Imagine being told you need to fit half your life’s work on one page. 

Because that’s what resumes are supposed to look like now. 

So you compress 25 years into bullet points. Titles. Numbers. Metrics you’re proud of. You submit it for roles you know you could do well. You interview well. And then you get the email. 

“We went with someone who had more industry experience.” Again. 

I know this because it’s my story. After more than two decades of doing work I was proud of, I found myself applying for roles from a standing start. I had experience and a track record, but no one outside my organization knew my name.

The Resume Wasn’t the Problem 

The problem was that nothing about me existed outside the company I’d been loyal to for years. I didn’t work in an industry where campaigns were publicly viewable or where teams gained notoriety for innovation. No external presence. Just a document trying to carry the weight of everything a document can’t hold: the resourcefulness, the problem-solving under pressure, the ability to hit goals when the conditions weren’t cooperating. 

The resume did exactly what a resume can do. It just can’t be your whole representation.

Personal Brand Has a Day Job Too

Most conversations about personal branding get framed around the job hunt, as if it’s something you dust off when you need it and put away when things are stable. I used to think the same way, and that assumption cost me. 

For internal marketers especially, the stronger case for building an external presence has less to do with your next role and more to do with what’s happening in your current one.

What an External Presence Does for You Right Now 

Credibility earned in public has a way of traveling inward. When stakeholders or leadership can see that others in your field take your thinking seriously, that people outside the building are reading what you write and sharing what you’ve built, it shifts the dynamic in ways that internal advocacy rarely can. You stop being the marketing person who attends the meeting and start being someone whose perspective people actually want in the room. 

There’s also the outlet problem. Every internal marketer I know has areas they’re genuinely curious about that their day-to-day doesn’t have room for. The scope of a role narrows, or it shifts, and the thinking that doesn’t fit the job description just has nowhere to go. That’s part of what Market Your Marketing became for me. My role changed and the work I cared most about, helping marketers communicate their value and earn their seat at the table, no longer had a home inside my job. So I built one outside of it. The writing, the frameworks, the newsletter. None of it required a title or a budget line to exist. 

And then there’s the less obvious benefit: publishing makes you a clearer thinker. When you write for people who don’t share your org chart, you can’t rely on context or assumed knowledge to do the work. You have to actually make the argument, which means you have to know what the argument is. That discipline follows you back into every stakeholder conversation, every leadership update, every moment where someone who doesn’t think like a marketer needs to understand why what you’re doing matters.

What a Personal Brand Actually Is 

Personal brand gets pigeonholed as something entrepreneurs and job seekers worry about. That framing undersells it, and it lets a lot of internal marketers off the hook for work they should be doing regardless of whether they’re planning to stay or go. 

A personal brand is the answer to one question: who is this person professionally, outside the context of their current employer? It’s the article you published about why your industry’s standard metrics are misleading. The framework you shared that 200 people saved. The point of view you return to often enough that people start to expect it from you. 

A resume is a record of where you’ve been. A personal brand is evidence of how you think, and unlike a resume, it goes with you.

Before you draw attention to yourself, decide what you want that attention to say about you.

How to Start Without Overhauling Your Life 

The first question worth considering isn’t what to post. It’s what you want to be known for. What do you want your boss, your peers, and leadership to associate with you when your name comes up in a room you’re not in? When you haven’t defined that intentionally, someone else defines it for you. Or worse, no one defines it at all and you just become the person who gets things done without anyone being quite sure what your actual expertise is. 

Once you have a direction, the mechanics are simpler than most people expect. Think about the last time you felt genuinely interested in something at work: a problem you wanted to dig into, a conversation that stuck with you, the part of the job you lose track of time doing. Write 300 words about it and post it. See what kind of response it gets, and more importantly, see whether the topic holds your interest long enough to write another one. Do that for a month before you worry about strategy or consistency or building an audience. 

“Building your personal brand isn’t a project; it’s a lifestyle. The two personal brand failure modes are: the person never started, and the person quit too soon.” 

-Mark Schaefer

Most marketers I know aren’t afraid of the work. They’re worried it sends the wrong signal, that more activity on LinkedIn looks like they’re quietly shopping themselves around. Or they’re waiting for the conditions to be right: the right topic, the right platform, a less busy season. 

The waiting is the failure mode. The reputation they could have been building quietly never gets off the ground, and when they actually need it, they’re starting from zero. Starting before you think you need to is the only move that works.

Where does your personal brand live right now, inside your company, or somewhere that travels with you? 

If the honest answer is “inside my company,” this is a good week to write the first 300 words.