For 15 years after completing my formal education, I had a pretty good career. Or so I’d like to think.
I worked across the world in various roles.
In the initial years, after completing my engineering degree in Computer Science (where I picked up programming skills), I worked on some cutting edge technologies for some really high profile clients.
Then I moved into a consulting role, where I started managing large projects across multiple industries with big teams and huge budgets.
After a ‘mid-career’ sabbatical (MBA), I changed tracks again and worked in the area of Mergers & Acquisitions.
Each phase in my corporate career exposed me to steep learning curves, challenging assignments and a host of technical and managerial skills.
What I would get in return for all the effort and contribution was – a monthly salary.
While the salary figure grew significantly over time, the kick I would get from seeing my new improved bank balance on the 1st of each month diminished rather rapidly.
There was something missing.
For starters, the belief that my skills and knowledge could be valued, not just by the handful of folks I was interacting with on a daily basis, but by a much larger community.
As an employee, apart from my immediate bosses and team-members, no one really knew or cared about my skills.
And why would they? The poor souls had their own demons to fight in order to secure their monthly cash inflow.
After 15 years, something changed.
How sharing knowledge helped build my career
With no commercial intentions in mind, I started freely sharing my knowledge with a bigger world that went beyond my immediate professional network.
I started writing online on topics that had nothing to do with my job, but about my real interests.
I wrote about my experiences of getting into an international business school as an older candidate.
I shared many of the research findings about business schools across geographies.
I wrote about how other applicants trying to crack into elite universities could position themselves and improve their odds of getting selected.
In a competitive world where everyone would rather keep their skills and professional knowledge a secret, I had being doing exactly the opposite.
Without knowing or planning for it, over time I was actually creating a brand for myself.
By being generous in sharing my knowledge, I was positioning myself as a Subject Matter Expert in an area where I had no prior track record.
This helped me quit the corporate world and launch my own venture in admissions consulting.
It’s been close to 5 years since I’ve been a full-time entrepreneur.
During these years when I started writing articles, apart from the technical knowledge I gained about a completely new field (i.e. international MBA admissions), I also learnt about how the online world works.
It doesn’t matter whether you want to continue in the corporate world or planning a career transition. Your charismatic online brand can help you over time.
For a newbie hoping to build an online brand, it’s easy to get crushed by the heavyweights who’ve been playing the online branding game for years.
While the popular blogging sites such as LinkedIn and Medium make it extremely easy for anyone to start publishing articles, there are 2 key drawbacks:
- The majority of articles published are amateurish, badly written and not edited.
- Unless you are already famous (an influencer in LinkedIn jargon), it is unlikely that your articles will ever gain traction.
So I thought, why not help other professionals build an online brand like I did. And more than just sharing knowledge and general advice, why not take it one step ahead and provide an actual publishing platform too.
A platform that’ll allow professionals to focus on their strengths (creating content that showcases their skills, expertise, industry insights) and not get bogged down with the technicalities (hosting, performance, tuning, analytics, search engine optimisation, etc).
I hope Careerizma can be that platform for a select few.
Would you like to build your online brand?
Become a writer on Careerizma.
At this stage, membership to the site is selective and by invitation only.
Over time, this site will have more readers than writers (I hope!). These are folks who’ll share and promote your articles, but only if they like them.
They are your customers who are longing to consume the fantastic insights you have to share and make their own careers better.
It doesn’t help if we publish mediocre content just to please writers who are only looking at this as a self-promotional trip.
Which is why I’d like to see if you have the potential and drive to take up this challenge and be in it for the long run.
Once you are on-board, I will provide personalized, 1-on-1 mentoring for free.
I’ll help you decide what you should write about, how to write it and how to get the most mileage from it after it gets published.
Apart from the effort you invest in yourself (and I’ll invest in you), there are no costs involved.
In return, I’m looking for knowledgeable, committed and self-motivated professionals interested (and very serious) about building a charismatic professional brand for themselves.
Most who read this post fall in one of these categories:
1. The Biggest chunk: They feel a mild sense of enthusiasm. Promise to take this up…when there’s more time in life and the alignment of stars is better.
2. Flash in the pan: Take a knee-jerk decision to act. Once they realise the effort needed, they disappear. I never hear back from them.
3. The driven ones: These are the folks who end up actually writing something.
I’m looking for Type 3 folks.
If you aren’t ready for a longer term commitment into self-branding at this stage, we’d also be looking for one-off posts on various careers.
If you think Careerizma can help you improve your visibility and credibility, share the following details in an email with the subject ‘Interested in being hosted on Careerizma’. Send the email to: careerizma [dot] info [at] gmail [dot] com
- Name
- Email ID + Phone number
- LinkedIn profile
- Role / industry / Skills
- Long-term career goal & how being part of this initiative will help you
- URLs of any online articles you’ve written earlier on your own blog or other sites
- Areas of interest that you’d like to write on
- – 5 Sample Titles of articles that you’d like to cover
If your interest and passion jumps out of your email, I’ll suggest the next steps.
There may be others in your network who’d give you a big jaadoo ki jhappi (or maybe just a simple, heartfelt thank you) for sharing this opportunity with them via social media.
