The best articles for improving your personal brand and your professional performance

September is usually the time when we look to improving our personal brand with a view to strengthening our professional profile on social networks such as LinkedIn, growing within our current workplace, or even looking for new opportunities. Improving our standing on both a personal and a professional level is not always easy; it’s not simply a question of brushing up our CV or creating an account on Twitter and sharing for the sake of sharing. To redefine your brand image, you must:

1. Go through an exercise in self-awareness. Create your own SWOT analysis, identifying Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Be honest with yourself when you do this.
2. The results of your SWOT analysis will allow you to work on your weak points, but don’t forget to keep developing your strengths as well.
3. Think about your career development path. Identify your professional objectives, however ambitious they may be. Don’t be afraid to aim high! On the basis of this objective, plan how you will go about achieving it in 5, 10, 15 years. Maybe it will involve studying for a Masters at a business school, or learning a new language.
4. Work within your sphere of competitive advantage, that which makes you unique and original, which makes you stand out from the crowd.
5. Put everything you learn to good use, grow continuously in your professional life. Improve your performance and efficiency, always give your best. And don’t just do it: tell people about it. How? On professional networks such as LinkedIn; by managing your own content strategy on Twitter or Instagram; revamping your CV; attending networking events… whatever it takes to make sure people get to know you.

The best articles about personal development

And read some of the articles written by Ferrovial staff and other contributors specialising in personal development, to help you in your path to professional improvement.

• This article by Arancha Pérez provides seven quick and easy to follow tips on creating and strengthening your personal brand. Read it: you’ll find it’s easier than you think.  7 Tips for Creating and Promoting your Personal Brand

• Mens sana in corpore sano is the saying. So Marta Romo writes on the importance of training our brain every day, to avoid deterioration through stress. Marta shows us how to train our brain to be more flexible and resilient, thus improving both our personal life and our professional performance.

  How can brain training make you more productive?

• Being a good speaker and controlling how we act and react in public is the basis for our self-esteem in any situation, and the key to public speaking. Learn how to improve your public speaking skills with this article by journalist and news presenter Carme Chaparro. Never speak in public without first doing these 10 things.

• Do you have a LinkedIn account? Is it up to date and complete? This profile is part of your digital footprint and as such is your professional visiting card, so it is important that it gives a true image of yourself. Be aware that anyone – your boss, your colleagues, a potential headhunter – can find you and read about you. So bear in mind these 10 tips for maximising the potential of your LinkedIn profile  by Miguel Juanicotena, from Ferrovial’s HR department.
• And this interview with María Benjumea, founder of the job search portal Infoempleo, vicepresident of  Círculo de Empresarios, vicepresident of  SECOT, founding partner of International Women’s Forum Spain and president of South Summit, is an ode to optimism, hard work and effort. Read it, get inspired, and use the advice provided. María Benjumea, a budding entrepreneur must surround themselves with good people and when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’

Prepare for this new working year by using all these tips to improve your professional brand, boost your performance at work and strike the right work/life balance.