You won’t find Barnaby Lawrence on Facebook. At least, not the one we talked to. In fact, if you Google his name, you will come up with very few relevant results, aside from some articles on The Pond, and his LinkedIn page.

For a Millennial, who works in the digital industry, this might seem like a surprising move. We decided to catch up with Barnaby to talk about Facebook, Personal Branding and the Future of personal digital promotion and CVs.

In person, Barnaby Lawrence is as charming and sharp as they come, and his work life sees him immersed in the world of online communication and engagement. Up until recently he was employed as marketing and digital communications specialist at Yellow, and has previously worked for The Pond as Creative Talent Manager. For someone of his generation, however, he has made the surprise move of refusing to use Facebook.

He’s not anti-Facebook, perse – acknowledging that it has its place for people wanting to stay in touch with overseas family and friend etc. However, personally, he feels that after spending his working day existing in 2D in a digitally saturated environment, he’d ‘rather spend some time living in 3D with real friends’.

On the flip side, Barnaby’s LinkedIn profile is engaging, comprehensive and active. Reflecting his online attitude to work versus socialising – LinkedIn is promoted as an online CV and prime networking tool, and for a fee, you can use it as such. And that’s fine if you simply want a personal page that shows who you’ve worked for and spells out what skills is attributed to you, while avoiding the most complicated aspect of personal branding.

However, as Barnaby points out, when you sign up to LinkedIn you agree to work within their constraints, in terms of design, content and even interaction. This can be an issue for anyone who is in an industry that is predominantly visual, creative or not measured strictly in ROI and KPIs. So what else can a young, connected, creative do?

Create a personal webpage, of course.

Barnaby’s personal solution to the limitations, he encountered within the LinkedIn framework, and there is no denying it is working.

If you want to peruse Barnaby’s website, you’ll have to ask him for the address because it’s hidden from search engines, something which, as you will see, is entirely intentional.

We asked Barnaby what made him hide his website from search engines – after all, isn’t the whole point of publishing something like this online is that it gives you exposure? He concedes that exposure is obviously the ideal result, but that he doesn’t want just anyone having access to his work history. Not to mention you can download a PDF of his Resume from his site.

As well as limiting viewers, this need for him to provide the address also allows him the opportunity to provide the context, and only expose himself to his personally selected audience. Of course, if the site makes enough of an impression on anyone, obviously it can then be shared with a third party, but this is very different from someone stumbling across it accidentally

Barnaby uses WordPress as his website platform and says he finds it to be the ideal medium for several reasons. WordPress is Open Source, meaning that anyone can create templates or plug-ins, so you’re guaranteed to find something that suits your needs. For $99 a year you can have a fully accessible, highly user-friendly, unobtrusively branded platform from which you can launch your personal brand and CV.

So what motivated him to create his website? Working as a Talent Acquisition’s manager for thepond.co.nz found him charged with interviewing candidates to uncover transferable skills that would enable him to find them a place in the advertising industry. For Barnaby, this highlighted the importance of a personally managed portfolio in terms of job seeking and the seed was planted.

When Barnaby talks about personal branding, it’s clear he is passionate about the concept and that he has a clear grasp of, both in terms of curation and presentation. He points out that he is so immersed in the world of branding and promotion that he finds it hard to imagine what it must be like for anyone outside of this realm. He is aware that not everyone has the knowledge or instinct for presenting a hireable personal brand.

We’re all still adjusting to a world where everything we say or share online is there, in one form or another ‘forever’. As a result, whether we like it or not, how we represent ourselves online does matter.

Personal Brand Matters a lot to Employers

Statistics clearly reveal that employers are looking up candidates online before they make a job offer. ‘Approximately 48 percent of employers use Google or other search engines to dig up some digital dirt. Facebook isn’t off limits either, with 44 percent searching that site and 27 percent of recruiters and hiring managers also searching Twitter feeds. Others take a look at Yelp and Glassdoor reviews.’

So what characteristics are employers seeking in their ideal applicant? According to a CareerBuilder survey, they’re looking for one of 5 things. ‘65% responded that they wanted to see if the candidate presents himself/herself professionally. 51% said they wanted to see if the candidate is a good fit for the company culture. 51% want to learn more about the candidates qualifications while 35% want to see if the candidate is well-rounded. Only 12% said that they used social media as a means of looking for reasons not to hire the candidate.’

It’s interesting to note while some employers don’t necessarily look candidates up online, they certainly have expressed the intention of wanting to. While only 37% may be engaging in the practice, that number could have easily increased, if it weren’t for the fact that 15% said that sneaking a peak at social media profiles is prohibited by their companies. 11% also said that, while they don’t currently use ‘social media screening’, it’s something they intend to implement.’

How Personal Websites Are Being Used

Originally personal websites were a service offered by ISP’s and taken up by consumers to create and share family photos or an online diary. However, these days’ personal websites allow an individual to express themselves and create their personal brand. You just to look to have at some of the examples out there on the web to see people are doing some pretty creative things on the web.

According to Workfolio, a newly launched company that develops applications for professional visibility; 56% of all hiring managers are more impressed by a candidate’s personal website than any other personal branding tool—however, only 7% of job seekers have a personal website.

Are personal websites the way of the future?

The question is, will people use personal websites in the future or is this merely a fad? Certainly there are more companies starting and growing in this space like brandedme, VisualCV, Workfolio, Re.Vu, who specialise in providing a platform to help candidates build their personal website.

For more sites check this blog out – Skilledup Blog

If that’s not appealing, the alternative is, that it’s easier than ever before to build a personal website with the rise of ready-made websites. These are called ‘website generators’ which make it super easy for a person to create their website and effectively replaces human designers and coders. For little more or less than $100 a year you whip up a pretty nice looking website for yourself in a couple of evenings on the web. In 2015 we’ll see more stunning and high-quality websites built with generators like Generator, Squarespace, Macaw, Webflow or Froont.

Personal Websites Give Employers the Big Picture

Before we go any further, it’s important to clarify that we’re not proclaiming the end of the CV as we know it. As a basic recruiting approach, it certainly has its place, but for any role with a level of complexity, to use it as a stand-alone tool, makes the recruiting process pretty hard.

When it comes to an employer recruiting, finding the best candidate possible for the role in the shortest amount of time possible is often paramount. This combination of requirements often works at odds with each other, and one of hiring’s biggest problems is that it requires the recruiting team to judge a person on 800 words and an A4 piece of paper. Not only because it requires HR to make initial decisions based on very little information, but also because this method massively undersells any candidate worth his or her salt.

CV’s don’t necessarily tell the full story the way a personal website can because a candidate can include video, and actual examples of their work, plus so much more. Employers can be led to feel more in touch with an applicant. There are several areas which would find a huge advantage in a ‘show and tell’ approach to CVs. Anyone who works in advertising, marketing, event management or any creative or artistic industry will struggle effectively to showcase their work and career highlights – a personal website can be an effective tool to demonstrate their capability.

Personal Websites Allow Expression of Individuality:

LinkedIn delivers much of the capability a personal website delivers. The general consensus is LinkedIn delivers on its 300 Million users. In the past, you got a fairly basic profile, but now days you can add backgrounds, video, links to other sites and even allow users to view your slide presentations.

Where LinkedIn comes undone is that it won’t allow social media feeds, in members LinkedIn profiles. Take for example Krista Gray’s personal website which has direct feeds from her Instagram, Twitter and Pintrest which summarises her thoughts, interactions, interests and what inspires her.

Above all people will want to express their individuality in terms of them being unique individuals. Something LinkedIn cannot possibly do, with its one for all, standardised format.

Conclusion

In an age of choice, people want more of it. People like Barnaby who want to be found on their terms and be able to address what flavour they want to add to their personal brand. This is important and will increasingly become more important. In a tough job market, applicants will need a way to stand out. A personal website is an effective tool to do this. Are personal websites going to be on the increase in the future? We certainly think so.

This article was kindly supplied by Haystack Jobs.