Personal Branding; Jockeying for Position in College
Written by John Rozewicki   
Wednesday, 10 May 2006

The State of University Undergraduates

I've noticed since coming to university that people are very apt to settle. Most of these people don't view their progress in life as a smooth slope upward. They seem to view it more as being tiered. Right now they're on the tier where they're going to university. They won't be off that tier until they've finished. As such they can't move up any higher, and so they settle in. They do only what is expected at the university and feel as if they can worry about their future when it creeps up on them.

Reasons for Complacency

It's not that these people are dumb. Most of them are not. They just lack insight. They don't realize what I said before about progress in life being a smooth slope upward. They don't realize that when they graduate they will be dumped in to the work force with every other schmoe who graduated that year. Many of them will have the exact same transcripts, recommendations, and skills as other people in their major. They don't realize that as it stands for them now there's no reason for an institution to hire them over anyone else.

Branding

This article is a semi-followup to my hilariously unsuccessful article from last week, You Are For Sale; A First Step to Worthwhile Employment. One of the most important parts of selling a product is developing a brand. Kleenex is a concrete example of a brand that has been so successful it is now synonymous with tissues. McDonalds is slightly more abstract branding, but is now synonymous with cheap processed food that is the same in every location worldwide. The book, Fast Food Nation is a great read that describes in detail the branding strategy of the fast food industry. My point is that branding can be as vague or specific as you like. It is possible for a person to develop their own brand. Donald Trump has invented himself as a brand. No matter how successful(or unsuccessful) he might be people will still gravitate towards him because of the strong branding he has created around himself. He's synonymous with token ruthless business tycoon who speaks his mind and says, "uuuhge!" This is how Donald Trump can have multiple business ventures be complete failures yet still get paid $1 million dollars per speaking gig for The Learning Annex. He's The Don, The Donald, or The Trump or whatever.

Getting the Edge

Branding is what separates someone from someone else. Branding is being able to easily state in one sentence what type of person you are. In another sentence what your skills are. In one more sentence what your goals are. Unfortunately, nothing else about you matters. Doing anything outside of trying to improve the contents of these 3 sentences will go unnoticed upon first impression. The people who are able to make a great impression are the ones who get hired. In the long term it will help to be more nuanced but your employer won't see that if they don't hire you.

Attitudes

Personal Branding is an attitude in the way that other concepts I've created such as Personal Entrepreneurship and Professional Smart Person are. People who are self-starters tend to have these qualities. They also tend to have more success than other people because they advertise and put themselves out there. I feel that working on developing a personal brand is something that puts me ahead of most people in my class. I've only met 4 or 5 other people in my classes who have this same attitude. I don't think that it's an accident that they're usually the most skilled people in the room. For those of you in the work force, what specific things did you do to make yourself more attractive to employers while you were still in college or at university?
Trackback(0)
Comments (0)add comment

Write comment
password
 

busy
 
< Prev   Next >