Personal Brand — Instructions of Use. Do Young Professionals Want and Need to be Taught Personal Branding?

The modern labour market has become a highly competitive environment, especially for young professionals, who often are either recent graduates or students in the last years of their studies. The energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, the global pandemic and many more minor forces caused significant difficulties both for those looking for a job and those who have decided about self-employment (Eurofound, 2022). In this context, the idea of adapting teaching at universities to the labour market requirements becomes a crucial aspect of the ongoing discussion concerning the didactic process.

Developing and implementing study programs that will meet the needs of both the labour market and young professionals entering this market is a challenge that — according to various studies, surveys and reports — universities are currently unable to meet. Analysis of these types of statistics leads to the pessimistic conclusion that graduates leave the halls of universities without a set of skills aligned with labour market needs in the short and long terms (OECD, 2021) — and in making this observation with regard to paucity of skills, we are including both hard and soft skills.

As it appears, in the constantly changing environment, soft skills, defined as non-technical skills that impact one’s performance in the workplace and support situational awareness and enhance an individual’s ability to get a job done, are even more critical. By equipping graduates with foundational soft skills, such as language proficiency, self-presentation to teamwork and time management, universities can prepare them to respond in an agile manner to megatrends and help them to upskill and reskill throughout their lives and, in turn, to thrive in the modern employment environment.

The authoress of the following paper is particularly interested in the situation of young professionals — self-employed entrepreneurs, those creating their first business ventures, start-ups founders and other similar classes of entrepreneurial persons. Conducting a literature review on the soft skills of entrepreneurs enables us to conclude that one of the key competencies might nowadays be an ability to create their personal brand, which, in turn, will reinforce the venture performance. Some researchers even claim that educating students on PB will be a critical element enabling them to succeed in the labour market (Culo et al., 2022).

For this reason, in the present study, the authoress initially analyses young professionals’ opinion on the PB role in their career and their assessment of previous education received in this area when studying at the university.

Following the introductory portion above, the remainder of the present study has been divided into four parts. In the first part, a brief overview of the previous research on education on PB is presented. The second part concerns the methodology, research questions and sample selection method, while the third presents the main findings of the research. Finally, the last part provides the conclusion, as well as a summary and critique of the findings.

The world of education is constantly changing. Gone are the days when a university degree was indispensable to work in an attractive position or develop one’s own business. In the age of the Internet and universal access to knowledge, higher education is no longer a critical pathway to develop the skills that lead to a good job and a successful career. Universities, particularly those wishing to maintain demand for studies and ‘make a difference’ to society and the economy, should serve students with a mix of knowledge and skills, and these should ideally be of such a nature that they are not only sought-after by employers in their potential employees but also would constitute a necessity for the students themselves when they engage in entrepreneurial activity in the future. Various reports clearly show that soft skills are an increasingly important part of this mix. The most in-demand competencies, called ‘power skills’ (Udemy Business, 2022), refer to leadership, teamwork, communication and productivity. Deloitte Access Economics (2017) forecasts that soft skill-intensive occupations will account for two-thirds of all jobs by 2030, compared to half of all jobs in 2000.

Constantly changing market requires special skills, especially from entrepreneurs. Starting and developing a new business, especially in such a turbulent environment as the third decade of the 21st century, is a challenging long-term process. As Gibb and Ritchie (1982) concluded in their classic work, in the emergent stage, founders must make far-reaching decisions very early, in a poorly structured environment and when they may have few resources.

This is why those who represent the so-called ‘entrepreneurial personality’ are generally more likely to succeed. A significant relationship between the entrepreneurial competencies of the leader and firm performance has been reported in empirical studies (Boyatzis, 2006; Chatterjee & Das, 2015; Frank et al., 2007; Yankov et al., 2014; Zaech & Baldegger, 2017). Various studies have confirmed that business success is closely tied to the specific psychological attributes of the founder. These attributes may take the form of personal traits, e.g. need for achievement, locus of control, risk-taking, self-efficacy, tolerance of ambiguity, autonomy, independence, optimism and innovativeness (Chatterjee & Das, 2015), or behaviours such as business leadership, financial discipline, networking, resource management and building relationships with employees and customers (Baluku et al., 2016). While most of these competencies are mainly innate, many can be learned and honed over time not only by practice but also in the course of formal education. The ability of PB is a competency that combines several soft skills — such as self-awareness, written and oral communication skills, social interaction, seeking feedback (Manai & Holmlund, 2015) and of course the ‘underpinning concept of personal branding — self-presentation’ (Goffman, 1959).

PB is defined as a planned process in which people make efforts to market themselves. According to Khedher (2014), this process involves three phases: (1) establishing a brand identity, which means differentiating themselves and standing out from the crowd while fitting the expectations of a specific target market; (2) developing the brand’s positioning by the organisation of an active communication of one’s brand identity through managing behaviour, communication and symbolism; and (3) evaluating a brand’s image in terms of personal and professional objectives (Khedher, 2014).

The teaching of PB was first mentioned more than 20 years ago by Shepard (2005), who pointed to some of the challenges facing higher education in attempting to create a curricular framework within which marketing professionals can learn how to market and brand themselves effectively. The author also noticed-and this is an observation that still holds good-that the authors of self-help books, career advisors and the Internet, in general, appear to be the primary sources of advice currently available on the subject, as academic programs and scientific research are lagging behind the business world and do not cover or barely cover this area.

Since that time, only a select multitude of researchers have discussed the need to include teaching about PB in academic curricula. Edmiston (2014) suggested that universities should provide students with a framework that leverages online media for PB purposes. In turn, Johnson (2017) advised academics to incorporate assignments into their classes, such as developing a personal brand statement or demonstrating one’s personal brand on social media, to facilitate students’ transition into their careers. Similarly, Wetsch (2012) presented the idea of PB assignment, intended to acquaint students with the possibilities of creating their personal brands through social media usage. Ilies (2018) invented a simple process model that can be used to create a PB plan with students. Stanton & Stanton (2013) developed an idea of an assignment based on creating a personal brand statement combined with students’ own evaluation of the results, which was an initial attempt to assess the effectiveness of the teaching of PB skills. In the case of this research, the students performing the tasks declared, among other observations, that developing a personal brand statement made them feel more confident about applying for internships or jobs (4.62 on a 5-point scale) and that the assignment helped them gain a better understanding of their personal strengths (4.33). It was also confirmed in the course of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modelling (SEM) that students’ personal brand concept belief and personal brand management efficacy positively influenced the personal brand authenticity of their later-created personal brand (Allison et al., 2020).

It is also worth mentioning that some studies in the literature considered university education about specific channels of PB, especially those related to the online environment, such as business and the employment-focussed social media platform LinkedIn (McCorkle & McCorkle, 2012; Zhao, 2021), and its tools, such as storytelling (Jones & Leverenz, 2017).

As noted by Gorbatov et al. (2018), two approaches to the teaching of PB are discernible in the scientific debate. One of them suggests that PB is a means to developing accompanying skills, such as awareness of online communication issues or metacognitive, creative and critical thinking skills (Lorgnier & O’Rourke, 2011), while the second sees PB as a core subject that requires to be studied in its own right, especially in relation to the provision of entrepreneurial, and other business field related, education.

As revealed by the literature review presented above, only in a few research studies were students asked about their assessment of PB teaching at the university level, as well about the extent to which PB skills could be imbibed by them through other avenues of formal education, and seldom were they afforded the opportunity to place on record their needs with regard to acquisition of PB-related skills.

To address the research gap identified above, qualitative research, with the participation of final-year students and recently graduated young professionals declaring themselves as professionals or entrepreneurs, was prepared. The choice of method, selection of respondents and method of data collection and analysis will be presented in the following subsection of the paper.

Following the transcription and extraction of verbatim quotes, the thematic analysis method (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to analyse the data obtained. The method is based on inductive coding and searching for themes, and enables the identification, analysis and reporting of patterns (themes) within data. The data analysis procedure encompassed six steps:

The results of the analysis carried out in this way are presented in the next section of the article.

The thematic analysis process applied to the transcripts elicited vital concepts evident in the data. In the course of defining and naming themes, a final set of four higher order themes comprising 14 subthemes was identified. Four main themes that emerged were labelled as ‘Scepticism towards teaching PB’, ‘Negative attitude towards teaching PB’, ‘Strong need of being taught PB’ and ‘Misunderstanding of the PB concept’. These themes are viewed as essential in determining the understandings of all the participants about the need of students to be taught PB. There are, of course, aspects of the participants’ understandings that overlap across these categories. This, however, should be viewed as a reasonable interpretation of understandings and attitudes in general, which are never made up of isolated concepts but are all relative to each other.

Below, the authoress presents a detailed analysis of all themes and subthemes with examples of participants’ direct opinions. All quotes presented below (in italics) are statements made by respondents during the interview, translated into English by the authoress. All themes and subthemes are additionally presented on the graphic thematic map, which enables a better understanding of relations between themes and some overlaps (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The detailed results above highlight some essential findings on how young professionals understand PB and to what extent they want to be taught the procedure. The four distilled themes discussed show that, in general, the need to gain personal brand skills is significant, and familiarity with the PB concept is widespread.

The key finding of this study is that it is evident that those respondents who present a negative attitude towards PB, or are sceptical towards it, usually misunderstand the concept — they perceive it in a way that is too narrow or completely incorrect, as well as inconsistent with the prevailing principles. This includes views of PB as manipulation or a threat to mental health. Of course, such phenomena do occur, but they result from pathological situations, and not from a properly understood PB process. Naturally, we can observe increasing scientific and popular-science discourse about the damage that PB may cause (Goldberg, 2022; Vallas & Christin, 2018), but still, this is the margin of the phenomenon.

In turn, many interviewees view PB as a ‘natural’ feature of the modern economy or as a set of practices and skills that any job seeker is obliged to master (RQ1). They understand that in a constantly changing business environment, PB is considered to be, as Loppis (2013) and Perkins (2015) have stated, a ‘leadership imperative’.

Scepticism about the teaching of PB at universities (RQ2) probably stems from the concerns and reservations that last-year students and young graduates generally have about the higher education system. This mainly refers to academicians’ lack of knowledge and experience in the business area, which, in the modern era, is a fundamental problem characterising the staff resources assigned for teaching of business subjects (including the teaching of PB) at universities. For this reason, the first step that is required to be taken in order to address the issue is to detect those skills and competencies needed by the labour market and only then try and adapt the curricula, accordingly. Educators need to present an interdisciplinary approach to make students more aware of market needs and teach them about the social processes and artefacts that influence perception, so that they can better create, maintain and control their personal brand (Montoya, 2002). This will primarily serve young entrepreneurs, who, in the survey, expressed a strong need to gain competence in PB, as they see it as their competitive advantage.

However, given the small sample size, caution must be applied and the findings might not be generalised. The picture of PB perception among young professionals is thus still incomplete, which encourages the authoress to conduct further research in this area.