Building a personal brand as a doctor can be a great tool especially when it comes to job search and building your career. Building a personal brand is great for two reasons:
- First, it helps define yourself and establish your voice and beliefs.
- Second, it’s your chance to highlight strengths on your CV, build a network of professionals you want to interact with and pave a way that opens more opportunities for professional advancements.
There’s a lot that goes into building a personal brand. It starts with learning how to clean up your social media footprint and building a profile that adds value to your professional life.
The Importance Of Personal Branding For Doctors
Most of the opportunities today are discovered digitally and face to face introductions are not as active as they used to be. While interpersonal interaction still holds its value, doctors today have multiple other platforms to share their work, communicate their skills, and exemplify their aspirations.
Today, you have the opportunity to develop your unique personal brand message and communicate it through your CV, your website, on your social media profile and presence, and even through verbal interactions.
Being present on social media drastically improves the likelihood of your work being noticed, and gives potential employers more insight about your style, voice and past experiences. For example, you could talk about your contributions in a research project that you were a part of or share an article that you’ve published in a popular medical journal. This could lead you to land your dream job or even offer possible career advancement opportunities.
3 Top Benefits Of Social Networks For Doctors
Effective personal branding can make all the difference when it comes to finding that perfect job and being chosen for it. Telling your potential employers who you are and what you’re all about is a fantastic way to become a “yes” and avoid being eliminated in the initial rounds. Here are three important benefits you can gain by building a personal brand for yourself on your social networks:
– It Attracts Great Opportunities
A strong personal brand promotes word of mouth which in turn can open up opportunities for referrals. Professionals in parallel fields, friends, and colleagues are more likely to recommend you to prospective decision-makers. Their recommendation reflects their own credibility and with a personal brand that imbibes those values, you can fit within a standard of quality that potential employers will be motivated to endorse.
– It Gives You A Strong Competitive Edge
As a doctor, you can showcase your specialties and approach by answering questions that users are posting on popular online forums. Using social networks for doctors is a great way to make yourself visible and reach employers who aren’t even actively searching. If they see you and remember you, they’re more likely to consider you or recommend you.
– It Establishes Your Skills And Qualities
Building a personal brand is all about highlighting your top accomplishments and skills. It takes credibility and talent to tell the world about yourself, and share aspects of your personality and your values. The more you make these qualities visible, the easier it’ll be for someone to choose you.
Before you start building your personal brand, it’s crucial to understand how to clean up social media presence so that you can ensure that the information that’s available about you online is recent and worthwhile.
How To Clean Up Social Media For Jobs
The truth is hiring managers are checking your social footprint just as thoroughly as they’re reviewing your CV and cover letter. In fact, most hiring managers scout social media to learn more about potential candidates.
So how should you clean up your social media footprint, and establish yourself as credible? It doesn’t mean you simply delete and change everything. The simple answer to how to clean up your social media identity is to monitor what you post, who you interact with, and how you interact with them.
Here are eight tips that will help you clean up your social media footprint.
– Change Your Account Status To Private
The first step to cleaning up your social media for jobs is to go on your profile settings and choose “only friends” so that only your friends can see your activity. Keep this status set to private until you’ve deleted all the unnecessary content and then change the settings back to “public” if you’re looking to grow your social network for doctors.
– Delete All Old Accounts
A crucial step in how to clean up your social media identity involves deactivating all the old accounts. The college Instagram account you created to highlight all your fun activities should ideally be deleted. If you don’t want hiring managers to discuss your college life, then it’s better if those accounts are not active.
One of the best ways to find these (and similar) accounts is to Google yourself. You’ll find all the hidden gems that you wouldn’t want your potential employers to see.
– Share A Professional Bio
This is one of the most effective ways to highlight who you are, what you do, what makes you great, and why you’re the perfect hire. Keep it short but share what you’re most passionate about. For example:
Dedicated Anesthesiologists with 8+ years of experience, currently at St. John’s Emergency Hospital. Proven to ably handle any medical emergency or situation, with the requisite skill-set to perform under pressure. Excellent interpersonal skills, and a dedicated worker with a sense of purpose. Aiming to leverage my experience and knowledge to continue career development in new areas.
– Add A Good Photo
Your photo is one of the first things people will see. Consider adding a professional headshot that makes you look credible and professional. If your photo is more than a couple of years old, consider adding a recent one. Also, ensure that you have a plain background (it’s best to go with white) and that there aren’t too many distracting elements in the photo. Face the camera straight on and smile!
– Share Industry-Related Information
Post and share information about the healthcare industry that is useful and new or that you have a strong interest in. Share your opinion on it, if possible. Follow the thought leaders and top physicians in your industry and interact with them. When a hiring manager sees that you’re on top of the latest developments in your industry, you’ll improve your chances of getting selected.
LinkedIn For Doctors: How To Leverage The Social Platform
There’s no better social platform to build your professional profile like LinkedIn. With over 690 million active users, whether you’ve just started looking for a job or are looking to advance in your career, LinkedIn is a great resource. However, be a little mindful when building your profile on LinkedIn.
Avoid making it a carbon copy of your resume and instead make the most of the other features that the platform offers such as connecting with other like-minded healthcare professionals and potential employers, joining groups and discussions, and showcasing your skills and experience.
Here are 5 ways LinkedIn can help you build your brand.
1. Join Industry Groups On LinkedIn
Find and join groups on LinkedIn that are most relevant to your specialty and the ones that spark your interest. You could consider joining a few region-specific groups and a few larger groups where you can connect with healthcare professionals from around the world.
You could start by introducing yourself and then actively participate in conversations and discussions that are happening in the group or initiate your own. Providing valuable information on topics that are your specialty will not only help you get noticed but will also establish your credibility as a medical professional.
2. Establish Yourself As A Thought Leader
LinkedIn is a fantastic forum to share good-quality content and establish yourself as a thought leader. It offers a feature called ‘Write Article’ that you can use to share your personal insights, industry news, your opinion on the latest healthcare trends, and more.
By consistently sharing good content that’s unique and useful, you’ll be able to add a ton of value to your personal brand and establish greater trust among peers from the industry.
Pro tip: Consider using a mix of content formats such as videos, infographics, and images to add more texture to your article. This will also make your content more engaging and could result in more shares.
3. Craft a Great Profile Summary
Writing a good summary of your profile can be challenging. However, look at it as your sales pitch. When someone visits your profile, after looking at your photo they’ll read that section which is a great opportunity for you to create the perfect first impression.
Ensure the summary you craft highlights your doctor specialty, your experience, skills, interests, goals, and accolades (if any). Make it as unique and personal to you as you can. A complete profile with all the information clearly laid out makes it easy for prospective employers to see your career journey which blends into building your credibility.
4. Use It For Research
LinkedIn is a wonderful tool to conduct research about the healthcare market, emerging technologies, job hunting trends, opinions on the latest healthcare improvements, and more. All this information can give you rich insight into the current market which you can then use to leverage and land a job.
For example, if you see someone’s post on a subject that you’re familiar with, send them an invitation to connect with a note highlighting what you liked about their opinion. Start a conversation to build a relationship that can later help you in your career.
5. Make The Most Of The Recommendation Feature
LinkedIn allows you to create something called ‘the economy of favours’ through its recommendation feature. To receive value, you have to start by giving value. Find your old colleagues and peers and write them a strong recommendation on their profile.
To add a recommendation, scroll down to the bottom of the person’s profile and you’ll see a ‘Recommendations’ section. Click on the button “Recommend (name).” From there you can describe your relationship with that person and mention a stand out trait. For example, Tracy could easily juggle multiple tasks and no matter how tense a situation, she would always keep calm.
Seal your recommendation with a final line that makes it clear that you give this person an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
More often than not, they’ll be happy to return the favour by giving you a striking recommendation. Not only does this spread good faith but also helps you build a strong reputation.
When it comes to exploring LinkedIn for doctors, there’s a lot that you can do to build a profile that opens you up to new and exciting opportunities. It all comes down to understanding the platform, how the industry folks interact with each other and share knowledge, and leveraging all this information and tools to find the perfect job and advance in your career.
Conclusion
Once you have understood how to clean up social media presence, you can then explore all these social networks for doctors to build a strong online personal brand that not only helps you kickstart a great career but also continues to fuel all your advancements in the future.
Are you on the lookout for your next big gig? A great job not only helps you excel in your career but it also gives you the fulfillment of doing something meaningful. Check out our guide on landing the job of your dreams!
This article offers general information only and is not intended as legal, financial or other professional advice. A professional advisor should be consulted regarding your specific situation. While information presented is believed to be factual and current, its accuracy is not guaranteed and it should not be regarded as a complete analysis of the subjects discussed. All expressions of opinion reflect the judgment of the author(s) as of the date of publication and are subject to change. No endorsement of any third parties or their advice, opinions, information, products or services is expressly given or implied by RBC Ventures Inc. or its affiliates.
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