Building the employer’s image through effective Personal Branding at Software House There are many tools for building the company’s image. They are divided into those designed to foster the creation of a positive image inside and outside the organization. External image building aims to obtain the status of a “first choice” company in order to attract talented programmers and new customers. Internal Employer Branding, on the other hand, serves to maintain the satisfaction of employees and business partners. Apart from the methods of building the company’s image, such as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) activities, broadening the range of benefits, building a positive atmosphere, or well-being programs, and many others, which are already well known to the HR departments, it is worthwhile to look at the benefits of supporting employees in building a personal brand, the so-called Personal Branding, following the idea that the company’s image strengthens when its employees have strong personal brands.

What is Personal Branding? “Personal Branding is identifying everything that makes you unique and communicating it to others. It’s also about those qualities that are convincing and relevant to your needs – qualities that will enable you to develop your career or your company. Personal branding is a way to identify and communicate everything that makes you unique and special and to use these qualities to break out of your competitors and succeed. Personal Branding is about learning about your own unique attributes – your strengths, skills, values and passions – and using them to differentiate yourself from your competitors and make the right business decisions. (William Arruda, Kirsten Dixson, after: Rampersad 2010, p.32-33).

Personal Branding at Software House in 2020

There are areas where personal brand is an integral part of career building, e.g. creative industries, freelancers etc. Building your own brand aims at attracting the potential customer and strengthening your market position. There are also industries where professionals do not pay much attention to the image they present. Due to a niche in their profession, or possessing rare, and therefore highly desirable, hard skills, they simply do not have to try too hard to get interesting job offers.

Such a tendency can be seen, among others, in the IT world, where the notion of personal branding among programmers is simply not applicable. However, this year’s events and their consequences, such as the loss of jobs of many people from various industries, including IT, show the need to build their own brand in order to stand out from others and thus increase their chances on the labour market. Contrary to appearances, the support of employees in building a personal brand does not have to contribute to their loss at a later stage, when brands will be strong enough to maximize the opportunity to get another job offer.

Of course, this can happen, but by providing employees with space for self-development and competence expansion, we make sure that they will not want to say goodbye to the employer who supports them in their career development – but if this happens, it is worth developing a culture of parting with employees in the company, following the principles of fair play and remembering that it must act both ways.

How does Software House Oakfusion support programmers in building their personal brand? First of all, by providing an opportunity to build your own brand on the employer’s brand, e.g. by allowing to perform at meetings as a speaker or participate in industry conferences

giving the opportunity to publish expert articles on the company’s blog,

engaging the HR and Marketing departments in sharing tips for building a professional image in social media, e.g. LinkedIn profile, taking into account the key features of a personal brand, i.e. good reputation, visibility and authenticity,

by preparing individual career development plans and supporting employees on their way to achieving the objectives set out in the plan, e.g. by enabling the development of soft and hard skills and by conducting internal recruitment.

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