Post by Kriti Rohilla

My manager at Goldman Sachs told me to build a personal brand. I thought he meant LinkedIn. He did not. He meant the office. And he gave me a very specific example of one of my colleagues. This person was the face of our team. Anyone who had ever interacted with our team knew him by name. He knew the ins and outs of almost everything we owned. At some point he had contributed to every project or initiative the team had taken. First as a junior engineer, then as a mentor, and mostly now only as a reviewer. But he did everything with so much diligence that it felt like he had worked on everything himself. I first thought personal brand was just about technical competence. That thinking broke when another equally competent person was passed over for a once in a lifetime opportunity and this person got it. Because he brought more than technical intelligence. He was humble yet friendly. He did not just review code, he passed on his thinking process. I worked on 2 projects with him and learned so much. And most importantly, he was not afraid to speak up when he felt something was wrong, even when it was a leadership decision. Not everyone can do that. But if you are right even twice, people take notice. That is personal brand for a corporate employee. And it is really hard to build.