Let Your Freak 'Self' Fly
How do you plan to be remembered in today's crowded job market?
Spend just a few minutes on LinkedIn, and if you don’t want to kill yourself, you’ve successfully made it through the first step in finding your next job.
LinkedIn has become a slow, plodding, death knell to the American Dream. In real time.
I get it. The job market is tough, right now. On everyone. Even those with jobs. A lot of people are struggling and I am empathetic. I am. But here’s where the empathy runs out.
Actual quotes pulled LinkedIn*:
“In my hunt for my next full-time, in-house Creative Director role, I found myself right in that middle space, between what’s familiar and what’s next.” XXXX Creative Director
“Is AI stealing my job? I honestly don’t know. But I do know I’ve had almost no work in nearly eight months.” - XXXX Creative Director
“Why me over some other creative recruiter? Maybe they're busy(?). Got a creative role at any level? I’m your guy…” - XXXX Creative Recruiter."
Come on, creative people — be creative! Stand out. Offer value. Create demand. You know. All the things you have to do for your clients.
There was a time when LinkedIn was a place of thought leadership, industry insights, networking with like minds. Start there.
Learn a little something you’re passionate about, and how that might intersect with your own work. There, now you look busy and you’re providing value. Busy and value-added is more employable than complaints and desperation, 10 out of 10 times.
You know what else stands out in this morass of self-pity and virtual pleading?
Success.
Yes, but how does one show ‘success’ when they’re not exactly living it?
Be creative. That is your job, right? Dig down. Search your soul. Find a story worth telling, and then tell the shit out of it. Online and off. Go out. Network. IRL. Report back to LinkedIn about the experience. More busy. More value-add.
Technically, you could say I’ve been “unemployed” for the last 14 years. In 2021, I left my FT agency gig (more accurately, I was canned, but they kept me on a limited contract) to start my own “creative” venture.
At first I called myself a “freelance writer” (one person literally responded, “oh you mean you’re unemployed.”) Lots of down time, stressed about my future. So yes, kinda unemployed.
But that message doesn’t work for getting new business.
You see, we here in branding and marketing, are in the business of putting a shine on things. Not lying, per se. But presenting ourselves and the brands we represent in the best possible light. And here we are, so many of us in this creative industry, putting such a dull point on our own professional profiles?
I stopped calling myself a freelancer very quickly and I started a brand and creative studio called, Self. Designed a logo, made cards, the whole shebang.
The first Self logo. The deer with the beard was the mascot. A Deard. I thought we were sooo clever We weren’t. But people liked talking about the Deard more than how hard the job market is.
In the beginning, it was just me, so it made sense. I thought, what better way to publicly mock all those poor LinkedIn saps who identify as “Self Employed?” Or in today’s parlance “Open to Work”?**
I made light of my little, one-man show, by ‘officially’ naming the business, “Self Worldwide,” another passive-aggressive jab at the bloated global agencies that are currently going extinct.
I literally built a brand based on personal spite (and am proud to say I pre-dated Larry David by about 10 years).
And then Self grew up. We became a small team of Selfs, and the name no longer applied. In fact, I always found it a little “self-serving” or “self-important” especially given our niche in climate-tech (arguably, a self-less endeavor).
We kept it, though. “Self.” Simple. Memorable. Enough equity with my clients to get over my dislike of the name. It just needed a little sprucing up.
We dropped the “Worldwide”and the Deard - funs over, kids - and we added “Brand Studio” to the name. And in stroke of creative brilliance, art-director, Brian Dixon presented me with the reflected word. In red. On white.
No notes.
New Self logo.
What did it mean? How would I tell this story? Certainly, everyone would ask, why “Self?” Why backwards?
I had a story ready to go. “Self is an honest reflection back to you of your brand’s identity.”
Oddly, no one asks.
That’s the funny thing about brands. People don’t care. At least not when discussing them at a conscious level. Brands are built to make an impression in the deep recesses and let the people carry on with their day.
Brands are supposed to be remembered. Full stop.
More than inform, or impress (which is completely subjective anyway), just…be… memorable. So when your customers are in the market for your product or service, your brand springs to mind.
But you don’t “have a product or service to sell,” you say? “I’m just out here trying to get a job.” Yes. You and everyone else.
Much like a “brand,” your ONE job (while looking for a job) is to make an impression. Hopefully a positive one, but even more importantly, (let’s all say it together)… be memorable. Same principles in advertising and branding, but for humans.
And you know what the most memorable thing about you, and every other human on this planet is — all 8 billion of us? Your Self. Your quirks. Your smells. Your chuckle. Your voice. Your handshake, your sneezes, your incredibly smooth, but freckled skin. No one else in the world has all the same human traits that you do, and no AI can ever replicate that (unless you’ve somehow uploaded your entire physical and emotional identity to the servers).
Now go exploit that shit! It’s yours, and yours alone. Milk that inner-weirdo for every dollar you can. Show your audience (recruiters, hiring managers, friends) the part of you that everyone likes.
What makes you interesting? What do you talk about when forced into awkward conversations? (If you struggle to answer those questions, start there).
It’s not even that hard to stand out these days. There’s so much same-ness out there. Like those same, sad LinkedIn posts that dominate my feed. The beige pants and Toyota Camrys of LinkedIn - utterly unmemorable.
I’m not suggesting you now show up to your next job interview in a turquoise Cadillac DeVille, dressed as a pirate, speaking creole. But if you did, it’d warrant a discussion at the new hire meeting, wouldn’t it?
There’s not a lot of content out there that makes one stop and think.
A conscious differentiation. A simple, unspoken thing, forever remembered. A signature color. A questionable turn of phrase.
A mirror image of a simple, instantly recognizable word.
What’s your Self?
Very well described. Great read
Cogent thoughts here, thank you.