he or she is upset, frustrated, and looking for you to solve the problem—not solve the problem because you are feeling charitable that day. Of course, you cannot make an exception every time. But telling your customers that you’ve made an exception at the moment they achieve resolution is like giving them a piece of cake, then taking it away before they get one bite of satisfaction.”

Harvard Business Review

Stop trying to delight customers x Matthew Dixon, Karen Freeman, and Nicholas Toman

“Two critical findings emerged that should affect every company’s customer service strategy. First, delighting customers doesn’t build loyalty; reducing their effort—the work they must do to get their problem solved—does. Second, acting deliberately on this insight can help improve customer service, reduce customer service costs, and decrease customer churn.”

Customer Think

Customer Experience: What, why, and how x customerthink.com

“HBR describes the customer experience as “your customer’s end-to-end journey with you…the cumulative impact of multiple touch points over time, which result in a real relationship feeling, or lack of it. So it’s about the multiple interactions that a customer has with a company and the collective nature of these interactions (whether good, okay or bad) that make up the entire customer experience. Right from the time a lead engages with a company till the time he continues to be a customer defines customer journey which makes the TOTAL CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.”

What does a personal brand audit achieve?

Posted on June 9, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody*

Towards the end of last year, I decided to use my Brand Audits’ framework and tools to conduct an audit on my own personal brand—’Brand Me’. It is not a perfect situation to audit yourself but I used a robust framework and process to keep it as unbiased as possible and included as many ‘external stakeholders’ as possible—ie, I did not ask my mother! This process allowed me to highlight what I had achieved to date but also what I wanted to achieve and more importantly the gaps.

It also enabled me to put in place goals and strategies to close the gaps to reach my goals in 2015. Through this process I am happy to say that I have completed a range of new start-ups; finished my Masters thesis; got my fitness to a level I have never had before; and for fun (and lots of laughs!), attending ballet classes “just because”. And all this was achieved in less than one year.

“It also enabled me to put in place goals and strategies to close the gaps to reach my goals in 2015.

Annual audits not only keep you on track, but also allow you to celebrate all you have achieved and reflect on your successes. It helps you ‘regroup’ after a diversion or disaster and gives you focus, energy, and motivation to keep going with a clear purpose and direction. I have now completed many personal brand audits for clients and I got to say that I enjoy the process because I see the difference that this makes to people and their lives.

Innovation—ideas based on your own needs

Posted on June 8, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody*

TheWrapDress-230514-48

I have always been an entrepreneur—even before I knew there was a word for it! I started my business when still at University and basically have worked for myself on a range of start ups. I believe working with a variety of clients as well as on a variety of projects in those early days not only gave me valuable work experience, it also exposed me to a variety of CEOs. I was able to observe first hand and at close range, how their leadership style had a direct affect on the entire organisation. It also gave me insights into how they coped with not knowing what was around the corner as far as technology was concerned. But it did not matter as the best leaders ensured that their companies spent time and money on exploring better ways of doing things and being aware what other industries were developing. They also recognised that things that they found annoying (pain points) may also be annoying for their clients so they set about creating new products around solving a problem.

Many of my ideas have come from a personal need or pain point or seeing a problem with a process or product. Every new concept I have developed—from The Wrap Dress (see story below), Designer Law School, and Poppy Cakes—have been an outcome of a an idea inspired by a personal need. So look around your company and spend time with your clients, and most importantly keep your eyes and ears open every time you are out of your office. You will never know where a new idea can come from.

Why I created ‘The Wrap Dress‘

I made my first Wrap Dress as a versatile staple that I could dress up or down for any occasion. So I could get out the door faster, and still look and feel as fresh and crisp at the end of the day as I did at the start. Something that would have me looking and feeling good, wherever my day took me. The concept grew from a corporate sewing group I started a few years ago—affectionately known as ‘Stitch ’n’ Bitch’! The Wrap Dress style was chosen as the first garment for its simplicity and versatility. And something that would perfectly suit the busy, outgoing women in our group.

I chose a stretch fabric that I later discovered was typically used in swimwear. As it turned out, it perfectly suited the everyday/everywhere/everybody style of garment. I was wrapped in a great idea! Then a friend wanted one. Then another. Then friends of friends. Then people I’d never met. I’ve kept refining the design and make over the years. The beautiful, comfortable, durable, versatile Wrap Dress you see before you is the end result. Complicated lives need simple solutions. The Wrap Dress makes getting dressed, out of the house and on with the day that much easier—and more fun!

A brand called YOU

Posted on June 2, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody*

Inc.com

You Inc: Why personal branding matters x Jeremy Goldman

“Just like household name brands, you have characteristics that define you; ways that you think of yourself and ways that others think of you. Effective personal branding isn’t about putting on a show or figuring out how to do as little work as possible while getting the most financial reward. That’s not something that I believe in. Life’s just too short to not be focused on building the best possible version of yourself.”

Women’s Agenda
Your personal brand matters: Five ways to develop it for career success x Megan Dalla-Camina

“One of the key aspects of our career that really matters is your personal —which is essentially how you choose to present yourself. Everyone has one. Many people don’t know what their personal brand says about them; and few do something positive to build it, enhance it, and leverage it to support their career success. I am still surprised by how many people think they don’t even have one.”

Harvard Business Review

Reinventing your personal brand x Dorie Clark

“People reinvent themselves all the time—to take on a new challenge, shift into more-meaningful work, or rebut perceptions that have hindered their career progress. Sometimes the changes are major (a financial services manager moves into retail, a venture capitalist becomes a life coach). Sometimes the rebranding is subtle, as for an executive who wants to advance but needs to overcome the knock that he’s “not good with numbers.” Taking control of your personal brand may mean the difference between an unfulfilling job and a rewarding career. As Longfellow noted, “We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.” Your path may make perfect sense to you, but how can you persuade others to embrace your new brand—and take you seriously?”

Want to be customer-centric? Then worry about every little detail

Posted on June 1, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody*

Fast Company
How Amazon and other top companies keep their customers in focus x Ken Fine

The habits of customer-centric CEOs like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Apple’s Tim Cook aren’t as hard to pick up as some executives might expect. Here are three things leaders can start emulating today to become more customer-centric and gain the insight into business opportunities and pain points that come with that focus.

Forbes

Marketing: Building a customer centric marketing ecosystem x Daniel Newman

As more and more brands are vying for a slice of the consumer’s attention, businesses need to restructure themselves, and become more customer-centric to stay ahead in the race. While most companies today claim to put their customers first, a surprisingly small number are actually doing it right. So, where are they going wrong? The fact is: some businesses are treating customer-centricity as a set of strategies meant solely for the customer-facing units of a business. They often forget that a customized or one-on-one approach is more than just a marketing goal for customer service reps and sales people.

Wharton

If you want to be customer-centric, you’ve got to be direct x Peter S Fader

Customer centricity is not merely about customized products and services. It’s also a celebration of customer diversity. Mary Kay consultants live and die by their ability to leverage individual customer-level data. A truly customer-centric firm also knows that world-class service should be reserved for only the best customers. Its principles warn that rolling out the red carpet for every customer is a crippling waste of resources

Stressed? It’s not your fault—blame the oldies!

Posted on May 31, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody*

Stress and its negative side affects of long-term stress is documented in various respected academic and business journals. I know first hand how stress can affect all areas of your life including your personal and business life. Researchers now believe that the stress and subsequent reaction to it is part of your DNA. I am one of the lucky ones, I think I got the ‘good genes’. I come from a family of determined women and men who see a challenge and take it head on. I think is it something to do with the mix of my Scottish and Australian heritage perhaps. I have had many challenges—especially over the past three years—but I have used these challenges to achieve so much more than I ever thought I could—from an exercise regime that includes bootcamp-style classes and first-ever ballet lessons; to creating start-ups including ‘The Wrap Dress’ and ‘Designer Law School’; as well as achieving one of the most important milestones: finishing my Masters Thesis!. All because I learned how to harness the stress and react to the challenges by changing my mindset and breaking things down to ‘bite size’ pieces. I now say to stress and the challenges: “Bring it on!”

Fast Company

How your grandparents’ lives affect your resilience to stress x Vivian Giang

“Can trauma, stress, and even nightmares be passed down from generation to generation? Scientists say yes. A number of research finds that those who have been traumatized around the time of conception can pass on a DNA code to their offspring that results in a higher vulnerability to stress in their molecules, neurons, cells, and genes. Furthermore, this gene expression—a chemical coating upon the chromosomes—is strong enough to be passed on to a third generation, which means grandchildren have “a kind of biological memory” of what their grandparents experienced, according to studies.”

Forbes

Recovering resilience: Seven strategies to become mentally stronger x Alice G. Walton

“Stress affects people in all different ways—or at least, different people respond to it very differently. For some, it rolls off quickly, and they rebound in a reasonable amount of time. For others, it “sticks” and it takes much longer to recover, if ever. This is because people’s mental “resilience” varies enormously, which itself is based on both genes and environment. For people who aren’t so good at coping with stressors, it may be that they’ve never been particularly good at it—or it could be that they were once good, but the losses and blows of life have worn away their resilience over time. Luckily, it’s possible to build that skill back up.”

Inc.

10 steps to building your resilience x Thompson Wall
“It can be easy to feel like throwing in the towel when you’re faced with adversity, tragedy, or even just plain old stress. But what if we could build an immunity to stress in the same way we take vitamins and antibiotics to boost our immunity to illness? A recent article in The Wall Street Journal explores the art of learning resilience with Dennis Charney, dean of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Charney is a world-renowned neurobiology expert specializing in the treatment of mood and anxiety disorders. In Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges, Charney and Steven Southwick, a psychiatry professor at Yale University, explain that people can train their brain to be more resilient by harnessing their stressors and using them to their advantage.”

Powerful women make powerful role models

Posted on May 28, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody*

Forbes has many lists and rankings, inlcuding lists of the richest Americans and the rankings of the world’s top companies. Two key lists were published this week—Most powerful women + most successful, self-made women in the U.S. These lists are inspiring especially the self-made women from a variety of industry sectors—fashion to manufacturing to medical. Interesting that 20 out of the 50 women on the list reside in California—must have something to do with the sunshine! Some are not household names which is a nice change from the usual ‘suspects’—Oprah and Sheryl Sandberg, etc.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Taylor Swift makes Forbes most powerful women list

“Taylor Swift has been named one of the most powerful women in the world after making her first entrance in Forbes’ World’s Most Powerful Women list this year. The 25-year-old was ranked number 64 on the list for 2015, and is also the youngest. Swift is one of the most followed celebrities on Twitter with 58 million followers. Forbes estimates her earnings in 2014 to be $81 million.”

Forbes

Living the Dream: The most successful, self-made women in the US x Luisa Kroll

“Forbes has compiled its first ever list of the nation’s top 50 most successful, self-made women as measured by their net worths.The exclusive freshman class includes entrepreneurs, CEOs, entertainers, designers and even an author. Some of the list members are extremely well-known, starting with the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. Others like Kathy Fields and Katie Rodan, dermatologists who created acne treatment Proactiv and now have another skin care company, aren’t quite household names yet but may be on their way.”

The World’s Most Powerful Women 2015 x Caroline Howard
“The world’s most powerful woman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, has a lot on her mind these days: Mediterranean migrants, Russian sanctions, homegrown spying scandals, Eurozone stability and the Germanwings crash, to name a few pressing issues. One thing she surely isn’t thinking about—but we are— is that come next year’s U.S. elections, she could lose her title for the first time since 2010 to the one person with a credible and mathematical chance of “leading” the world.”

The beauty of PopUps

Posted on May 27, 2015 by brandaudits

Brand Audits Update x Christine Moody*

A few years ago, I identified the potential of retail PopUp stores. To prove my theory that this concept was a great alternative to a long-term retail lease, I prepared a visual presentation on the current state of retail in USA and Australia and the PopUp trends. The purpose of this presentation was to investigate if there were any ‘hidden’ negatives around the idea in the context of the Australian retail environment. I then presented the PopUp store idea to landlords, agents, and anyone else involved in retail leasing. My research found no negatives so I set about finding a retail space. I gave myself one week and two thousand dollars to set up a cupcake PopUp store. PopUps can be used to promote the brand, test new products, to get direct customer feedback, as well as to test potential retail precincts prior to signing longer-term retail leases. It also adds excitement to business as PopUps creates a startup mentality—lots of energy and creativity because of the limited resources—time and money! Here are some other PopUp ideas—from market stalls to Martha Stewart’s PopUp Pie Shop.

Omni-Channel Retail 101: Test New Markets With Pop-Ups x Bryan Steel

“According to a survey of over 30,000 global consumers, 60% admitted that they browse products online before ultimately purchasing them in stores. Now consider that e-commerce in 2014, only accounted for roughly 6% of total retail sales (US Department of Commerce). What does this all mean for your business?—Jon Burbank, President of Strategic Initiatives at Nielson says, “Now is the time to create Omni-channel experiences for consumers who are actively using both digital and physical platforms to research and purchase, as consumers increasingly don’t make a distinction between the two”.”

Pitchi Chats With Simon Obarzanek, the Founder of Markit x Cassandra Carbone

“Large pop up markets are becoming increasingly popular, and with Markit setting up shop once again in Melbourne’s Federation Square this Sunday we thought we’d find out what is involved in running such a large scale event. Markit founder, Simon Obarzanek sat down with us to share a little bit more about his life as an entrepreneur, market connoisseur and creative—and how he juggles so many hats!”

Martha Stewart’s Pop-Up Pie Shop x MarthaStewart.com

“To celebrate our new book, Martha Stewart’s New Pies & Tarts, we opened up shop! On March 26 and 27 (2013), our test kitchen team set up a provisional pie and tart store in Manhattan’s West Village neighbourhood offering a variety of baked favourites from the new book. On hand were dreamy cream pies, dainty lemon tartlets, classic fruit pies, savoury galettes, rustic hand pies … and the book that showed how to make all of them! Customers also had the chance meet the bakers behind the book and participate in hourly raffles, as well as check in to the pop-up shop on Foursquare.”