Do Grades Define Your Success?

What more can professionals and students do to get employers to notice them? Shyam Visavadia from Red Sea Development in Dubai and a past member of RICS Matrics UK Board, shares his insight on the value of building your personal brand.

Value of Social Media

The industry is changing, and technology is playing a large part in shaping the future. I spend a lot of my time talking about the importance of empowering employees to be active on LinkedIn and Twitter in order to build their personal brand. More and more employers are using social media as a means of identifying future talent; as such it is vital that the next generation of surveyors keep their online profile updated, relevant and concise.  

For any young professionals. or those wishing to enter a profession, wanting to build their social brand I offer the following advice:

• Add relevant content to your profile
• Help create a positive image, which tells people a story about your success and how you’ve developed yourself to reach such position
• Have a range of content, which shows that you are more than just what your qualifications give you i.e. voluntary work, international work experience, and awards
• Try to create a strategy for your social media networking and then start to work towards raising your profile
• Participate in relevant group discussions and post articles that will benefit your network. Find a niche and help add value to your followers

As you progress in building your career, the content of your profile should change to reflect your achievements and current and future aspirations.

Intrapreneurship

An Intrapreneur is someone who has the traits of an entrepreneur but within an internal ecosystem. An Intrapreneur is someone who works within a large corporate which could include their university, to identify opportunities by bringing together people. As someone starting out in this industry, it is important that professionals and students can utilise their resources and opportunities available to them to help reinforce their professional brand. These opportunities will act as milestones and better support a strong foundation for your career.

It is important that people position themselves by flaunting their skill set, ambitions and achievements.

It is not practical to be involved in everything; however, professionals should select opportunities that will attain to their long-term aspirations and add value to their long-term career plan. For me this was taking advantage of opportunities abroad, freelance writing and being the administrator of a Global Graduate Twitter account. These opportunities leveraged my position as a young professional and opened up other opportunities for my career to progress.