Inés Temple: «Our name is our personal brand»

Publicado en webeenow.com, el 02/03/2021

INTERVIEW with Inés Temple, author of the book “Yo SL”, published by Alienta Editorial, in which she argues that each of us should manage his career as if it were his best business. Before others, one works for oneself, so it is important to be clear about this in a context in which the pandemic has changed the rules of the game. Work, motivation, personal marketing, practicing networking, knowing how to sell yourself and building trust are some of the key concepts discussed in the book and also about this interview.

– In what way has the pandemic situation we live in changed personal marketing? Why is it more important now than ever to practice it?

-The pandemic has shown us that today more than ever it is important to have a high level of employability, that is, to be clear and aware of the importance of being very competitive and being very current and relevant in the labor market, since at any time we may be needing to get a new job or a new client for the sale of our professional services. Therefore, let us remember that our level of employability is related to our attitude, our disposition, our skills, talents, achievements and results, which allow us to add value to an organization at any given time and obviously also to the contacts that we can. to have.

That said, it is important to remember that being all service providers and therefore having to handle the sale of those services as we would in our own best company, our name is our personal brand. It is the brand that represents that company that sells our professional services. Personal marketing is linked to how others see us, how others perceive those characteristics, competencies and abilities of us. That affinity that we can project in our way of interacting and communicating.

That has changed a lot with the pandemic, not only because now a large part of our work we have to do through videos or teleconferences -by Zoom, Teams or Meet- which forces us to develop a new way of communicating and hopefully be equally effective in quality. That is, be very close and positive with people through video. Today more than ever we have to be able to demonstrate – and that people perceive from us – our empathy, our warmth, our humanity and our closeness to everyone. And also demonstrate our willingness to be flexible, adaptable, creative and empathetic

Personal marketing is linked to how others see us, how others perceive those characteristics, competencies and abilities of us

– Telework, professions that are no longer “for life”, layoffs, ERTEs … Where do you think we are evolving? What qualities should the worker of the future have?

-I would say that more than the worker of the future, today we are talking about people with high levels of employability, that is, people who know that their work, that our jobs will last as long as it suits us both. That they are always ready to jump to the next position, whenever they want, when it is necessary for them. But while they are working, they are aware of providing the maximum possible value, their best attitude to be aware of contributing, producing, generating value.

That attitude is something that has changed a lot and today each job is seen as an adventure, as a place where one can learn, where one can give the best of oneself, hopefully where they find a good alignment with their life purpose. Hopefully, work becomes a place of personal fulfillment, I also believe that today it is something that we all seek and it is something that, together with, obviously, the financial support needs that a job can give us, is what complements the who we are as people, as professionals and “how far we want to go”

-Do you consider that it is a good time to undertake?

-Yes, I believe that a crisis like this shows us the amount of opportunities there are to innovate, to do different things, to provide better services, to get closer to customers with better offers. Entrepreneurship is an important step in life, deciding to undertake is certainly one of the most important decisions we can make in our professional life, especially when it can give us immense satisfaction, but it can also lead us to lose time, lose energy, save time and encouragement. .

Entrepreneurship has to be a decision made, not as a reaction to the lack of employment or a reaction to leaving a bad job, but to undertake has to be done as a conscious decision, looking at our profile, looking at our life goals and being very lucid of a total commitment to our business because entrepreneurship takes us 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and at the beginning – above all – it does not allow holidays or rest and requires total dedication and absolute dedication.

In the end, many times – although not always sadly – it brings fruits for all of us. Therefore, if the decision is well made and well planned and before starting one makes a good business plan -just as one would make the plan of a house before starting to build it- undertaking can be a good alternative for those who start to start. your own company with open eyes and strong arms to work hard

-How important is networking in this new context? What would be the keys to creating networks of trust … despite teleworking and social distancing?

Today everyone is a Zoom away

-I would say that today more than ever it is important to be very clear about the importance of networking. You have to work remotely, it sounds more difficult, however it is easier than ever, we can be closer to friends, acquaintances from work, clients, suppliers who live far or who we did not see in a long time. Today the whole world is at a zoom distance and with this amount of changes in the world of work due to the pandemic and also due to digitization – where we know that we may be needing a new job, very soon, or a new client for our professional services – the contacts will be those people who will be able to raise their finger in favor of us or lower it.

Our contacts will be our best referrals, those who recommend us and hopefully speak well of us. Those who through word of mouth can recommend us as professionals, as workers, as good, correct and ethical people certainly. Making contacts does not have a purely utilitarian purpose of “I look for you when I only need you”, if it is not very important to have these authentic, genuine long-term relationships in force, where the interest for the other is as important as the interest that I can have for what you need at any given time. Therefore, making contact today is more important than ever and easier, as I said at the beginning, we just have to become aware of that and realize that in this new normal, the people who know us and who appreciate us,

-What new challenges do we face? We always talked about evolving, adapting to changes… but in a matter of a few months, the “rules of the game” have completely changed… What if it is necessary to reinvent ourselves? How do we do it?

– Certainly today we have to reinvent ourselves faster and more emphatically than ever. The reasons are obvious: the pandemic and digitization. All the changes tell us clearly and strongly that it is time to release a new and improved version of ourselves, just as every year we hope or every month we hope that the applications we work with will come new and improved, people also expect that we always remain current, competitive, relevant, that we have new ways of doing things, different ways that add more value, that are more positive.

It is a habit that we have taken up and I believe -in general- that humans who are so close to technology always want new and better things. Therefore, we always have to do that too, with a change of mentality and paradigm. It is our responsibility to always remain capable of giving better service offers, giving better results, adding better value, more quantity, faster. And it sounds exhausting, but those are the new rules of the game and if one does not embrace them and with good spirit, we will only find good rewards for our careers.

-What role do social networks play in all this? How can we continue to use them for our “employability” and “personal competitiveness”?

Social networks are increasingly important to our careers to the extent that we handle them positively, that is, if we are aware of our integrity, that is, we are the same person regardless of the role we are playing at any given time. Therefore, we have to conduct ourselves equally personally and professionally, privately and publicly, and always with the same values, with the same correctness. Obviously each network will have a different style of communicating and we will probably show different facets of our personality, because they are related to our different roles, but having said that, let us remember that recruiters, companies and people who are interested in our services are always very attentive to what we say and do in networks,

In our networks they will see if there is a coherence between what we are and what we say we are, between what we do and what we say we do; And that is why, in a recent study we did in Peru among recruiters, up to 64% of people lost opportunities, precisely because they had not audited their social networks and did not have a consistent or correct behavior in all of them. It is not a question of always being boring, but of remembering that nothing is private on the networks, that everything is known and more importantly, that everything is recorded forever.

Yo SL means Yo Sociedad Limitada, that is, how I manage my own career as if it were my own best business

-What does “Yo SL” mean? How do you become aware that you are your own company?

Yo SL means Yo Sociedad Limitada, that is, how I manage my own career as if it were my own best business. That is to say, becoming aware that one is not an employee of anyone, one works first for himself, works to sell his professional services and hopefully do it with the best quality, with the best possible results so that our professional services are always in demand, both in the place where we can be working today, like in the job market, if we need it soon.

Therefore, that key is taking responsibility and becoming aware of our level of employability, that change in mentality where we do not feel like employees dependent on anyone, but owners of ourselves, of our career; As I said about the sale of our services, because when we take responsibility for ourselves, we quickly become aware that we are a company that sells its professional services and only then can we have a more strategic approach in managing the sale of our professional services. To remain more competitive and relevant and always up-to-date to provide higher quality services at all times, to try to better interact with people at work, people with whom we interact at all levels and also in personal life. Obviously, interacting positively is important and,

-What role does confidence play, being able to believe in one’s own possibilities? How to show it to others?

Self-confidence is key, that is easy to say sometimes and difficult to achieve, but professionally, I think it is based on knowing that we can do a job well, we can do it with dedication, with a good attitude, with determination and This leads us to generate results, which in turn lead us to more responsibilities and therefore more opportunities to prove how with the right attitude and the will to continue learning and growing, we can always meet the expectations of those who hire our professional services and I hope we exceed those expectations and therefore continue to advance and grow in our professional lives.

That is creating a virtuous circle, where things improved, the happier I am; better results and achievements, the happier they are with my services, they entrust me with more responsibilities and so on, believe in our possibilities, it opens many doors for us to develop in new areas, to risk undertaking different things, to meet different and new people, to be more flexible and adapt, to broaden our mind, broaden our mentality, broaden our paradigm and how we understand life. All this will enrich us as people and professionals. Now it is up to us to enjoy much more than we do.

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