EAE News
-
Experiencia EAE
Noemí Vico: “Try to go a step further than your customers need”
03 de December de 2019
The workshops organized by EAE’s Professional Careers Department are designed to improve employability and capitalize on the training acquired on the Master.
Noemí Vico, a coach on personal branding and organizational development at Thinking With You, ran a workshop on personal branding for the students of EAE Business School. The co-author of the book ‘Smart Feedback’ emphasized that, in view of the changes taking place in the labour market, we have to develop new strategies to find employment, optimize our online presence to be more effective and productive, and lastly, foster self-leadership in our professional career by drafting a personal Action Plan to direct our achievements and learning.
The session covered aspects such as employability, how to approach building our personal brand and working based on self-awareness, visibility and strategy. In Noemí’s opinion, we have to go a step further than our customers need, being active and mentally prepared to embrace the changes in our professional lives. Moreover, she recommended taking advantage of the digital channel, which offers far closer contact with companies because it enables candidates to do research on them and get in touch with the CEOs.
The coach and recruiter applies tricks related to the customer experience to create a new value canvas that adds meaning to the CV, LinkedIn profile and personal interview. The shift in the key players is a reality in the business world in a VUCA setting, for which the expert replaced the familiar acronym Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity with Vision, Understanding, Calibre and Agility.
“When building a personal brand, we have to think like trend-hunters”, explained Noemí. Nowadays, knowledge and experience are no longer enough. We have to work at it. “Finding a person with the right attitude and setting yourself apart is tricky”. With this in mind, she introduced the concept of the knowmad profile, a blend of know and nomad: “the nomad of knowledge and innovation is the professional who best adapts to the VUCA setting”.
Knowmads are not any particular age and they do not see their profession as a job because they have a motivation that is not simply financial. They consume information to turn it into knowledge and generate ideas. They are digitally literate and have a firm grasp of new technologies. In addition, this profile knows the world in a global sense, without borders. They are always connected and have a great capacity for resolving problems because they embrace the fact that learning is a lifelong process.
In a professional environment in which there is a hidden labour market (18% of employment is visible and 82% invisible), our personal brand encompasses all this. “A person’s brand is the word that comes to mind when we see them”, explained Noemí, defining the concept as a concerted and planned effort to ensure that, when people talk about me, they highlight the aspects that I really want to set me apart. To do this, the coach recommended drafting an Action Plan that sets a series of realistic objectives and strives to achieve them.
“We spend a lot of our life working. Why not choose a project that we are passionate about?” explained Noemí. In short, we have to stop and ask ourselves what type of life we want, what my vision is, my objectives, values, priorities and professional goals. In this respect, the personal branding expert recommended ensuring consistency in terms of aspects such as where we go, what resources we use, and defining the achievements and skills required to achieve them. Moreover, she advised the participants to apply authenticity when defining their personal strengths, asking ourselves “what we want to offer our market, what makes us relevant, why we are bestsellers”. This personal analysis process ended with a practical exercise, with all the students taking part.