The 360-Degree Career Framework: Grow Your Professional Brand and Build Key Networking Relationships

It’s a great modern paradox: we live in a digital transformation age, but interpersonal and relationship building skills are the key to success. Bridging the digital divide relies on your ability to meaningfully connect with other people. The rapid rise of disruptive technologies and remote working during the pandemic kickstarted the fifth industrial revolution, the Virtual Age, and has caused us all to re-imagine work, workforces, and workplaces.¹

Unlocking the true value of these high-tech shifts requires empowered and inspired employees.² A recent GetSmarter survey of 5,808 people from 128 countries emphasizes that innovation and change can’t be defined just as technical; it has to be human-centered, too.³ The former president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, correctly predicted our current state of affairs at the 2018 G20: “The future of work will be a race between education and technology.”⁴

Innovation and change can’t be defined just as technical; it has to be human-centered, too.

Investing in your uniquely human skills and building key relationships have become even more important as the pandemic shifted our work priorities: well-being and personal and professional development are now crucial measures.⁵ It has led to the ‘great resignation’ and a rise in non-linear careers.⁶ To thrive in this new working world, regardless of your path, you need a holistic career plan to help you make savvier, more fulfilling decisions.

Your solution? GetSmarter’s Career Guide 2022: a 360-Degree Framework. It contains three growth levers: personal development, network development, and professional capital. These continuously influence each other within an iterative professional growth ecosystem that includes economic and cultural capital. It starts with a tailored personal development plan, as it expands self-awareness and knowledge and improves personal skills.⁷ As we’ve outlined this plan in an earlier article, this blog focuses on the next step and the second lever: network capital.

Network capital is defined as the value your working and personal relationships can provide in your career.

It relies on a cycle of mutually beneficial reciprocity and relational ties.⁸ In any industry, a professional with high network capital and influential connections has more opportunities for advancement than someone with a smaller circle. It offers the potential to achieve more on a professional and personal level as you’re able to draw on your network’s strengths and resources.⁹

While you do need all three levers to craft your ideal career, developing a personal brand and building up key relationships can quickly increase your workplace value, expanding your influence, skills and earning potential.

Develop your personal brand

This is not about raising your profile just for vanity’s sake. Building your brand is a marketing strategy to promote yourself and your career.¹⁰ It empowers you to control your professional image and market your skills and experiences to attract new career opportunities and influential connections.

It can directly boost your bottom line. According to a survey of over 1,000 high-profile professionals, having a highly-visible personal brand can earn higher billing rates, attract more media attention and clients, and even improve the perception of their company’s reputation through the halo effect.¹¹ Research shows that two-thirds of experts with strong personal brands benefit their firms as their reputation often spills over to their organizations, helping to raise brand awareness and providing more development prospects.¹²

There are eight steps in developing your personal brand:¹³

1. Start collecting assets.
   Credentials, certifications, skills, passions, and core values – they combine to create a representation of who you are. 
2. Craft a personal branding statement.
   This is a short synopsis that clearly defines what you have to offer and your motivation.
3. Develop your brand personality.
   It should paint a picture of who you are as a professional by listing your personality traits. It should form part of a narrative or story that describes what makes you unique, and how that has been influenced by your background. This isn’t just a written asset; you should also end up with an elevator pitch or verbal script that helps you describe your brand when meeting someone on a virtual call or in a real-life situation.
4. Pinpoint your target audience.
   Who are the people you want to see your personal brand? Who do you want to build relationships with and how do you want them to feel after connecting with you? Are there any specific networks or groups you’d like to target? Once you’ve identified them, you’ll need to create audience profiles for Step 7.
5. Define your service or solution.
   How are you solving their pain points? It should cover what you do and how you do it.
6. Upgrade your CV.
   Once you’ve defined all the steps above, you need to refine your CV by following these guidelines. 
7. Craft a content strategy.
   This plan covers your content creation, publishing schedule, and outlines the channels you’ll be using. Several of these options are social media channels such as LinkedIn, TikTok or YouTube, but could also include webinars, podcasts, blogs, guest posts on relevant websites, and email newsletters. It is an opportunity to create thought-leadership content that defines you as an industry expert.¹⁴
8. Put together a press kit.
   Media exposure is a powerful amplifier of awareness and influence. A press or media kit is a pre-packaged set of promotional material about yourself that you send digitally to media members. It should contain your profile story, any past media exposure, and professional photographs.¹⁵ 

Build key networking relationships

We all require meaningful relationships to thrive in our personal and working lives. Research reveals that deep and diverse connections that provide social support are fundamental to your physical and psychological well-being. These connections also support your ability to learn, especially during times of uncertainty and stress like the pandemic era.¹⁶ 

Strong relationships can bolster adaptability – a career superpower.

In the workplace, higher levels of adaptability are linked to improved performance, learning ability, confidence, and creative output.¹⁷ 

Professional networking is a career-boosting activity that helps you discover, build, and maintain relationships to fulfill specific goals.¹⁸ It can offer several workplace benefits, including finding new job opportunities, providing a creative catalyst, unearthing new ideas, sourcing expert support, and helping you to measure your career progress against your peers. These can guide your next employment steps. 

The connections must be mutually beneficial to forge authentic relationships, and you’ll need to recruit both vertical and lateral networking. Vertical focuses on connecting people with specific passions, interests, or characteristics within a job niche. Lateral networking emphasizes building relationships with peers and colleagues at the same level or industry.

Effective business networking does not need to happen exclusively in a work environment. In the post-pandemic world, most of your professional networking will occur outside of an office. There’s a wide, ever-increasing range of digital and physical options to discover peers and potential mentors from social media and virtual mini-conferences to brunches and online courses.

There are three kinds of professional networks:¹⁹

1. Operational: This is an internal network consisting of colleagues. You create this by reaching out to lateral connections in other departments, and it’s most commonly used to achieve short-term goals at work.
2. Personal: This covers relationships outside your company with people similar to you. This type can offer personal development and support as well as professional growth.
3. Strategic: This combines both options and can rely on internal and external networking. It’s essential for sharing ideas based on best practices, keeping an eye on development in business, learning new approaches, gaining leverage, and helping to see the bigger picture.²⁰

So, where do you start? Before reaching out to prospective connections, you’ll need to have worked on your personal brand and content plan, and have created a professional online presence. That’s the first place any new connections will go to find out more about you. Once those are in place, there are no set rules defining the connections you’ll need; it’s bespoke to your ambitions.

Begin by researching your social media channels for opportunities. In the post-pandemic world, these platforms and video chats are invaluable as they can safely connect you with people worldwide. The second step: identify your passions for vertical networking and then draft a plan to cover all three types of professional networks. Create a schedule of industry events, both physical and virtual, and investigate coworking spaces, online groups, and communities to join. Some online courses offer workshops and networking opportunities upon completion.

Next, start leveraging your network’s network by asking them to recommend connections. In the same way, you should act as a gateway for others to build their networks: sometimes the greatest value you can offer is the people you know.²¹ If you’re able to vouch for both sides, you should bring them together.

Lastly, once you’ve identified potential connections, introduce yourself by quickly outlining your passions and skills, but then start asking questions. When you show an authentic interest in getting to know someone better, personally and professionally, it shows sincerity in genuine relationships.²² If it’s over a video call or in real life, be mindful of your body language and non-verbal cues. All of this will help to build up a rapport. 

Sharpen your professional communication skills to drive results and connections.

Find a mentor

According to a survey of over 2,000 employees, career stagnation has been one of the top drivers of the ‘great resignation’, and the motivation for this shared feeling: a lack of mentors, missing clarity about a development path, and a decrease in one-on-one time with leaders.²³ With the rise in digital platforms, it’s now easier for you to research potential mentors and discover leaders in your industry.

Relationships with mentors and coaches are powerful. They can improve your knowledge, help you avoid mistakes, and boost your credibility, perceived value, and profile equity.²⁴

It’s a crucial requirement for your personal development.

Even with all these obvious benefits, only 37% of professionals have a mentor. Most of that is due to a hesitancy to ask for the first meeting.²⁵ The fear of rejection can be paralyzing, and these levels have been even higher during the pandemic.

The solution: once you’ve pinpointed a potential mentor, send a short email that shares one or two things that you admire about their work, introduces who you are and why you’re reaching out, and then finish with your request. A short video call or coffee meeting is a low commitment for your potential mentor, and it’s where you see if they are a good fit for you.²⁶ This is about casual conversation and authentic connections; it’s not the time for a hard sell. Follow this meeting up with a thank you note, and then a few weeks later, send a follow-up email to solidify the relationship. After that, it’s up to you to maintain it and ensure it’s reciprocal.

Use your network capital and continuous learning to stay relevant

We’re living longer, and the rate of change has never been greater. Just like hard skills, human skills need to be continually learned and honed, especially in this fifth industrial revolution.²⁷

As part of your digital career toolkit, you’ll also need to build and maintain key relationships. It hinges on your ability to elevate your personal brand profile and harness professional networking.

To craft a bespoke, long-term career and unlock the job satisfaction you’ve always wanted, follow GetSmarter’s 360-Degree Framework. Your new career starts here.

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