With the trend of work-from-home and flexible working arising from the Covid-19 virus pandemic becoming increasingly popular, personal branding will play a growing role in the workplace. Practitioners in a few industries, such as public relations, have been at the forefront of personal branding and will continue to attract people from other industries and even graduates to start focusing on building and managing their personal brands. In the near future, personal branding may become mandatory for graduate jobseekers and even further popularized in university and college vocational education.
Previous studies have shown that personal branding can help improve graduates’ employability, which is done through a three-stage approach: firstly, establishing their brand identities, then positioning their brands to the audiences, and finally checking how well it matches the company’s brand for which they are seeking employment. This study conducted empirical research on 80 science/engineering graduates no more than two years ago to determine the level of correlation between each of the three and their perceived employability through PLS-SEM analysis. On this basis, the study also explored whether and to what extent perceived external marketability plays a role in the impact of personal branding on perceived employability.
The PLS-SEM analysis results show that the conceptual model is a good fit. According to our research, the impact of graduates' core personal brand identity and personal brand positioning on perceived employability is not significant. This finding makes us think about whether the current personal branding guidelines, which generally focus on improving personal brand positioning, are really useful. The study also found that extended personal brand identity had a direct contribution to graduates' perceived employability. The most important finding is that the fit between personal brand and company brand makes the most difference for graduates' perceived employability, and perceived external marketability also plays a significant mediating role. This reveals that future graduates should look more into their brand fit with the preferred company when seeking employment.
This study provides valuable new insights into the impact of personal branding on the perceived employability of science/engineering graduates. Although the results are encouraging, future researchers can build on this study with longitudinal or cross-sectional follow-up studies.