Briefing Report

Importance of personal branding for employers

and students?
Introduction
This briefing paper focuses on the importance of personal branding
for employers and students. It will discuss the background of
personal branding, current research as to why personal branding is
important to employers and students, the issues surrounding
personal branding, implications of personal branding for employers
and students as well as a conclusion about the importance of
personal branding and recommendations. The aim of this paper is to
understand exactly why personal branding is essential/non-essential
for employers and students.
Throughout the personal branding movement, individuals and their
careers are marketed as brands complete with assurance of
performance, tag lines for success and functional designs(Lair,
2005).
Background
According to (Chiaravalle and Schenck, 2007) personal branding
became very important when Fast Company magazine ran an article
called The Brand Called You by Tom Peters in 1997. Soon various
other books joined in on the idea that you can now control your
career path and the time had come to take control of your personal
brand.
(Chiaravalle and Schenck, 2007) define personal branding as, the
process in bringing more value to your work, through the target
market you serve. You learn how to identify and communicate your
unique promise of value. Strategically the process of making you an
active partner in creating direction in your life. (Chiaravalle and
Schenck, 2007) believe that there are simple steps to follow in
creating your personal brand; 1. Defining who you are, 2. Spotting
your target audience, 3. Getting to know your competitors, 4.
Crafting a personal brand profile these steps help to create your
personal brand.
(Rampersad, Goldsmith, and Ulrich, 2009, p.3) gives the definition
that, Personal Branding is essential to career development and an

effective career tool as it helps define who you are, what do you
stand for, what makes you unique, special, and different, how you
are great and why you should be sought out.

Current Research
Primary research involved a questionnaire. The questionnaire
contained questions about peoples hobbies, preferred methods of
studying and personality questions. Five females and five males took
part in the questionnaire with all agreeing that personal branding is
important to establishing career development in the future. 60% of
the people asked preferred to learn verbally using speech and
writing, and a further 40% preferred to use visual learning such as
using pictures and images. This research has shown that it does not
matter what type of learning methods students have personal
branding is crucial to university students. Social media is a massive
part of personal branding, some would argue personal branding can
not function without social media. The secondary data collected
regarding LinkedIn (Bullas, 2015) states, that there are 347 million
users on LinkedIn of which 39 million are students and university
graduates, this shows just how big the market is for employers when
choosing employees which is why students have to make sure they
are stand out from the crowd through good personal branding. (See
appendix 1, 2, 3 and 4 for further facts and figures regarding social
media). (Deckers and Lacy, 2012) agree that social media is crucial
for personal branding as they state Networking is extremely
important to building your personal brand. Every aspect of social
networking has some type of professional networking system to it.
Current Issues
One of the current issues for students is brand awareness, (Montoya
et al., 2003) states that brand awareness is about knowing the
sources name and knowing what the source stands for. This can be
problematic for students as most students will not know how to get
exposure of their personal brand and if they manage to how to keep
the personal brand in a good light. This in turn has a knock on effect
on their employability as employers are not gaining the personal
branding they are searching for. (LearnVest, 2013) state that another
issue with personal branding is the fact that people do not have
their own website. You probably think your profiles on the big three
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are enough they are not. Everyone

in the world should have their own website. It can capture who you
are and what youve accomplished (LearnVest, 2013). This is
relevant to students as the majority will not have their own website
which is harming their personal brand. Having your own website
allows you to best control your message. It will allow you to portray
what you do best, samples of previous work, highlight your personal
mission/bio. This will then give employers a better insight into your
personal branding.

Implications
An advantage of personal branding could be injecting personality
into your brand and business. The brand is rooted in your authentic
personal identity. The aim with personal branding is to be known for
who you are, what you stand for and what you do for others.
Personal Branding also allows for more common ground to be shown
towards customers (Home, 2016). Another advantage of personal
branding is that you can establish the like, know and trust factor a
lot quicker as is more personal to yourself (Shillington, 2013).
Personal branding also allows to strive for excellence as once you
have identified your brand and the field of choice you can perfect it.
This will then show your audience you are an expert and will trust
your opinions and offerings, which in turn will give you market
exposure. It is vital to stay ahead of the latest trends and
developments as things always change in every industry (Pass,
2016).
A disadvantage of personal branding could be that most people
have various qualities not just a single quality. The idea of a personal
brand can harm some of your qualities as you tend to prioritise your
main qualities and reject the ones that do not fit into a certain
image (Hassan, 2014). For example, could your passion of playing
tennis developed into anything more than a hobby if you did not
drop it to maintain your credibility as a passionate entrepreneur.
According to Hassan (2014) another disadvantage of personal
branding is that it burns the bridges between your personal and
professional life it removes the barrier, this then suggests that you
are accountable for your action not just at work, but outside of work
as well.
Conclusion

Considering the reasons of the importance of personal branding to

students and employer, it is evident from the figures in the
appendices that social media plays a huge role in personal branding.
If students can portray their personal brand correctly through social
media this can be very effective in propelling their future career.
Enterprise that have been voted Graduate Employer of the Year at
the 2013 TARGETjobs National Graduate Recruitment Awards by UK
students and a panel of experts have stated that Personal
Branding needs to start from the 1st year at university. Not only will
this help you secure the career you want after graduation, having a
strong personal brand will fast track you on a very successful
career (Brand Stand is your personal brand standing out?, 2016).
Ultimately, this statement is correct in saying students have to start
personal branding from 1st year then improve on it through out
university so your personal brand is ready for when you graduate.

Recommendations
One recommendation for students/graduates of the importance of
personal branding is the four steps that (Chiaravalle and Schenck,
2007) have stated which include defining who you are, spotting your
target audience, getting to know your competitors, crafting a
personal brand profile. These four steps will help students to
develop through university with help from tutors, lectures and will
help start and grow your personal brand. Additionally, universities
should inform students just how important personal branding is and
should hold sessions with guest speakers, lecturers, and more
descriptive information on university websites on how to create a
personal brand. These things will certainly help students to gain
understanding of personal branding as they will receive first hand
knowledge about a good personal brand. Furthermore, employers
could make it clear what they are looking for within a personal brand
which will then give students the chance to create a personal brand
suited to a specific company/job role.

References
-Brand Stand is your personal brand standing out? (no date)
Available at: https://enterprisealive.co.uk/connect-with-us/tag/brand/
(Accessed: 22 January 2016).
-Bullas, J. (2015) Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/33social-media-facts-statistics-you-should-know-2015-jeff-bullas
(Accessed: 22 January 2016).
-Chiaravalle, B. and Schenck, B. F. (2007) Branding for Dummies.
New York: John Wiley & Sons.
-Deckers, E. and Lacy, K. (2012) Branding yourself: How to use
social media to invent or reinvent yourself. 2nd edn. Indianapolis, IN:
Que Corporation,U.S.
-Digital, social & mobile worldwide in 2015 - we are social UK (2015)
Available at: http://wearesocial.com/uk/special-reports/digital-socialmobile-worldwide-2015 (Accessed: 22 January 2016).
-Hassan, A. (2014) The ultimate list of disadvantages of having a
personal brand, Personal Branding, 27 September. Available at:
https://passiontribe.com/ultimate-list-disadvantages-personal-brand/
(Accessed: 10 January 2016).
-Home (2016) Available at: http://personalbrandinguk.com/7benefits-personal-branding-solopreneurs-and-self-employed/
(Accessed: 10 January 2016).
-Lair, D. J. (2005) Marketization and the Recasting of the
professional self: The rhetoric and ethics of personal Branding,
Management Communication Quarterly, 18(3), pp. 307343. doi:
10.1177/0893318904270744.

-LearnVest (2013) 6 things that could be hurting your personal

brand. Available at:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2013/10/31/6-things-thatcould-be-hurting-your-personal-brand/2/#60d234d83d3f (Accessed:
22 January 2016).
-Montoya, P., Vandehey, T., Viti, P. and Tim (2003) The personal
branding phenomenon: Realize greater influence, explosive income
growth and rapid career advancement by applying the branding
techniques of Michael, Martha & Oprah. United States: Millennium
Advertising.
-Pass, J. (2016) Four tips for building A powerful personal brand.
Available at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269523 (Accessed:
22 January 2016).
-Rampersad, H. K., Goldsmith, M. and Ulrich, D. (2009) Authentic
personal branding: A new blueprint for building and aligning a
powerful leadership brand. Charlotte, NC: Information Age
Publishing.
-brandsfortheheart and Shillington, A. (2013) The pros and cons of
personal Branding. Available at:
http://www.brandsfortheheart.com/articles/pros-and-cons-personalbranding/ (Accessed: 22 January 2016).

Appendices
1.

(Digital, social & mobile worldwide in 2015 - we are social UK, 2015)
2.

(Digital, social & mobile worldwide in 2015 - we are social UK, 2015)
3.

(Digital, social & mobile worldwide in 2015 - we are social UK, 2015)
4.

(Digital, social & mobile worldwide in 2015 - we are social UK, 2015)