All right. So my name is Kenneka Tober and today I'm gonna be talking about how to be a brand and not an employee in tech. And this is the presentation that I'm gonna be going over today.So if you guys, if you guys can't see anything, just let me know in the chat. So this is me. My name is Kenneka Tover and I am the uh CEO of career rehab. I am from Washington DC and um I have a book called Career Rehab. So I specialize in helping um clients with their careers and transforming their careers. So I've been featured in a couple of uh amazing places like CNN CBS Radio, Yahoo and Glassdoor. And um, you know, I'm a wife. I have no Children. So we're gonna go over the overview is going to be brand market sale. So we're gonna, we're gonna break this presentation up into three pieces. We're gonna talk about how to brand market and sell yourself. All right. So first we're gonna talk about how to brand. So we're gonna talk about the power of branding, branding mindset, become an industry expert in how to create your linkedin profile. All right. So the power of branding, so the power of branding is really important for us to really um understand in order for our careers to grow, we have to brand ourselves, we have to look at ourselves as brands. Um our sales is kind of like our, our salary.

So our salary is the things that we want to make. So same thing with brands like Chick Fil A and mcdonald's and all these places, they have sales. We are looking to brand ourselves for our s to, to be able to make a lot of money. So we really wanna make sure that we are um being able to make a lot of money as we brand ourselves in tech, our customers are like our employers. So we really wanna make sure that our customers and our clients are satisfied. Um Our awareness comes from us being industry experts. So as we brand ourselves and we get ourselves out there, we really wanna make sure that we are bringing awareness to who we are and what we know and that ultimately equals success. All right. So we're gonna talk about the employee versus a branding mindset. So this is an extremely important concept because a lot of us have been told to be employees, but we're actually brands. So we wanna make sure that people understand that an employee is someone that just do what they're told, they don't go above and beyond, but a brand is someone that is a company or a person that goes above and goes above and beyond and they have unique service and they have unique offerings and we are brands in tech, us as women.

We are brands in tech. All right. So three ways to embrace a branding mindset. So three ways that we can embrace a branding mindset is that we can focus in, focus in on making sure that we are writing down our weekly accomplishments and keeping track of our performance metrics. This is so important for us to keep track of these things because when we continue to uh keep track of our performance, we are keeping track of what our brand is accomplishing at work. Another thing is we need to make sure that we are displaying great communication skills through meetings, through conference calls, through phone calls, through emails that we are showing up and showing our expertise and knowledge in a great way. So another thing that we can do is we can anything that we do, whether it's big or small at work is an asset to our brand. We have to continue to deliver quality deliverables and information for our brand. We have to make the small things seem big. All right. So five ways to build your personal brand. So if I was to build your personal brand, I think it's so important for us to get on challenging projects because this is this is where we challenge ourselves to learn new things that we didn't know before.

Um This is a great time for us to enroll in virtual training, attend virtual conferences to, to achieve our career goals. Earned certifications. I've earned Aws certifications. I, I'm working on a cybersecurity certification right now myself. I have the Scrum Master Certification.

I want you guys to be empowered to continue to get certifications for your tech brand. And then I want you to be able to subscribe to tech podcast shows. This is important for us to subscribe to podcast shows that can further our knowledge and our information. And the last thing I want you guys to do is read a career related or tech career related blog or article per day. This will just continue to in advance advance your knowledge. All right, the foundation of our brand is creating a linkedin profile. It's so important for us to have a linkedin profile that is the foundation of our brand online. In addition to having our resume, it allows us to connect with people, but it also allows us to apply to jobs that we want to apply to. All right, how do you guys, how do you guys like what's going on right now? Cause I wanna make sure that everybody is able to see the information. Is it, is it good? So you love it. Put a one in the chat if you love it. Awesome. Awesome. So I'm gonna, I wanna do is make sure that you guys can see and everything was going good and there was no technical difficulties with the first, with the first part. All right, cool. So we're gonna, we're gonna jump into the second part, which is how to market yourself, right? All right. So I'm gonna go back into powerpoint and then we're gonna get into marketing. All right.

So now that you've created this brand, you have this linkedin profile, you know how to keep track of your performance. You understand how to look at yourself as a brand and not an employee. We're going to talk about how to market yourself. So, you know, brands that's they do, they market themselves. They, you know, you see Nike and, and, and you see Beyonce when she's a personal brand, you see brands like um uh Nike and Starbucks and, and Chick Fil A, they market themselves. We're gonna talk about how to market yourself on job board sites, how to build your linkedin profile. A a and not only just build your linkedin profile, but build your network on linkedin. We're gonna talk about how you can maximize connecting with recruiters and how you can maximize yourself using social media marketing to market your tech expertise online. And then we're gonna talk about how you can attend networking events to market yourself and expand your network. All right guys.

So let's get into the marketing. So job bore sites now that you have a linkedin profile and you already should have a resume. This is where you guys should be putting your information online so people can get to see you. So you need to be using. Indeed. If you are looking at one of the largest databases for jobs is indeed.com, please create a profile. Keep it updated if you are. Um I'm in the Washington DC area, so I work for the federal government. So for you guys that are looking for tech opportunities in the federal government, make sure that you are having a, a great federal government resume on USA jobs and you're applying to tech jobs on USA jobs. The next thing is linkedin, we already said you have to have a profile. Um But we wanna make sure that your resume is added to your profile and you are utilizing it to connect with recruiters and to apply to jobs on linkedin. The next thing is clearance jobs. So a lot of people in tech, especially in certain areas like Washington DC and even all over the world, they have security clearances. So if you have a security clearance, you wanna use clearance jobs and you wanna put your profile on clearance jobs, you wanna put your resume up there because these are people with top secret secret clearances, you guys wanna make sure that the recruiters that are looking for people with security clearances, they can find you.

All right. So linkedin, um linkedin is really important. So out outside of um creating a profile. You wanna make sure that you are joining linkedin groups, right? You wanna make sure that you're joining linkedin groups. You wanna, oops, I'm sorry. Uh You wanna make sure that you're joining linkedin groups, professional groups are so important right now because you wanna make sure that you, if you are in cloud or you want digital transformation, if you're in security that you are joining the groups that are associated with your tech brand, this is where you're gonna meet other industry experts.

Then you wanna make sure that you, you guys are connecting with recruiters online. So one quick tip is if you are looking to get with a company, you can search for a recruiter in that company name and you can search for their profile and you can connect with them directly on linkedin and then you can let them know that you're interested about an opportunity.

But professional groups is a great way to have close conversations that's specific to your tech um expertise and knowledge. All right, social media marketing, I love social media marketing because I find that it is so important for us to make sure that we are sending our brand out there to Twitter and Facebook and linkedin and Instagram. So if you guys are interested in blogging about certain technologies that you're knowledgeable about, I think wordpress and Medium is a great opportunity for you guys to create blog posts. Linkedin post is an amazing um platform that linkedin has then reshare that information about your tech knowledge on social media, on Twitter, on Facebook. Um and on linkedin um website is important too. I have Kenneka tover.com. So if you guys want to have your own website with your name or with your tech company name, make sure you guys create a website um that is going to be able to show your personal brand or your company brand. And then if you really are wanna invent some great tech products, this is an opportunity to create an app to create solutions to create services that you can share on social media. So people can buy your products and buy your tech services that you are knowledgeable about.

All right. So attending networking events, COVID-19 has shut us down right from attending face to face events for majority of 2020 right? But this is not an opportunity for you guys to not attend virtually events. Please guys, I want you to guys to attend virtual meetups, webinars.

Of course, we're having a virtual conference right now. Please use meet up.com use Eventbrite to look for those free workshops for that interest you for your tech brand. So you can join in in the conversation with industry experts and you can also connect with other professionals at these online virtually events. Then when we go back into normal society and we're able to go to face to face events, please guys, I, I think this is a great way to meet people and to tell people about your expertise and to possibly land a job by meeting people at these virtual um networking events. All right. So I'm just gonna stop there and I just wanna see how you guys feel about marketing yourself. Did you like that information about how to market yourself? All right. All right. So we're gonna jump into the last piece and then I'm gonna take questions at the end and we're gonna talk about how to sell yourself. This is about selling yourself. You've created a brand, you understand how to market yourself, but how do you sell yourself into the job that you desire? All right. So we're gonna jump into selling yourself, right? All right. So I'm gonna go back to the powerpoint.

Just wanna make sure you guys were good cause so here we go, we're gonna go into selling yourself. So selling yourself is so important because in order to get that job that you want to create that business product that you wanna sell, we have to learn how to maximize our network and act for referrals. So we're gonna talk about how to ask for company referrals. We're gonna talk about how to create a linkedin message to reach out to these industry leaders and recruiters that you wanna sell yourself to, into a, for a job interview. And then we're gonna talk about how to successfully prepare for job interviews. All right. So let's jump into it. So, asking for company referrals is one of the best ways that you guys can market yours to sell yourself into a new job. Um So if you know that you wanna work for a specific company and you know, somebody on your linkedin network that already works for that company, I want you guys to feel empowered to look for the job on that company website and then reach out to them and introduce yourself and ask them if they would be interested in referring your resume into the company system.

This cuts out you trying to apply a bli blindly. This cuts, this cuts out. You just trying to contact the um the recruiter directly. They're gonna trust an insider first for a company referral before they just trust you applying a, applying, applying on the website. So I want you guys to feel empowered to reach out to your, you know, people that you went to school with, people that you used to work with at past companies or people that you just start to meet online to ask them to refer you into the company system. This will help you tremendously um with, with all of the competition that's going on right now with everyone being unemployed. Please feel empowered to connect with people that already work at the companies that you wanna work at all. Right. So let's talk about creating a linkedin introduction message So this is important, right? You know, you, you gotta make sure that as you're connecting with people on linkedin, that you are creating a message that resonates with them that will help them understand what you want out of this new connection. So I, I think it's important for you to craft a very, you know, introduction message. You wanna make sure that you introduce yourself, you wanna make sure you introduce why you're reaching out to them. Like what is the reason why you're reaching out?

And then you wanna make sure that you are adding your resume, your cover letter, if it's a recruiter to the message and and make sure your contact information is there. So if you are reaching out to a recruiter, you wanna make sure that you say, hey, my name is Kenneka Tover and um I am a senior project manager and I see that you have an opportunity at your company uh for for project management opportunity. I am interested in this particular um opening. You wanna make sure that you also reference the opening, so maybe add the URL to the opening and you wanna make sure that you also attach your resume and cover letter and have your phone number, your email address just in case they wanna reach back out to you. So just, just continue to craft a craft the message. You also wanna do the same thing when you're reaching out to professionals that you just wanna connect with and you wanna say, hey, I see that you work at Deloitte. I found an opportunity at Deloitte and I would love to connect with you and see how you like working for the company because I'm interested did in applying to this opportunity and I would love to connect with you.

So we wanna make sure that we are um knowing why we're connecting with people and we're not blindly just sending really, really um vague messages to the recruiters and to other professionals. All right. So the last thing is we're gonna talk about preparing for the job interview.

Now you have, you need to have a brand, you have all this expertise and knowledge, you have certifications, you got a resume, you gotta link their profile. When you get that call back from that recruiter, you wanna make sure that you're ready when they say, hey, we're gonna have a video interview ready. We're gonna have a phone screening because that's a big opportunity in this climate that you're gonna be doing video interviews and phone screenings and phone interviews. So I wanna make sure that you guys know how to properly prepare right now for this type of job interview.

So guys, I want you to know that the cheat sheet to the job interview is the job vacancy announcement, the quality applications, that is what you guys should be studying, that's what they're gonna be talking about and, and explaining how you're gonna merge your current information that you've learned at your, at your current role or past roles and mash it up with that job vacancy announcement.

I want you guys to tell the story of how the qualifications and the vacancy announcement match up with what you're doing now. All right, next thing is I want you guys to review the technologies. So there's a list of technologies that are usually on the vacancy announcement for that opening that you're gonna be interviewing for. I want you to have a good understanding. You may not have had all hands on experience with all of them, but I want you guys to feel empowered to at least have some little bit of knowledge. So go and study some of the technologies that are on the vacancy announcement for the job that you're gonna be interviewing for. The third thing is I want you to feel empowered to research the company. I want you to make sure that you know what the company does, what they offer, what's, what's their expertise and knowledge. And I want you to be able to, to, to match that up with the things that you know, and what the company offers. So you can kinda sell yourself to say that you're a good fit for that company and what they provide, what services that they provide. And then the last thing is I want you guys to prepare your own questions.

It's so important to at least prepare 2 to 3 questions. Um You know, you wanna, you wanna get more information about the role you wanna have, you wanna be able to have a thought provoking question, that kind of shows that you did your research about the company. Um um Because you wanna have a question on there. That is 11 about the role, but two, you wanna say, hey, I see you guys currently went public. I see you guys currently have this new offering. You wanna have a wow factor question to let them know like, hey, what is your future plan on implementing this new technology or this new service that I see that you currently guys have just been in newly introduced. So I want you guys to ask a question, then I want you to ask a third question to get a feel of the culture, to get a feel of the, to see if it's a good fit for you because just as much as you are interviewing with them, either they're interviewing you, you wanna interview them.

So just as much as they are interviewing you, I want you guys to interview them. So you wanna make sure that you are going to this um opportunity knowing what the company culture is and, and, and you, you wanna maybe ask about training about diversity, about work life balance, anything that is dear to your heart that is gonna make you happy. You wanna make sure that you ask a question about what are their company perks and benefits and offerings? All right. So we're gonna open up questions right now in the chat. Um I hope this was helpful for you guys. Um This is my information. If you guys wanna connect with me offline, if you wanna purchase my new book career rehab, this is, this book is all about building your personal brand and rethinking the way that you work. Um If you feel like you need to revamp your personal brand or level up your personal brand and tech, definitely a good book to pick up on Amazon five star rated book. This is all of my social media. So everything is Kenneka Tover. Um You guys can follow me on all social media and if you wanna reach out via my website, you can reach out Kenneka tover.com and if you wanna reach out about coaching, definitely can reach out with my email address here on the screen.

So I am going to stop sharing now and I am going to basically, I want you guys to pretty much be able to ask me any type of questions you wanna ask. So go ahead and ask me some questions in the chat. If you thought this particular talk was fire, put your ones up in the chat, please put your ones up in the chat. So I'm gonna stay here to ask question to answer any questions that you guys want to me to ask. Um So I am sorry about some of the technical difficulties. Um I hope I still brought the energy that you guys came to see cause I really wanted to make this an amazing talk for you guys. But if you wanna ask any questions in the chat about how you can build your brand in tech, I am willing to ask answer anything that you guys want. What website do would you recommend to use to create your brand? Um I would recommend wordpress. I will, I would recommend uh Wix. I would recommend you guys using things um like medium if you want a blog and you wanna create a blog, um I would recommend that I use wordpress. So Kenneka Tober is wordpress. It's a really easy to set up. Um So I use wordpress. Um I, I have a lot of friends that, that use Wix and they use Squarespace as well as another platform. Any other questions? Um What can we ans uh what can we answer for where you see yourself in the next five years? OK.

So I think it's important to like write out your five year goals and when the company asks you where you see yourself in the next five years, I want you guys to be confident in aligning that with where you guys wanna go. So if you guys want to, you know, say you want to be you're a developer now, but you, you see yourself being more so like a solution architect in five years or seven years. I want you guys to, to, to, to, to really be truthful and honest with orga organizations about where you see yourself in five years. But also where do you see yourself in five years as far as just, you know, in your personal life? Our personal brands are bigger than just our job and our career. All right. Um Somebody says, um how do you continue to sell yourself after getting the job? Great question. Great question. This is how you sell yourself after you get the job, you show up every day and you continue to be an expert, you continue to take yourself to the next level. You do, you do talks, you do conferences, you, you write white papers, you blog for the company, you be an a, you, you basically be a change agent for the company by showcasing your expertise and knowledge with the company that you're with, with the company that you're working for.

Um Somebody said, do you think your company brand can damage your own brand or is it, is it only you managing it wrong? Um So your company brand, your personal brand is your responsibility. It's not the company's responsibility to manage your personal brand. It's your responsibility.

Um If there's something that happened at work and they want to, you know, compromise your integrity or compromise your, your um your, your, your brand online, that's something different. But I think we need to own our own careers and our own brand. Um How do you consistently seek feedback from a manager on at work that might not be aligned with? Hi, his ideas. So I personally at work, I still work a 9 to 5 job. I constantly seek feedback by having weekly tag up meetings with my manager. So I am constantly in contact with them because I wanna make sure that I'm going down the right path for my projects and my deliverables. So make sure that you are meeting with your manager at least once a week. How can we increase visibility of profile on linkedin search? Make your linkedin search very, very, very public, please. Number two, make sure that you are maximizing putting all of the tech skill sets on your profile because recruiters are coming in by searching what's on your profile.

So if you are Aws, you wanna make sure Aws and Cloud and Azure is sprinkled all through your profile. If you're a project manager, Scrum and Agile or project management, make sure the keywords are shining through your profile. All right, somebody said, how um somebody said, how should we go about creating a brand when we are still exploring our domain? Um One thing you wanna do is I've, I've always purchased um domains that I don't use. So Kenneka Tover is purchased. Career rehab is purchased, go ahead and purchase every idea that you already have just in case you plan on using it later. Ok. I want you guys to feel empowered to, you may have an idea. You may not use it now, but go on, go daddy, go on name cheap.com and purchase the domains for the things that you think you wanna do, but make sure you lock down your name if it's still available. All right. Um What advice would you give for an undergrad student in brand building to start off? This is a great question. So, in my book, I think that undergrads or newly graduates are the cool geeks. So what I would do is I would empower you guys to do internships. I will empower you guys to do internships to be build your brand. Number two, I will empower you to go ahead and start um blogging and signing up for um free talks that you can do at conferences because this is where you're gonna shine.

So if you're in computer science or you're in an undergraduate program and you're passionate about data science or specific programming language, sign up to start speaking at tech conferences right now to build your brand. So when you start applying to jobs, you can tell the employer that you already did these amazing things at these internships and at these tech tech conferences and even at your school. So that's important for you guys to shine now while you're in the classroom. All right. Somebody said, um what's tips and advice about how to get your first job or internship? Um The first thing that you guys can do about getting your intern first internship and jobs is to pretty much make sure that you guys are searching for the keywords on linkedin and indeed, internships and always applying early. So you wanna always apply in advance. You wanna make sure that if there's a summer internship that you start applying for the summer internships in the, in the spring, because you don't want to wait too late to apply um tips about a time when you had to work with a difficult person. So this is a good one because difficult people can compromise your personal brand at work. So I wanna make sure that you guys know that it's important for you to make sure that you are um being transparent about working with difficult people that work with your leadership.

But first, you wanna develop a relationship with that employee first and try to get to the bottom of why the relationship is being difficult before we go to management. Let's try to develop healthy relationships with our coworkers. Um First, someone said, how do you deal with the fact I'm moving from tech profile to managerial but people see me as too green for the latter or I feel too obsolete um to be up to date in the former. OK. Um So you're moving from tech into managerial. So the great thing about me is I was kinda, I'm a man, I'm in a managerial role right now. But what I've done is um I've tried to make sure that as I elevated from being extremely technical to being a project manager that um it's important to not be so green, you have to develop those soft skills, you have to develop those communication skills, those right skills.

So it's important to make sure that the same way we take a lot of technology training, we gotta take leadership training, guys, we gotta take leadership training. It's important for us to make sure that we are good tech leaders and we lead teams in a way that's effective. We all have been under a bad leader. You don't want to be the person that gets promoted and you're the bad new tech leader. So take leadership training. Um So, so I may miss some questions. Let me try to go back up. Um If you, if I miss your questions, you can continue to add it because the questions were going up and up and up. Um I wanna make sure that I answer all your questions. Um It's so important right now for you guys to turn your anxiety into accomplishments right now. There's a lot of stuff going on in the world, but this is an amazing opportunity for you guys to build your brand. Do white papers, do blog posts, do, do do presentations, um become an expert, whatever you're passionate about with tech, do that, do that, write about that, talk about that and continue to be inspired to be a brand and not an employee and you will, you will always have a job, you will always have a job if you do that.

So, um I really enjoyed this time with you guys. If you guys wanna connect with me on linkedin, I'm gonna get ready to drop my linkedin um URL in a chat. So let me just go grab my UR my URL. Um I just, I just love you guys. I had an amazing time with you guys. Ok? And I, and I hope that you guys learn something new that you didn't know about how to be a brand. Um So I'm getting ready to go give you my URL. You guys can connect with me on linkedin. I am. Uh I love to post on linkedin. All right, here's my linkedin profile, guys, connect with me. Um Also, if you guys wanna purchase the book, I'm gonna send a link to the book in the chat as well. All right, you guys, if you are interested in rebuilding your personal brand and you really, really want to rebuild your personal brand, um how to be a brand and not an employee is a chapter in the book, but there are a lot more gems that I shared in this book that will help you take your career to the next level and to help you land the job of your dreams in tech.

So if you guys have any more questions, I'm gonna stay online for a few more minutes, drop them in the chat. I put my link to um to my linkedin profile and I've also put the link to my book on Amazon that you guys can get, you can get the ebook, the audiobook or the physical book. I'll be going on tour in 2021 after all of this is over with, with COVID-19. I hope I can come to your city or your country and we can connect in person. So sorry about all the technical difference. Cool. T I did, I don't know a lot about hopping. So I hope that you guys still enjoyed my presentation and my talk despite me having those beginning of technical difficulties and I hope that you guys can connect with me on linkedin, on Twitter, on Instagram. Thank you so much. I love you guys. Just continue on striving for greatness out here right now. OK, guys. Thank you so much.