Do you have a personal marketing plan?

So, it would seem no one really has a personal career marketing plan.

Is it that we know implicitly our own SWOT; or like most businesses, it takes too much time to write a business plan, and we can just wing it?

I am not sure that many have people have a "formal" personal career marketing plan, but I do think that people manage their online professional brands so they can have opportunities "coming in" even when they are employed. In today's world things are so dynamic that I do not think a formal plan would stay "relevant " long. Maybe it is more practical for people to have something like an informal "Career Rolling Forecast". Cindy Kraft, care to comment here?

I will admit, Wayne, I was a little confused about this topic. When I think of a personal marketing plan, I think of our resumes are being the marketing product, and the plan as being a goals to get us to the next position. I would be interested in taking this topic a little deeper so that I can have a better understanding of what you mean.

Chris, it would be formally comparing yourself to your professional peers. I.E., I am a controller, I want to be a best in class controller, how do I separate myself from all the other controllers out there in terms of my skill set (including soft skills). Relative to your competition you identify your strengths (S) relative to them, your weaknesses (W) relative to them, opportunities (O) to make yourself better (more marketable) than them, and their threats (T) to you (I.E., they are more social media savvy, they are learning SEO), etc. SWOT is often used to benchmark a company against its competitors or an entire industry. In this case you are benchmarking yourself against those which you are and/or will be competing for the job you want (or the job you want to keep)

This conversation has made me think that it's odd that executives who often work from a plan in their professional life, would not have a plan around their own marketing.

A SWOT analysis is fine as far as it goes, but it's not really a plan... with a SWOT and 25 cents you can make a phone call.

Do other corporate finance professionals merely start doing stuff, without any form of personal marketing plan - however incomplete that may be?

When I think of a plan, I think of written and specific steps to reach SMART goals with a timeline. Is that out the window when it comes to personal marketing?