Self-Branding: Me vs Brand
Ilana Gershon is an Associate Professor at the Indiana University Bloomington’s Department of Anthropology. She is interested in how new media influences our social tasks in daily life. More specifically in employment, work, and neoliberalism. In one of her books, Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today, Gershon discusses branding within the workplace, and that it is something that is advanced by job trainers, but doesn’t actually aid people in getting jobs. Rather, personal branding is just an idea that involves “marketing yourself” (Gershon 24). In the First Chapter of the book, she discusses the concept of selling yourself through personal branding. She describes a personal brand as the inclusion of “three or four words that capture your essence” and that “branding aficionados will call your authentic self” (Gershon 24). Furthermore, a successful brand is one where the qualities exuded by a person are “reflected back … in the words people choose to describe you” (Gershon 25). To do so however, people must “manage themselves as though they are businesses” and have “a marketable image” (Gershon 26).
Even though Gershon doesn’t believe that self branding will actually land people jobs, I believe that self branding and self marketing are the first step in paving the path to a career. I have taken time out of my many semesters here in college to try and think about what I wanted my self brand to be. They are as follows:
- Fearless
- Impact
- Strategic
I firmly believe that every part of self branding is important to any career. Employers want to hire people that they think that they can get along with and work with. Thus, the way that you sell yourself is very important. The way that I think about it is that I want people to like who I am as a person, so that they will want to like the work that I do. People aren’t as perceptive as you may think, and subtle hints at personal characteristics may never cut it. So, with self branding, people are able to sculpt and predetermine that image that they want to give off to others. With time, this persona will be perfected, and with confidence, will give one candidate the edge over the other.
My vision for my career is to be doing client-facing work in either Business Technology Consulting or in Finance with projects that are grounded in the workings of everyday and cutting edge technology. With backgrounds in Statistics, Media, and Technology, I have been able to grow and develop numerous interests revolving around the relationships and interactions between technology and media, and the ways in which to analyze those relationships quantitatively. Additionally, through my ability to form relationships, I am able to bring new ideas to clients by building rapport on a personal level, speaking up to ensure a mutual understanding, and pushing the bounds of technological growth in their business.
I strongly believe that my personal brand should be no less representative of who I am as a person. I don’t believe that my personal brand should highlight any part of my person that I believe is not true to who I am as a person. As a very opinionated person, and my image of self is very specific. Specific in a way that is niche, and could be a standpoint that does not reach out to as many people and interests. However, I believe that because I am so well rounded while being able to relate to many different fields and interests, that I will be able to make up for the lack of distinction between my brand and my person.
