Personal branding is what you're known for. It's content, voice, audience, recognition. It compounds over years and helps recruiters find you.
Positioning is where in the market you're hired. It's level, function family, target titles, comp band, channel mix. It can be reset in a week and determines whether your current search produces offers or silence.
Brand is the slow game. Positioning is the urgent one. When a candidate tells me "I've been job-searching for four months," 9 times out of 10 the positioning is the problem, not the brand.
Brand can be built while the positioning is being executed. Don't sequence them the other way.
— Dr. Hosney Adel