Today I’m going to bring up a topic that is softer in nature, but critically important to your career path in equity compensation: building your personal brand. Now, I know some of you may be thinking – “I don’t have time to think about my brand!” If that’s you, recognize that you are not alone. In fact, you have a lot of company in that mindset. I’ll attempt to convince you why you should be actively working to build your personal brand, starting today.
Is your brand on life support?
There are a lot of estimates, guesstimates, and surveys that try to pinpoint just how many people are a bit, shall we say, “relaxed” when it comes to focusing on their personal career brand. One study quoted on Monster.com suggested that 45% of people don’t think about it at all, ever. That got me thinking about how many of us probably realize that it’s a good thing to create a name for yourself in this industry, but haven’t put the priority into actually doing it.
Building a brand is about two things: recognition for your value inside the company, and recognition for your value outside of the company. I think many people tie their brand to the next job search – meaning that it only needs to be worked on, or polished off, when it’s time to look for that next position. That is a mistake. The process of working on your personal brand should be ongoing – there isn’t an end to the process.
5 Quick Ways to Build Your Brand
I’m a fan of tangible action items, so I’ve gleaned some tips from many resources on brand building. Here are 5 of my favorites – and they are all things you can do or begin right away.
#1. Own your online presence. “If you don’t brand yourself, Google will brand you,” says Sherry Beck Paprocki, co-author of the book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Branding Yourself”. According to the New York Times, “That means you need to try to control what information comes up when your name is searched online by a potential employer, as it inevitably will be. Will she see a professional LinkedIn profile or that embarrassing photo of you from Halloween 2005?”
Have you ever Googled yourself? Try it and see what comes up. An increasing number of recruiters and employers are trolling online sites to learn as much as possible about prospect candidates, often before scheduling interviews. Be very careful about what you post online, as almost nothing stays hidden forever. According to data published in the Wall Street Journal, 44% of employers consider trashing another employer on social media to be a hiring deal breaker. 30% of employers consider the use of foul language (even if not employer related) a guaranteed trip to the reject pile as well. The bottom line: guard your online presence and use your best judgment, even on personal social media sites.
#2. The rich is in the niche. I can’t guarantee you’ll be monetarily rich from picking a niche, but your brand will likely become more lucrative if you master a few things rather than dabble in many. How do you choose a niche? Think about what you like the most about equity compensation. Are you crazy about calculating taxes? Do you love recordkeeping? Are you a lovable accounting geek? Figure out what gets you excited and start there. Next, think about your unique strengths. Are you really good with details? Do you have a knack for writing or performing calculations in your head a light speed? The key to the niche is marrying your passions with your unique skills.
#3. Show your face. All I can say here is network, network, network. A 2010 survey by Right Management (an arm of staffing giant Manpower) reported that 41% of respondents said they landed a job through networking. I’ll make an unscientific guess that in this small industry of equity compensation, that number is even higher. Never underestimate the power of a strong network. How do you jumpstart a network? Volunteering in the industry (including local NASPP chapters), participating in industry events, attending conferences, speaking, and mentoring new professionals should give you a few ideas.
#4. Add more value. Let’s face it, we live in a culture driven by an ever-present question: “what’s in it for me?” When it comes to increasing your brand value, the number one thing you can do to ensure sustained growth of your brand is to add value to your community first. So in everything you do ask yourself if you’re adding value. What are examples of adding value? Creating something really useful, solving a problem that has yet to be solved, being accessible/approachable/and helpful, developing a unique expertise, teaching a new skill. It’s a simple shift in approach that can bring huge returns to your brand.
#5. Create a LinkedIn profile and keep it updated…regularly! LinkedIn’s own statistics report that only 50.5% of users have a “complete”profile. That screams “untapped potential” to me. The average LinkedIn user spends 17 minutes per month on their profile. At the same time, 94% of recruiters use LinkedIn to vet candidates. Imagine if you just completed your profile and spent 20 minutes a week managing your profile, making new connections, and participating in groups. You’d be way ahead of the “average”.
Bonus: Write down three career goals that will help you build your brand. When I say “write down” I mean, “write down.” The best way I can give color to what I mean is to share the story of a study of 1979 Harvard Business School MBA students. There have been articles and books that depict this study, and it’s been widely analyzed, but I’ll summarize it as described by the site Life Mastering: “In the book ‘What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School,’ Mark McCormack discusses a study conducted on students in the 1979 Harvard MBA program. In that year, the students were asked, “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” Only three percent of the graduates had written goals and plans; 13 percent had goals, but they were not in writing; and a whopping 84 percent had no specific goals at all.
Ten years later, the members of the class were interviewed again, and the findings, while somewhat predictable, were nonetheless astonishing. The 13 percent of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all. And what about the three percent who had clear, written goals? They were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.” Hmmm…something to think about.
Building a personal brand you can be proud of is not hard, but it does take consistent work. For more tips and resources, visit the NASPP’s Career Center. We’ve got an entire blog dedicated to career development, resources, and our Equity Expert podcast series.
-Jennifer
Tags: career, career development, LinkedIn, network, networking, personal branding
Is your calendar full for January yet? As we head into the new year, now is a good time to touch base with other departments that you work with throughout the year to review procedures and plan for the coming year. In today’s blog, I discuss a few of the groups you might want to meet with. Looks like it’s going to be a busy month…
Payroll
Schedule a meeting with payroll to kick off the start of the year. A few items for the meeting agenda include reviewing W-2 reporting procedures for various stock plan transactions (see our “Form W-2 Reporting Checklist” and “W-2 and 1099 Reporting for Equity Compensation – FAQs“); reviewing tax rate and limit changes for the upcoming year; and reviewing current procedures–what’s working and what isn’t working.
Accounts Payable
Forms 1099-MISC are typically prepared by accounts payable. If you grant equity to outside directors and other non-employees, it’s a good idea to meet with this group to ensure that any of their taxable stock plan transactions for the year will be reported appropriately. Ditto for any taxable transactions that occurred after the death of an employee or subsequent to the transfer of options/awards pursuant to divorce.
Accounting/Finance
For calendar year-end companies that haven’t done so since last year, now is a good time to review your valuation assumptions (volatility, dividend yield, interest rates, and expected life) for stock option grants. It’s also a good time to revisit the expected forfeiture rate applied to options and awards. Set up a meeting with accounting/finance to have a conversation about this. If you’ve had unusual transactions that occurred during the year (acceleration of vesting, changes in employee status, option exchange programs, other option/award modifications), it’s a good idea to review how these transactions are accounted for as well. You don’t want any surprises when your auditors review your financial reports.
Legal/Finance
You’ve probably already done this if your company has a calendar year-end, but if you haven’t, you’ll want to schedule a meeting with the folks responsible for preparing your company’s Form 10-K and proxy solicitation statements to ascertain what your contributions will need to be. Reviewing last year’s statements to remind yourself of the information included relating to stock compensation can be a good preparatory step for this meeting. It’s also a good idea to review the number of shares available in your stock plans, expected share usage for the next two years, and plan expiration dates, so you’ll know if a shareholder proposal relating to your stock plans is necessary.
HR
Review your current grant guidelines with HR to determine if any tweaking is necessary and to find out if HR has planned any changes to your equity programs for the next year.
Brokers
With cost-basis reporting going into effect for the first time with 2011 Forms 1099-B, you’ll want to meet with your brokers to find out what will be reported as the cost basis for stock issued under your stock plans and what information they will be providing your employees about the new reporting procedures. See my November 30, 2010 bog, “Four Questions to Ask Your Brokers.”
Section 6039 Service
If you plan to use an outside provider to prepare and/or file Section 6039 returns with the IRS and provide statements to employees, don’t wait any longer to get the conversations with your provider started. The deadline for employee statements is January 31!
International Advisors
If you offer stock compensation to non-US employees, it’s a good time to check in with your external advisors for international compliance to find out if any local requirements have changed and if there are any year-end reporting requirements you need to comply with outside of the United States. Where US employees have relocated to other countries, or foreign nationals have moved into the United States, also review the US tax reporting requirements with respect to these folks (even for foreign nationals that moved back out of the US by the end of the year).
NASPP “To Do” List
We have so much going on here at the NASPP that it can be hard to keep track of it all, so I keep an ongoing “to do” list for you here in my blog.
– Barbara
Tags: financial reporting, Form 1099-MISC, Form W-2, networking, proxy, tax reporting, year-end
A policy is only as solid as its exceptions. You may have a well-defined plan or policy for your company’s current situation that has bare spots that may not stand the test of time–and unusual circumstances. It’s difficult to cover all your bases when you are creating a new policy or plan, but it’s even more difficult when you jump into managing an existing plan under inherited policies.
The problem is that it is rare that a stock plan manager has time to pick through every piece of every plan document and policy and play out every scenario to determine if there are cracks that need to be exposed. This is where experience really counts; whether it is your own personal experience or experience you picked up second hand by listening to the holes other stock plan administrators have encountered. Whenever you are networking, attending a presentation, or perusing a discussion forum and you hear a new predicament, run–don’t walk–back to your desk and check to see if your company could potentially run into the same issue.
Just to give you a taste, here are three problems to think about:
Insider Trading Policy
Generally speaking, insider trading policies restrict the transactions of individuals deemed to be in possession of insider information. They help to protect both the company and the individuals by preventing transactions that would either be or appear to be insider trading. However, there are a couple places where ambiguity could trip you up. For example, if your insider policy doesn’t detail what constitutes a transaction, you could find yourself up against (or in the middle of) a blackout period scrambling to determine the correct course of action. Cash exercises and trading shares to cover tax liability on restricted stock vests are the most common sources of contention. Even if you’ve covered yourself by getting all your insiders into Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, there could still be an issue when someone not normally considered to be an insider is marked for a particular blackout period because she or he is either recently promoted or currently in the middle of a project that provides access to nonpublic information. If that same person has, for example, a restricted stock vest during the company blackout window, you could have a situation on your hands.
Fair Market Value
The fair market value for both grants and transactions can be pretty much any reasonable definition, which means that companies may set fair market value differently. Non-market days can be blind spot when it comes to restricted stock vests. Another tricky situation may arise if your FMV is defined in such a way that it is possible for someone to exercise an underwater option. For example, if your company uses the prior day’s closing price as the FMV for option exercises, an employee could exercise barely-in-the-money options and end up with an exercise price that is higher than the defined FMV.
Terminations
Your company can treat all terminations equally, but most companies do not. Voluntary, involuntary, for cause, death, disability, and retirement are all on the list of potentially unique termination reasons with varying impact to equity compensation. Of course, you want to have each reason clearly defined, but the blind spot could be what happens if the circumstance combines more than one reason. For example, what if an employee leaves the company and subsequently passes away during the post-termination grace period?
Take Charge
For larger issues regarding plan design and policy, there are a number of resources on the NASPP site to provide essential guidance. Our April 2010 webcast, “25 Ways to Improve Stock Plan Documents,” details more than 25 plan design issues that you need to be aware of and we have an entire portal dedicated to plan design with a host of resources under multiple topics.
There were also several fantastic sessions at the 18th Annual NASPP Conference last year like “Night of the Living Dead: Equity Compensation Horror Stories–The Sequel!” and “Key Fixes for Today’s Stock Plans: Clawbacks, Double-Triggers, and Hold-through-Retirement” that you haven’t missed your opportunity to experience–you can catch up by ordering the audio and materials today. I can’t wait to see what plan design treasures are in store for us this year! If you have a fabulous idea for a session at this year’s Conference, we are accepting proposals through February 28th.
Finally, don’t overlook your opportunities to learn from others. The NASPP has over 30 local chapters planning regular meetings. Making sure you attend your chapter’s meetings gives you access not only to timely topics and great speakers, it also gives you the networking opportunity to discover which issues are most important to your peers and how they are dealing with them. We also have an active Discussion Forum where you can browse, search, and even subscribe to the topics that matter most to you.
-Rachel
Tags: administration, equity compensation, FMV, insider, networking, Plan Design, termination