MarCom Professional

Gretchen Neels is the president of Neels & Company. Her company is the leading provider of soft skills training to professional services firms, covering all areas of business communications. Gretchen has over ten years of experience recruiting and retaining top talent at a number of prestigious professional services firms, including Bain & Company, Bank of America and Gordon Brothers.

Gretchen's company offers two amazing products: Business Etiquette 101 & 102. 101 focuses on the basics for new professionals, and those who may need a refresher, on what's acceptable and what's not in the workplace. More...

There will be one more post in this series, marking #10. Today, I wanted to bring out religion, so that maybe we could have a great discussion around the perception of Jews. Feel free to examine the information in this post, as well as my analysis and comment on it. This series has been much better than I ever thought it would be and I think the result of your participation has motivated me to get this series up to 10. I hope you enjoy and stay tuned for the final one tomorrow. The Series:

• #1 - Tall people are basketball players
• #2 - Glasses make you look smart
• #3 - Men who wear pink are homosexual
• #4 - The hippie phenomenon
• #5 - Only punks wear mohawks
• #6 - Ageism puts Gen-Y in danger
• #7 - A nice car means you’re successful
• #8 - Choose your major wisely

What is a Jew? Jewish people originated from the Israelites of the ancient Middle East. More...

The number one most important factor to employers selecting entry-level candidates is their major (44%). I think it's pretty obvious why this carries the most weight. If you are a finance major applying for an entry-level position in marketing, it may be challenging to convince them that your experience and learnings can apply to that position. I always say that you need to discover your brand during college because you have the most amount of choices, including which major you select, what classes to enroll in and what organizations you participate in. If you select a major based on what your parents or peers want you to do, then at some point you will be caught in a chokehold. More...

After dealing with ageism, I wanted to talk about social classes and how they are perceived by what they wear or what product brands they are attached to.  James Bond drives an Aston Martin in many of his films, which includes the DB5 classic car and the Vanguish. You can't tell me that those wouldn't profile him as a rich, successful and attractive person to females and business associates. The products we touch, the people we go out with and the companies that hire us all impact our personal brand perception. A lot of people are giving advice such as "fake it until you make it," but that isn't authentic. More...

I quickly wanted to share a few achievements I've had recently concerning this blog. Every time I post here, the blog will magically be syndicated across some very high profile and credible media websites. This is great for anyone I write about, as well as the magazine, TV show, awards and everything else I do to support the personal branding community. It also goes to show what you can accomplish in a single year by blogging. I hope to inspire you as we conquer the world together. Here is an explaintation of each source:

• Guy Kawasaki: First, I would like to mention that Guy Kawasaki invited me to be on his Career AllTop page, with 90 other career websites, such as Tim Ferris, Lindsey Pollak and Penelope Trunk.

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I hope everyone is enjoying this personal brand stereotype series. I think a lot of encounters we have with others go unnoticed and some of the ways we react to physical appearance can either hurt or help another person. The funny thing with personal branding is that sometimes you have little to no control over how you look (height, glasses), while other times you are in full control (mohawk, hippie, pink shirts). I really like the comment David LaPlante had on my last blog post, where he explained how a mohawk is a "social filter." In some ways I feel like this "social filter" applies to blogging in general. More...

As we continue with the many personal brand stereotypes that plague our culture, I hope you're being more observant as to people who are wearing pink shirts or glasses and are more understanding of their situation. No one wants to be made fun of or laughed at because of what they wear. People have the freedom and enjoyment of self-expression. I don't think I would ever see a large corporate environment hiring a hippie, without forcing them to conform. As we drift into the realm of gen-y, you will see different cultures emerge. Managers that are accepting of such stereotypes, as long as they produce. More...

I've been running a series for the past week on personal brand stereotypes. The purpose of these posts is to demonstrate how we are already perceived by others, without even noticing it. Sometimes we are penalized or ostracized by society for choosing to wear and act how we do, and other times we are rewarded by our differentiation. What I've posted about so far:

• #1 - Tall people are basketball players
• #2 - Glasses make you look smart
• #3 - Men who wear pink are homosexual

Today I want to talk about the hippie movement, which was a subculture that began in the US during the early 1960s. It was initially said to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. More...

Get Your Domain Name or Lose I tell people all the time to purchase theirname.com, but few still take the initiative. You need to secure your eBrand these days or it will come back to bite you. There are billions of people in this world and many share the same name (John Smith, etc). This means that once an alarm goes off in their head, they will purchase their domain name ahead of the others. When this happens, they get placed first in Google and have protected their reputation. Everyone else, has to find creative domain name strategies that STILL won't be as strong in search engines. Listen, there are people who are in the "personal brand domain name" business as we speak. More...

I typically don't post more than once a day unless I feel I have no other option. WordPress 2.5 is officially out, which means people who are using Wordpress.org and hosting it on their own domain must download the new version, while we Wordpress.com'ers have it automatically switched, without losing information. The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and it took the collective feedback of the entire Wordpress community to built the new look and feel.  Matt Mullenweg, in my opinion, is not only one of the smartest people I've ever spoken with, but his brand is righteous and honest. I interviewed him for the 3rd issue of Personal Branding Magazine, if you remember. More...