PERSONAL BRAND ESSAY

Personal Brand Essay – Who am I? In order to succeed in a diverse and competitive world, one must distinguish between his strength and weakness and understand how to utilize such strength. In the past few years, I had been contemplating on who I am and what I am good at. Through few life experiences, I finally discovered what my strengths and weaknesses are and I have been able to improve myself and apply my strengths to real life situations. My biggest strengths are the abilities to adapt quickly to new environments and deal with people with diverse backgrounds and personalities. I originally came from China and have lived with three different host families in the United States. I have also traveled to twelve countries and lived in seven different cities so far. Those life experiences really shaped me into who I am. Because of those experiences, I learned to be independent and to adapt to environments very quickly. Those experiences also taught me how to communicate and live with people that are very different from me. I was able to utilize my strengths in my past career experiences. I adapted to new working environments very fast and also knew how to deal with diverse clients on a daily basis. In addition to my abilities of coping with different people and fast-adaption, I am also strong at information organization and analysis. I have received high grades on many exams that required memorization. When asked about how I was able to memorize many things in a short period of time, I always responded by clarifying how I did not really have a good memory, all I did was to organize my information very well that everything on my notes was relevant to the exam. Indeed, I can cut through complexity, link all useless information together and make them become something valuable. In addition, I am also good at analyzing large amount of data and information. I can quickly find relationships between things that are seemed unrelated at first; I can also determine what information is needed to achieve my goal and eliminate the rest. My analytical skill and information organizational ability really strengthened my experience as an intern at a hedge fund in the past summer. I was able to analyze the market trend and organize information in a useful and efficient manner that my deliverable improved my team`s overall return by 33%. My previous strengths are mostly demonstrated in the career environment; in the social sense, many of my friends have mentioned that I am a very considerate person. Being considerate really helps me get along with people. I try my best to understand people that are different from me, I put others first in a lot of situations. I know how to empathize with people and help them as much as I can. Being considerate made me seem more approachable and more personable to people I first met. It helps me leave a good first impression both in career and social situations. It is always dangerous for one to focus solely on his strengths, therefore, I also asked for feedbacks from families, friends, and teammates in terms of my weaknesses. I am very assertive and stubborn, therefore, I might not be the best listener. I tend to assume what others want to talk about and interrupt in their conversations. I am also sensitive to criticism and disapprovals from others. After I received such feedbacks, I have been trying to show more respect to others and their opinions, I tried to think very thoroughly before I speak so I do not interrupt others. Those feedbacks from people around me really helped me grow into a better person and perform better at work and with a team. I tried to understand how I developed those strengths and weaknesses. I came close to my answer after I took a Jung and Briggs Myers personality test. My results are ENFJ (extraversion, intuition, feeling, judgment). As an extravert, I gain energy when I am with other people instead of when I am alone. I spend most of my time hanging out with friends and exploring things that I have never done before. I am also easily affected by the mood and action of people surrounding me. In a sense, I am more dependent on others than many introverted people. Another personality trait of mine in addition to extraversion is intuition. I constantly contemplating about reasons and truths. I often use inner perception about myself and can solve many problems on my own without others` help. For me, reason and purpose are more important than the result or the fact. I cannot accept an idea unless I truly understand how it functions. My third personality trait is feeling instead of thinking. As I mentioned previously, I am a very considerate person and I sometimes value others` happiness beyond mine. Therefore, I am easily affected by people around me. I also seek acceptance and like from other people, therefore, I value social implications more than strict rules. In addition, I am also more related to judgment than perception. I tend to plan my activities ahead of the time and try my best to finish my tasks as early as possible. Any change of plan tends to give anxiety. Meeting the goal and the deadline are very important to me. Being an ENFJ, I am very people-oriented. I am genuinely interested in people and value others` feelings. I am very organized and productive. At the same time, I dislike impersonal logic and am very sensitive to criticism. Knowing about my personality traits helps me identify a clearer career paths. Many analysts and researchers claim that ENFJs should choose career paths such as manager, social worker, sales representatives, etc. I am an accounting major and I hope to work in the advisory division for an accounting firm since advisory is a great combination of accounting knowledge and people/client based work. I am also involved in many volunteer activities. And my life goal at the end of my career is to truly give back to the society and environment as a social worker. In addition to my strengths, weaknesses and personal traits, my passions are also what make me unique. I love playing piano, traveling and volunteering. I started playing piano since I was five and half. Playing piano was not easy for me at the beginning. When all the other kids were out playing in the field, I had to sit in a dark room practicing piano. I wanted to give up many times and did not really enjoying piano. However, my parents always encouraged me and pushed to achieve one step further each time. By age of twelve, I successfully passed the highest level of piano examination in china. The experience of playing piano taught me to be resilient, to be patient with myself, and to not give up easily. It also helped me form a sense that once I really work for something, I could achieve it. It made me believe in myself and learn to appreciate things I might not like at first. Now I have grown up and started appreciating piano. I love playing it every day and playing piano has helped me relive stress from school work. Playing piano is the best asset I gained from my childhood. In addition, I have always loved traveling. I love the feeling of exploring and experiencing new things. Instead of being held back from things that I have never seen before or cultures that are very different from mine, I seem to be attracted to those diversities. The countries I have traveled to or lived in, and the people I have met from all over the world made me more confident in dealing with difficult situations since I have experienced so much that I feel like there is nothing in the world that I cannot achieve. Besides piano and traveling, I also devote a big portion of my spare time to volunteering. I genuinely love helping people in need and I feel very excited, fulfilled, and satisfied when I help others. I have gone to Costa Rica to help build the local elementary school, I was a merchandise model for a fair trade retail company, I did Chinese translation at an organization called Sure We Can and spent a lot of time with people whose jobs are collecting cans and bottles on the streets of New York and sell back to the beverage companies. I am currently an income tax preparer and filing income tax returns for low-to-medium income families in the Bronx neighborhood. Those volunteer works taught me to appreciate life even in the most difficult situations. I learned that everyone no matter rich or poor, black or white, extraordinary or common, all have very interesting and amazing stories behind them. I became very interested discovering other people`s stories and respect people no matter who they are. Those volunteer works made feel like I was worth something, that I had a purpose in the world and my purpose is to help others and do whatever I can to make the environment and the society a better place. My volunteer experience also gave me a clearer career path. I decided that I would only work for companies that are socially responsible. To best demonstrate my strengths/weaknesses, my personality traits and my passions, I decided to design a brand website. I want to use visual representation on my website in order to make my readers engaged. On my front page I would have a list of what my strengths/weaknesses, my personality traits and passions are. Then my readers can choose subcategories under those three main categories. The subcategories under the strengths/weaknesses category would include what my strengths/weaknesses are and also the working experiences I applied my strengths/weaknesses to. In terms of the subcategories under my personal traits, I would provide definition to those traits and also include my personal stories and. I would include the most pictures under my passion category. I would also list a timeline of what I have done so far in my life on my front page of the website. I might also shoot a video of myself therefore, instead of reading words and paragraphs, my audiences can also choose to listen to my stories instead. In order to keep my audiences engaged, I would find a song and attach to the website as a background music. I would also make sure the color, size and fonts of words and background on my website are easily readable. The purpose of my website would be to introduce to others who I am and what I can provide for them, therefore, it is really important for me to gain feedbacks from my audiences. Therefore, I would have leave comment areas under each of my categories so people can comment freely on my website and give me feedbacks. I would check the comments regularly and respond to my audiences. In case if people want to discuss matters privately with me or want to learn more about me, I will also have a page listed of my contact information including my work phone number, my email address and my work address. I am constantly growing and discovering something new about myself each day. In the future, I will try my best to eliminate my weaknesses and enhance my strengths; I will further analyze my personality traits and decide on what I could do better both work and social wise due to the personality traits I have; I will also continue pursuing my passions and have a greater influence on other people around me.