Personal Branding for Women in Tech
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How can you keep that Imposter Syndrome at bay? We are more likely to work harder than our male counterparts and yet we're less likely to believe in our capability for success. This presentation looks to help everyone in tech overcome her or his Imposter Syndrome, empowering you with tricks that can help position you for the right jobs, roles and collaborators in just 15 minutes a day. This will include presenting yourself online in the most favorable (and Googleable) light including branding, image, and social media networks like Twitter and LinkedIn. Watch the accompanying webinar at https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/43/247985?utm_source=BrightTALK&utm_medium=brighttalk&utm_campaign=247985
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Personal Branding for Women in Tech
- 1. Personal Branding for Women in Tech How to keep that Imposter Syndrome at bay
- 2. “She explained that many people, but especially women, feel fraudulent when they are praised for their accomplishments. Instead of feeling worthy of recognition, they feel undeserving and guilty, as if a mistake has been made. Despite being high achievers, even experts in their fields, women can't seem to shake the sense that it is only a matter of time until they are found out for who they really are — impostors with limited skills or abilities.” Sheryl Sandberg Lean in: Women, Work and the Will to Lead
- 3. Myself and other journalists and podcasts hosts often lament that we simply can’t get enough female interviews.
- 4. Maybe this writer from The Atlantic has found the answer to getting more women in press, but why is it harder work?
- 5. Women work on average 39 more days than men a year, at an average of 50 more minutes per work day. World Economic Forum
- 6. BUT “Men and women get imposter syndrome equally.” The International Journal of Behavioral Science
- 7. 70 percent of people will experience at least one episode of this Impostor Phenomenon in their lives, whether in school or at work, or even in their relationships. The International Journal of Behavioral Science
- 9. Imposter Cycle Explained 1. Tasks are assigned. 2. Worrying you aren’t good enough, you procrastinate or over-prepare. 3. You feel relief when it’s finished. 4. But if you are praised for your work, it’s “luck” or because you overworked. 5. You feel like a fraud who hasn’t earned this success. 6. This all causes self-doubt in next project.
- 10. Downside of Imposter Syndrome • don’t spend time self- promoting • fear of letting others down • fear of coming off as arrogant • fear of being stigmatized • underestimating yourself • fear of being chosen not for talent or skill • perfectionism • overthinking, second-guessing • OVERWORKING
- 11. “Caroline Holt, a consultant and career coach in London, worked with a woman in a senior position at a Big Four accounting firm who was in line for a promotion to become a director. The partners at the firm were pursuing her for the position, but the woman resisted, even though she wanted the job. She feared the company ‘would find out that she is not as good as it thinks she is’.” BBC Missed Opportunities
- 12. But it has an upside! • empathy • good listeners • good mangers and team players • give credit where credit is due • grateful
- 13. Self-doubt and leaving your comfort zone is part of personal development “Experts say that this feeling of insecurity and self- doubt might actually be a sign that someone is headed for greatness. Evidence shows that those who have a tendency for the syndrome are driven to perfection and thus most likely to achieve your goals.” The Independent
- 14. Do whatever you want! Don’t look at these recommendations as pressure. Look at these small tips as empowerment to do what you want, when you feel ready to do it. Just make sure you aren’t the one holding you back.
- 15. 9 Ways to Fake it Until You make it In 15 minutes or less a day Tweet your own tips to #InternationalWomensDay @BrightTalk
- 16. Why 15 minutes? Because everyone has 15 minutes to advance her future, five days a week. Also as you see on the next slide, it’s proven growth hacking.
- 17. Lisette Sutherland Founder, Collaboration Superpowers Talking about her application of The Revenue Growth Habit by Alex Goldfayn “Every week I look at my revenue goals and decide on one small (15 min) action per day that will bring me closer to those goals. Sometimes it’s calling a client and asking for a referral I can use on my website. Sometimes it’s following up with a quote I sent out. Sometimes it’s planning a webinar to generate new leads. The main thing is to plan what the actions will be in advance and track the success of each one."
- 18. Learn to take a compliment “I got lucky!” “It was a team effort.” Be grateful Share the learning
- 19. Keep a Work Journal • Makes it easier for performance reviews, CVs/resumes, and your LinkedIn profile • Add anything that you do beyond your job description • Especially anything numerical like $ and % increase/decrease • Remember your value!
- 20. At every tech conference I attend, I take photos of empty ladies’ rooms…
- 21. …but occasionally, I’m pleasantly surprised! I just wish all ladies’ rooms at conferences were filled with female speakers and attendees doing this…
- 22. The Wonder Woman Pose Two minutes of this ‘power pose’ can increase your testosterone and confidence. Amy Cuddy, Presence
- 23. Try poses that take up as much space as possible. Avoid poses that have you “lady-like” taking up less space or body language that closes you off
- 24. Sit at the Table Sheryl Sandberg Lean in: Women, Work and the Will to Lead • Don’t know a subject? Don’t sit in the corner! • Actively listen and learn. Ask questions and take notes • Make sure to involve everyone’s opinions
- 25. Look great in each pic • No avatar, cartoon or political statement • Have a headshot (professional even) that shows your personality and up-to-date of how you look now, glasses, freckles, hair color, beards, etc • Don’t dress for the role you want. Dress how it expresses yourself comfortably.
- 26. Use same pic across everything public Especially update your email, Gravatar, Twitter, and LinkedIn right away to all have same headshot.
- 27. Express yourself! (in so many characters) YOU ARE NOT THE COMPANY YOU WORK FOR LinkedIn = 60 characters or fewer • Keywords • No adjacent punctuation like/this Twitter = 160 characters or fewer • Your value proposition. What you do and what you can do for someone else. • What makes you memorable. Something memorable of your personality, bonus points if it’s funny.
- 28. Cultivate your fans • Ask for LinkedIn recommendations • Ask for introductions • Ask for a Retweet • Just make sure to give back too!
- 29. Support each other! Tweet out something you are proud of to: #InternationalWomensDay @BrightTalk And then track these to see who among us you should help promote and, of course, follow!
- 30. Jennifer Riggins http://ebranding.ninja @jkriggins linkedin.com/in/jkriggins And a special thanks to Gratisography for always supplying me with free, open-source, fun images.
Editor's Notes
- What is Imposter Syndrome? also called the impostor phenomenon, impostor fears, and impostorism. I couldn’t have a talk on Imposter Syndrome without mentioning Facebook’s COO who made it famous but as much as she’s a woman to be emulated, I think she has a good definition of what is Imposter Syndrome, when people feel like fakes when they are praised or always feeling undeserving or guilty of success. She does controversially say that it’s a women-only disease, which has it’s truths and falsehoods
- Certainly women do take on more work than men, on average an extra 50 minutes a day. I constantly find myself wondering with other female journalists and podcast hosts why it’s so hard to get other women interviewed and involved! Maybe it’s because we are already spending more time working than others. These extra 39 days of work a year could be why we are less likely to agree to do an interview or to present a talk because we not only don’t feel like we wouldn’t have enough time to do it, and if we do agree to do it we are more likely to spend more time perfecting it. We’d rather help out a colleague before we help ourselves. Add all this to the fact that women are just overlooked in the male dominated tech space and we simply are missing at a lot of industry conferences Also we are less likely to take risks. And as we are increasingly the main breadwinner in households, we feel we have even more to lose. And then we are often the main caretaker in our families beyond all this hard work. But while I think Sheryl defined Imposter Syndrome well, and while I don’t think anyone should make anyone feel worthless, least of all ourselves, I don’t think it just plagues women.
- http://bsris.swu.ac.th/journal/i6/6-6_Jaruwan_73-92.pdf Indeed men and women are equally susceptible to imposter syndrome, just women may be more susceptible to people assuming it about them. And we may have more of an excuse of not having time than our male counterparts But today is international women’s day, so I am focusing a bit on women, but all of these tricks work for everyone.
- Is it a female disease? Nope not necessarily, my friends and colleagues of both genders in the tech industry certainly claim a lot of Imposter syndrome. But perhaps across the board this presumption is plaguing more women than men. According to the same Behavioral Science Journal research, 70% of people experience it at some time in their lives. anyone can view themselves as an impostor if they fail to internalize their success and this experience is not limited to people who are highly successful. a lot of my friends in the tech journalism space — lament is what happens often, men always take the time to promote themselves and women take on more work so they can’t Imposter syndrome, or imposter phenomenon, is indeed experienced by both men and women alike. Need statistics about women vs men self promoting also need statistics about women in STEM anything about women’s self perception versus men’s likelihood to go into work sick
- Basically it starts in the top left here when a task is assigned and then goes around clockwise. They start to worry they aren’t good enough to complete the task so they either procrastinate or over-prepare. They’re relieved when it’s finished, but then if they are successful and are praised for their work, they ever attribute it to luck or having worked their asses off. If they did work hard, they attribute that to not talent or true ability. They then feel like frauds who haven’t earned this success. It causes more self-doubt that feeds into their next project Perfectionism Impostors disregard their success if there is any gap between their actual performance and their ideal standard, which contributes to discounting of positive feedback.
- Basically it starts in the top left here when a task is assigned and then goes around clockwise. They start to worry they aren’t good enough to complete the task so they either procrastinate or over-prepare. They’re relieved when it’s finished, but then if they are successful and are praised for their work, they ever attribute it to luck or having worked their asses off. If they did work hard, they attribute that to not talent or true ability. They then feel like frauds who haven’t earned this success. It causes more self-doubt that feeds into their next project Perfectionism Impostors disregard their success if there is any gap between their actual performance and their ideal standard, which contributes to discounting of positive feedback.
- Downfall — lack of ability to self-promote - which is what we will spend some time helping you do fears of letting other people down, of coming across as arrogant, and being stigmatized as that inappropriate B-word You underestimate yourself — often women (and sometimes men look at them that way) see themselves in a certain role or receiving a certain award or opportunity because they are the token woman on a team. Trust me that is rarely true and when it is, that’s a moment o take advantage of the situation and prove your awesome qualified nature! Impostorism causes us to overthink and second-guess. It makes us fixate on how we think others are judging us (in these fixations, we’re usually wrong), then fixate some more on how those judgments might poison our interactions. Overworking is probably the most common casualty of imposter syndrome
- We pass up on opportunities It’s not just women in tech, women in law firms and accounting firms are particularly struggling with if they want to risk their more secure roles within a company by taking the risk of a promotion.
- Now it’s not all terrible. I must admit some benefits of Imposter Syndrome Benefits of Imposter Syndrome - -empathy, listening make good managers because will put the team forward won’t hesitate to give credit where credit is due are grateful workers
- to grow your career you have to get out of your comfort zone. This can lead to feelings of insecurity. But it can actually be a sign of progress and success. So Imposter Syndrome can actually be a sign you’re doing something right and heading in the right direction.
- There’s getting outside your comfort zone and there’s going too far. Before we get into ways to overcome Imposter’s Syndrome, one quick note. Don’t go overboard with this. Don’t take an opportunity because you feel forced to to prove yourself or because you don’t want to be pegged a victim of imposter syndrome! Today we are talking about small ways to improve the way we feel about ourselves so we can improve how we present those parts to the world. But don’t look at any of this as pressure, but more an empowerment of your choice. Do what you want to do, when you feel ready to do it. Today’s webinar is just about making sure you’re not the person who is holding you back.
- Here are some concrete and less concrete ways recommended to overcome Imposter Syndrome, then we’ll dive into the ways we can really start promoting ourselves! How do you do it? Share it via Hashtag #InternationalWomensDay and at @BrightTalk and feel free to add it in the questions and comments in the chat here so I can ask it aloud!
- why 15 minutes? Because everyone has time to do it and it’s one of the best things to do. Now we’re ready for the concrete ideas. Each should take you between two and 15 minutes to complete. The point of growth hacking is to do something small every day that moves your personal brand forward. And yes you don’t have enough time but everyone has that amount of time to do something positive for your future
- My friend and colleague and remote working guru, Lisette actually takes 1-2 hours for her Money Mondays when she uses an exhaustive and impressive checklist to make sure every bill is paid, every expense and receipt accounted for, every invoice sent and what’s been received. While I find I always put off invoicing as I worry about delivering work more than chasing money, Lisette prioritizes ways she has transparency into her business finances and is actively pursing her active growth, 15 minutes a day, five days a week. READ QUOTE
- Learn to take a compliment! I got lucky, it was a team effort, or brushing it off is no way to own your work and success! I’m not talking about your looks but when someone compliments your work, don’t make yourself less by saying things like well it was lucky or offer credit where it’s not due. Be grateful and then share what you learned from it with your peers And don’t forget to celebrate your success and treat yourself when you deserve it
- Keep a work journal This is helpful to remember not only what you do that’s in your job description, but where you went above and beyond and when you achieved things this makes filling out your performance review much easier it also makes filling in your resume, CV and LinkedIn profile much simpler Especially make sure it include numbers like money saved or revenue accrued, percentages like increased productivity or employee retention as well as numbers like how many people you’ve managed directly and indirectly
- At every tech conference I attend or speak at, I always take a photo of the empty bathroom and tweet it out. It’s a good way to raise awareness in the tech space, to raise the eyebrows of each conference organizer and it also usually gets good retweets. In a world where we have to queue or line up for the bathroom, usually a ladies’ room at a tech conference is like a VIP lounge. Yes, never having to run out of paper is great, but that’s not how it should be. These tweets are just over a a few months too! If you see in the bottom right corner, this is a conference I gave a talk at that local women in tech actually showed out just to see me and the other female speaker talk, tweeting, supporting and asking questions
- And then I have to give credit where credit is due to Redmonk developer analyst firm for recently giving me the opportunity to not be able to take a pic in a ladies’ room because the event attracted the right diversity of attendees — and not just of men and women but of people of color too — and speakers. Monkigras was a conference I’d completely recommend because I got so much out of it!
- Yes I would like to see ladies rooms at tech conferences filled to the rim with women speakers and attendees, all with the women doing this in there (though perhaps in tech brand tees and hoodies.) I’d absolutely recommend Amy’s famous 2012 TED talk if you haven’t seen it yet. Supposedly if you do this or any other power pose for two minutes you actually trigger testosterone in your body and feel more confident, body over mind!
- If nothing else while I was finishing off these slides yesterday at my coworking, it did boost my energy quite a bit just for the few moments to take these pics. Now, at 8 months’ pregnant, i no longer have a problem taking up as much space as possible, but I would admit that I spend most conferences like the bottom image like a fly on the wall, head down, typing faster than a speeding bullet. Don’t like your hands on your hips? Try to fully star-fish out or do another expansive wide pose, where instead of crossing your legs in an allegedly lady-like way so you take up less space or with your arms crossed in a way that keeps folks at bay, take up as much space as you can! It is guaranteed to help you overcome Imposter syndrome
- Sit at the table A lot of times when we don’t feel confident enough about a subject so we sit in the back of the room and hope we’re not called on. But we know from school this is a dumb way to learn and an easy way to get distracted. Why not instead sit down at the table and take notes so you are actively learning and listening? Also by constantly sitting in the back, your opinion and input is often forgotten. Sitting at the Table is one of Sheryl Sandberg’s concepts in her Lean In. If you are in a leadership role, it’s also important to follow Sheryl’s strategy of broadly soliciting input from every corner, so you have a diversity of opinions and you help everyone overcome Imposter Syndrome.
- A real pic of you looking great but this is where you want to make sure that it really looks like you - not an avatar, a cartoon, or political statement. I used to have a pic from my wedding which was rather casual so that wasn’t the issue, but I wasn’t wearing my glasses that day which I wear at all events I attend and all work I do, both to see and to fit into the geeky world I am privileged to work in So while you want to look great and like your authentic you, you also want this to be appropriate for the industry you’re in and your role. I’m not really crazy about dressing for the job you want — i’m for being comfortable as yourself. And if you want to move up in a tech company I really don’t think you need to wear a suit in your profile pic — I think even the world’s largest tech companies are looking for more approachable tech c-levels than corporates. That doesn’t mean you shouldn't dress up for an interview at Microsoft — do your research on that first — but your photo should show your authentic self (unless perhaps you’re a naturalist. What’s really important is that you keep it up to date. For guys thank goodness hipster beards aren’t trending anymore, so if you shave it off, you need a new pic. Same if you change your hair color etc. If you’re camera shy, then i think it is actually worth it to spend some money on some professional headshots that make you feel good about the beauty you are presenting to the world.
- The other important detail is to use the same photo across all your public social media, so I don’t care what you put on your Facebook or if you have a private Twitter, but if your name is on it and it’s public, use the same everywhere. This is especially true if you write blogs anywhere or give talks. Gravatar Know that when you give talks, most likely they are getting your headshot from your LinkedIn or maybe your Twitter. If you are writing a blog, mostly they are pulling from your Gravatar, which means make sure ALL of your email addresses are up to date on there. And when you have a new photo, I’d prioritize your email — because that’s how you most often communicate — your Twitter, your LinkedIn and your Gravatar, and anywhere else you use for logging in places. Even if you write a comment on a blog, using a tool like Discus, you should make sure to add your image.
- Create a headline that best expresses yourself and the work persona you’re trying to be. This is NOT your current job role and this is certainly not the company you work for unless you own that company or MAYBE it’s it’s a Fortune 50. But, while loyalty is important, who you are is not the company you work for. If it’s a LinkedIn headline, it’s about who you are. It’s also only 60 characters or less so it doesn’t get cut off on mobile app It’s keyword loaded LinkedIn is a fairly dumb search engine though which is good for you. This means you want to do exact keywords and you don’t want to use a lot of punctuation. Like make sure that you have For Twitter, it’s a combination of Your value proposition. What you do and what you can do for someone else. What makes you memorable. Something memorable of your personality, bonus points if it’s funny. Mine reads: eBranding Ninja! #Tech #culture storyteller #writing #marketing #branding to translate your value so your ideal customer and Google find you! And I'm hilarious.
- You may not always love you but there are certainly coworkers and friends who really appreciate the work you’re doing. Why not ask them for a more permanent boost like a LinkedIn recommendation? LinkedIn recommendations are really important — if you have ten or more supposedly recruiters won’t even quest you, but this is a time-consuming and arduous process to get organized so you need to start soon. Plus those notes of appreciation are a great thing to look back on when you’re feeling low, reminding yourself you do do a good job. Perhaps ask for a retweet of something important to you. It’s OK to ask for something, so long as you give as well, so don’t forget to retweet!
- And now for our last tip. In the end, we are all human beings. It’s important to support each other. That goes especially for women who are often raised to compete Our final call to action of strategic self-promotion tweet out something you are proud of or looking for help with Then let’s each track that and RT or like/favorite if appropriate to our brand And of course follow I would say don’t just go Retweeting all at once. IF you use a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite scatter them throughout the day — it’ll raise your profile in general and especially related with Women’s Day.
- Go ahead and add me on LinkedIn. We need to work to do this more. When a couple months ago at that conference I realized those young women in tech were just coming to support my talk and one other I realized I need to do more to give back and and connect with more women in business and tech and with that…