Your professional image

The cornerstone of your personal branding arsenal is your professional image. Does yours measure up?

Last month, I had a look at Photofeeler and got some feedback on the photo that I use pretty much everywhere. What Photofeeler does is ask you to rate 10 images yourself, and then 10 people rate your image on three different criteria:

• Competent (Smart, capable)
• Likeable (Friendly, kind)
• Influential (Leading, In charge)

For each criteria, a person is asked to rank you as 3 – Very, 2 – Yes, 1 – Somewhat, 0 – No. The results are then compiled and you get a picture (sorry, bad pun!) of the image that you’re using.

And the results for me? Hmmm… not so good!

Karen Brown: Resume Writer, LinkedIn expert and author

• Competent – rated 1.5 out of 3.0
• Likeable – rated 1.9 out of 3.0
• Influential – rated 1.2 out of 3.0

Ouch. I guess smiling in the photo helped me appear likeable but that’s all!

So tomorrow, I’ve a session booked with a really great photographer and we’re going to have a shoot at the office.

As an exercise, voting on business photos gives you an idea on what you think makes a person look competent, likeable and influential. Have a go yourself and see how you rank. I’d be really interested to hear what your scores were, it might make me feel a bit better about mine!

Take care for now

Karen x