Latest news with #summerBreak
Forbes
09-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Summer Is The Smartest Season To Build Your Personal Brand
Photo credit We often think of summer as a season to cut down on our professional commitments while taking vacations and letting career development slide. Taking a break is absolutely essential to your physical and mental well-being. And, in addition to spending some time at the beach or checking out a city you've always wanted to visit, investing in your personal brand will have a big impact on your mindset, career, and mood for the remainder of the year. Commit To Building Your Personal Brand This Summer A little summertime personal branding will give you the competitive edge. That's because while others put their careers on pause, you can set the stage for a major career boost when the days get shorter and the leaves start to fall. Here's why now is the perfect time to focus on your personal brand, along with ways to leverage this time effectively. People maintain a more casual attitude toward work during the summer months, giving you time to focus on yourself. Building a meaningful personal brand requires reflection, creation, and planning, all of which become easier when you aren't overwhelmed by the size of your to-do-list. You have more opportunity to reflect on your career goals and personal value, while getting clear on your brand differentiation. Take advantage of this mental space to reconnect with your purpose, clarify your goals, and create content or messaging that reflects your authentic self. The fourth quarter is often the most important part of the calendar year. Q4 is when next year's budget decisions are finalized, promotions are discussed, and year-end results are measured. When you delay engaging in brand-building activities until September, you automatically become less competitive. Focused brand-building during the summer gives you a strategic edge when the year-end race begins. Many organizations hold their performance reviews starting in September. Your leaders begin gathering feedback during this time as they evaluate your contributions and seek out promising team members for salary increases and promotions. Your personal brand helps you influence that conversation. It helps guide decision-makers by highlighting your strengths, achievements, and future ambitions. The summer season lets you reflect on and update your achievements so you're ready to have a meaningful conversation with your manager. Summer tends to bring lighter workloads and lower stress, freeing your mind for creative thinking. When your daily work commitments decrease, your brain has the space to be more creative. The change in energy enables you to think and establish fresh, original ideas. This is ideal for personal branding activities, many of which benefit from space to daydream, reflect, and explore new ideas. Most people turn on autopilot mode during the summer months. That includes your colleagues, peers, and competitors. People often reduce their online activity during this time by publishing less content, attending fewer networking events, and engaging less frequently on social media. That makes it the perfect time for you to stand out. Your content and contributions are more likely to be seen while others are coasting. Summer visibility helps position you as a consistent, relevant voice while others are off the radar. Consistency is key to effective branding. Your personal branding strategy involves maintaining relationships along with your professional identity. Summer is a great time to reconnect with peers, mentors, clients, and other key contacts. During summer months, people become more available and open to connecting while avoiding the hectic pace. These small touchpoints strengthen your network and help you stay top of mind. All strong brands have a growth mindset. To expand your personal brand, you need to enhance your skills and adopt new behaviors and mindsets. Professional development often feels like a luxury we can't afford. Summer creates both the time and physical space for pursuing learning. Use this time to upskill. Whether it's through a short online course, reading industry books, or even experimenting with tools like AI, learning will help you amplify your brand. Your primary mindset during the busy work periods is performance-oriented. During summer, you have a little more freedom to take a step back and view things from a broader perspective. Allocate summertime to analyze your brand strategy. Where do you want to go next in your career? What have you learned over the past year that could inform your future plans? How can you make sure your digital brand reflects who you are and where you want to go? That means reviewing and updating your LinkedIn profile, making sure it is current and reflects what you want to do next. Do you know how others perceive your brand? Do you maintain regular presence across essential platforms that matter? Use this slower season to sketch out a simple, six-month personal brand strategy with answers to those questions. AI Can Help You Uncover And Build Your Personal Brand AI can help jumpstart your personal brand work, especially when you're not sure where to begin. First, help your preferred AI tool get to know you. Then, engage in conversations with AI to help get deeper clarity. The AI skills you learn will help you reduce your workload in the fall. Embed AI systems into your work activities strategically to free up time that you'll be able to devote year-round to building the brand called YOU. Engaging with AI as part of all work activities (including personal branding) is like having an assistant who never takes a vacation. Make Time For Your Personal Brand This Summer Personal branding is one of the most powerful ways to reach your goals. It's the opportunity to lean into what makes you, you. The summer season gives you some much-needed time to focus on those personal branding activities that will set you up for success in the fall and the coming year. So go ahead and spend some time at the beach, but also spend a little time on your brand. Your future self will thank you. William Arruda is a keynote speaker, author, and personal branding pioneer. Join him as he discusses clever strategies for using AI to express and expand your brand in Maven's free Lightning Lesson. If you can't attend live, register to receive the replay.
Wall Street Journal
31-05-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
International Students Fear Leaving the U.S. as Trump's Visa Threats Mount
Finals are wrapping up on U.S. campuses, but international students are struggling with a bigger test: Stay put during the summer break or travel home and risk not getting back. The Trump administration's growing crackdown on foreign students—threatening schools' ability to enroll them, revoking or withholding visas, and signaling tougher re-entry—is forcing students to make high-stakes decisions with little information.
