Before employees have to decide what to wear to work, they need to first get a job. To do that, more and more people are relying on their personal brands to help them in the job market — both online and in real-life job interviews.
Nancy Gray, a professor in the Marketing Department at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, teaches all things having to do with brand development.
Gray joined The Show to talk about how prospective employees have been trying to build up a personal brand to show off to prospective employers.
Full conversation
NANCY GRAY: Ever since there was a job posting and somebody wanting to fulfill that. I mean, really it's, it's timeless that we want to bring our best self forward to an opportunity that we see that would be beneficial to us and that we can bring value to the organization. But, in today's, this has come to the forefront because it's so easy for us to have a presence that is online for the world to see. So, this question is one that comes up often, and I've heard it asked, “is this a new thing?”
You know, in 1990s, there was a business consultant, Tom Peters and he back then said, if people need to focus on crafting a personal brand at that time, so he kind of brought that to the modern forefront of this. And, he believed that you really had to create this brand called you and what that looked like.
MARK BRODIE: Are we thinking about it differently or has how we think about that evolved over time? I just think back to when I was looking for jobs in the 90s and I don't think anybody said to me, “what is your personal brand?” It was more “what can you bring to this job?”
GRAY: You know, I think it's semantics. I think that what you were bringing to the job and how you were expressing yourself and how you wanted yourself to be viewed by that particular employer was your brand. You may not have called it such, but that was who you wanted that person to see you as what's changed about that today is that it's not just that person that is in the room that you are creating and crafting an answer for you are able to put who you are out there in ways, and we enjoy putting ourselves out there.
So, we use social media, we put ourselves out on our Instagram Stories, or maybe we have a feed on X. And so we're curating, crafting who we are, and so as we do that we create extensions of ourselves out into, we put those out into the world. And so instead of it just being confined to a room and someone asking you who you are, the whole world has access to see who you're putting yourself out there as. And so that is what has changed.
BRODIE: Well, it almost sounds like part of the brand is being careful not to show something that an employer will find objectionable in addition to or maybe instead of showing them things that they wanted as part of their company.
GRAY: Well, I think there's both, I think one thing that somebody, if you're trying to work on building your personal brand and you say, “OK, I want to create my presence. I want to show who I am.” It's really important to be authentic in who you are and putting that out there, and to be consistent in that.
And so I think that, keep in mind, that people are going to be looking at it. But, at the same time, if you're putting something up there, just because you think somebody wants to see that and they have an experience with you, let's face it, a brand is a promise. So, if their experience and what they find out about you is different than what you're putting out there, you've just lost that you, that sense of being consistent in the brand.
BRODIE: What is the difference between the way a company builds a brand, and the way a person builds a brand?
GRAY: That's just a really good question. And there are definitely some similarities in that, if a company is building a brand, the first thing I'm going to ask them is the, “so what.” Like, why does anybody on the planet need what you're offering, whether it be a service, whether it be a product, whether it be an idea and what value does this bring?
And so I think the same thing applies to building a personal brand. Is this, so what you know, who, who am I? What do I bring? What values do I bring? What skills do I bring? And just doing a reflection on what that is.
BRODIE: Do you find the concept of employees or prospective employees having a personal brand, is that more prevalent or maybe more important in some industries or types of jobs than others?
GRAY: Oh, absolutely. I think if you are, I teach in a marketing department and so if you were looking for a job having to do with marketing, it's a lot about storytelling, so how you tell your own story is very, very relevant. My education is in design. My PhD is from the Herberger Institute for Design in the arts. So, if you are a design student or anybody in the arts, then absolutely. Your brand, your portfolio, your presence is, is critically important. I would imagine in other fields, it's not as much. However, I think the need to have a good presence on LinkedIn is ubiquitous.
BRODIE: I just wonder if, like, depending on how public facing or forward facing your job is, if it makes it more important. Like I can imagine, for example, an attorney might have a particular brand that they are trying to get across to potential clients, or a radio host for example, you know, might have a particular brand that they would like to get across to a, you know, a prospective employer as opposed to maybe somebody who, who's a little more behind the scenes, let's say.
GRAY: Absolutely. I mean, if, if you are, you know, you, if you're a lawyer, you want your firm to be perceived in a certain way, you want yourself to be perceived in a certain way. And so if you're going to have to curate what you have to decide what that is, you know, what field am I in? What's my expertise? How do I want people to perceive me? And you're going to be crafting your story around that.
You just, again, need to make sure that what you're doing is consistent with what somebody is gonna receive or the word, that's gonna get around really fast.
BRODIE: As technology continues to change and evolve, what challenges do people have, in terms of trying to build their personal brand and try to get it out into the world?
GRAY: I think there's no hiding anymore, and what I mean by that, it sounds like a negative strange thing to say, but what I mean by that is that somebody puts your name into a search, they're gonna be all kinds of things that come up. So, I think a big challenge is, how do you curate that message? How do you frame your brand in a way that's authentic, but also is shielded from a lot of the noise that's gonna come across?
Theme music for this series was composed by Seth Villaescusa.
