Personal-Branding and My Career
Personal-branding is another aspect in finding a job. In my professional life, I am hoping to be either working in sports production or with collegiate sports in the athletic communications field (which is what my internship is in). As with any field, a great applicant needs to have all types of skills to put them ahead of the competition, and a personal-brand is something that can give an applicant that extra boost in the application process.
For the career I want, personal-branding is very important. There can be plenty of qualified candidates to be hired by a company like ESPN for example, so how can I make that impact on my future employer to show that I am a great fit for the job? This is where my brand will come in to play.
Ilana Gershon writes about her opinion on the personal-branding rise in her book Down and Out in the New Economy. She explains on page 24 about a seminar she went to, and how the person running the seminar got hired at Google, saying, “What caught his eye was that she was one of the most positive people he had ever met, and he knew that she not only would make his work life better but would be well-suited to a customer service position,” (Gershon 24). This shows how a personal-brand can put you ahead of other candidates. Just putting out the vibe that you are a positive influence in the work place can land you that job.
Finding your own brand is something that comes from understanding yourself in all capacities. Gershon writes about the key to finding this, and it’s to choose “three or four words that capture your essence,” (Gershon 24). For myself, I don’t think this is something you can just come up with on a whim, and as I’m going through my internship, I believe I will find it easier to decide on these words to form my personal-brand, which will help me in the future in landing a job in the field I want.
The idea of a personal-brand relates back to what Gershon writes in the introduction of her book, saying, “People now think they own themselves as though they are businesses — bundles of skills, assets, qualities, experiences, and relationships, bundles that must be consciously managed and constantly enhanced,” (Gershon 2). In my opinion, this shows more of who you are, and not quite what your brand is, but the two rely on each other in the bigger picture.
Who you are is that bundle of skills, assets, etc. but your personal-brand is the thing that shows the skills that you cannot really put on a resume, in my opinion. Putting on a resume that you are a happy/positive person in the workplace doesn’t seem appropriate, but showing that off in your personal-brand is, and can land you that job at Google, as seen in Gershon’s writing. So, having these two elements of who you are as a bundle of skills and who you are as a brand are equally important.
Gershon finishes her writing on personal-branding saying, “The sharp division between work and personal life under the self-as-property metaphor has evaporated. Now that you are a business, there is no break from being a business,” meaning once we build that brand for ourselves, we cannot stray away from it. Every time we do anything, we have to feel like we are always “on the clock” so to speak (Gershon 59). If we act in a way on social media that goes away from our brand, we make ourselves look bad and we lose credibility in the eyes of employers, which is the last thing anyone searching for a job wants.
I imagine in a field like sports production, having a personal-brand that fits what the employer is looking for is key in standing out from many candidates. Once I find a brand that fully encompasses me, I will be able to search for a job knowing that not only do I have the skills to perform in my career, but I also have the brand to show truly what I offer to employers.
