Quintessential Careers Reviews: Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand

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Book Review: Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success

From time-to-time, as we receive career-related and job-hunting books and other resources from publishers, the staff of Quintessential Careers will review them to help you make better decisions about the best books to use in your career and job search.

Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, by Dan Schawbel, $16.95. Paperback. 236 pages, 2009. Kaplan. ISBN-13: 978-4277-9820-6

Reviewed by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.

Dan Schawbel is one of those people who makes you wonder how he does it all. He's constantly writing blog entries for his Personal Branding Blog, lining up guest writers, interviewing folks about personal branding, speaking in public, and maintaining a highly active presence on social-media venues. The fact that Schawbel is relatively young -- still in his 20s -- makes his relentless activity is all the more remarkable, especially given Gen Y's reputation for a less-than-stellar work ethic.

He has positioned himself as the leading personal-branding expert for Generation Y and targets that group in the book, although readers of all ages can get something out of Me. 2.0.

My wish list for the next edition of Schawbel's book includes more discussion of storytelling. I content that one's personal story is a key component of one's brand, but story gets only a tiny mention in Me 2.0.

Here are the top 10 things I learned from Me 2.0:

1. Personal branding is about unearthing what is true and unique about you and letting everyone know about it.

2. The brand components that contribute to having your brand selected (primarily by employers) include a robust professional network, endorsements from professional colleagues, previous accomplishments with catalogued results, and a diversified and unique skill set.

3. Networking is key to communicating and disseminating your brand.

4. Schawbel's "Octopus Model" illustrates the elements that go into a personal brand: public relations, marketing/branding, networking, human resources, career development, search-engine optimization, social media, and entrepreneurship. This last item, entrepreneurship, stuck a slightly discordant note with me because I'm not convinced it's required for a personal brand.

5. The new career-search toolkit includes a presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and Google (I'm sure the next edition of the book will include Twitter in this list), and virtual worlds like Second Life (I'd wager that Schawbel won't include Second Life in this next edition as it has largely fallen out of favor in the social-media world.) Schawbel also recommends a video resume as part of the toolkit, and during the time he wrote the book, video resumes got a huge amount of buzz. Given the failure of video resumes to gain much traction in the hiring realm (largely because of the time it takes for employers to watch them), I would categorize video resumes as a nice enhancement to your career toolkit that may be useful in limited situations but is not a requirement.

6. Your own Website provides the framework for the critically important online incarnation of your brand, and Schawbel provides some excellent guidelines for what a personal site should include and how to build one.

7. Since the number of social-media venues in which an individual could participate is overwhelming, you can learn to prioritize the ones with which you wish to become involved based on relevancy, volume (how many people the venue enables you to connect with), and credibility.

8. It pays to be ready with a personal press kit, which can include a cover page, bio, testimonials, experience (not like on a resume, but a list of projects and results), associations, publications and media in which your work has appeared or in which you've been quoted, a list of presentations you've delivered, and your contact information.

9. Monitoring how your personal brand is coming across online involves more than just Googling yourself. Schawbel offers a list of sites to keep tabs on.

10. The proactive side of maintaining your personal brand is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), an activity that most job-seekers and careerists don't think about, and Schawbel offers an excellent, comprehensive list of SEO tips.

Final Thoughts
Me 2.0 is an essential primer on personal branding, especially for Gen Y. I've mentioned the next edition of the book; to a great extent, readers can get a taste of what the next edition might include by following Schawbel's info-packed blog, Personal Branding Blog.

Check out all our book reviews in Quintessential Reading: Career and Job Book Reviews.

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Quintessential Reading: Career and Job Book Reviews

Book Review: Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success

From time-to-time, as we receive career-related and job-hunting books and other resources from publishers, the staff of Quintessential Careers will review them to help you make better decisions about the best books to use in your career and job search.

Check out all our book reviews in Quintessential Reading: Career and Job Book Reviews.

Maximize your career and job-search knowledge and skills! Take advantage of The Quintessential Careers Content Index, which enables site visitors to locate articles, tutorials, quizzes, and worksheets in 35 career, college, job-search topic areas.

Quintessential Reading:
Career and Job Book Reviews