Guide Your Career Path with a Personal Rebrand
How do you make a switch or direct your career in a particular direction? Recently I got asked this exact question —
How did I make the switch from being an all-around video producer (from shoot to the final cut) to being a motion design and video editor?
When being a generalist is sought so much these days, why close down options for work? It seems counterintuitive, but keeping all your options open can close a lot of doors.
Think of it this way — who would you rather perform heart surgery? Your primary care physician or a cardiologist?
Press Delete and Rebrand Yourself
To improve in the area that interested me most (motion design), I had to let go of the titles I had once worked hard to get and was still getting paid under.
It can feel extremely uncomfortable to rebrand yourself like this. For me, there was even another layer — I am a self-taught motion designer. When I first added motion design to my title, I felt like a complete fraud.
But as long as you have the skills — give yourself the title you want, not the title you’ve always had and want to get away from.
It's tough to stop advertising a key talent, but if you want your dream jobs, it's a must! So delete your unwanted title wherever possible. You’ll want to tell the world the gigs you’re looking for on your website and LinkedIn, but make sure you don’t falsify your job history by pairing a job and title you never had.
When I was hunting for work, I still included the skills I was less interested in using on LinkedIn and my resume, but I was strategic in where and how I listed them (typically at the end of job descriptions and last in my list of skills).
For a while, I even had an unlisted page on my website that included more of my video production work. I never linked to this page on my resume or social media, but it was nice to know it was there if I needed to showcase it to get a job (I never had to).
It’s hard to believe, but narrowing your focus will get you just as many, if not more, opportunities. The more specific you are in your title, the more you come across as an expert in that field.
Go find that niche that makes you happy!
