Brand yourself right, position yourself aptly

Some time ago, I had a dialogue with one of the senior HR executives, trying to understand the contemporary hiring trends. He often emphasised the statement, “We hire value, not degrees”.

On probing further, he said they define the value of a job aspirant through his/her personal brand. This triggered many thoughts in my mind, and I started exploring various dimensions of personal branding.

The excellence attained in the academic journey of a student becomes inconsequential if it is not strongly positioned. According to an article posted in Harvard Business Review in March 2022, the job market needs authentic and unique personal brands that can add value to the organisational brand and 70% of the recruiters’ hiring decision is influenced by the candidates’ brand value.

Personal Branding is not just demonstrating one’s skills but is a process of reengineering oneself to suit the requirements of the industry. The aspirants must calibrate their cognitive strengths like emotional astuteness, and behavioural dynamics, and position themselves rightly in the job market.

Emotional astuteness: Emotional astuteness is leveraging one’s emotions to connect with people. Indeed, we humans are emotional creatures and respond to the emotional triggers that can be beneficial in creating a positive impression during job interviews. According to positive psychology, people who are emotionally astute can deal with any challenging situations at the workplace and can cope with any amount of job stress. So, emotional astuteness can be one of the potential personal brand statements that can attract recruiters. The students, during their academic pursuance, may invest some time to introspect on their emotional concerns and initiate appropriate strategies (mindfulness, creative visualisation, or autosuggestions) to invigorate their emotional strength and astuteness.

Behavioural dynamics: Workplaces are full of mind games that keep evolving on par with the changing workplace structures. Games People Play: Psychology of Human Relationships, a book by Eric Berne, says that our brains are hardwired to play games. These games may be positive or negative. However, the mind games are imminent, and the budding professionals must train behavioural patterns to deal with the mind games without damaging workplace sanctity or relationships. These behavioural dynamics are the crux of one personal brand value.

Strong narratives: According to narrative psychology, a story is a bridge between a sender and a receiver wherein the sender gradually reengineers the receiver’s thoughts or perceptions. Besides, the human brain is hardwired to be more receptive to strong narratives. Existing literature shows that the recruiters who seem to be more logical during the process of hiring are more vulnerable to emotional anchors that are present in the strong narratives. The job aspirants must construct an appealing narrative and deepen its influence on the recruiters. A strong narrative is the chariot of your personal brand value, and this chariot may be your cover letter or resume.

Digital presence: An article published in Forbes says that people are migrating from e-Commerce to social commerce. E-Commerce (selling or buying services or products over the internet) was dominated by millennials and social commerce (selling or buying services or products over social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn). It is crucial to note that social commerce is driven by Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012). These are digital natives who spend an average of four hours every day on the internet, as per a survey conducted in May 2021. Interestingly, contemporary human resource (HR) managers mine sufficient data about the job aspirants before they meet them for an interview. This means that HR already has an impression on the candidate before they could meet.

Therefore, budding professionals must create and strengthen their personal brands on social media. It is an undeniable fact that the current generation is very proactive. This makes the competition tougher in the job market. Some possible mantras to create a strong digital presence are:

• Creating your page on LinkedIn that narrates different episodes of your story of success
• Building your professional network on LinkedIn or Twitter
• Blogging about the competencies or information pertaining to your prospective job roles
• Being sensible about what you post on social media because the data can be retrieved by anyone

The aspiring students must remember that the job market is very competitive and the employers’ demand for the candidates is heightening. It is the right time for the students to invest consistent efforts to build a personal brand and demonstrate a personal value proposition (unique value added to the company) that makes them exceptional in the eyes of recruiters.

If your academic degree is a passport to the corporate world, your personal brand is a VISA that fetches your dream job.

(The author is a professor of behavioural sciences based in Bengaluru)