Employer-oriented personal branding: methods and skills for Indian business school students

Purpose The purpose of this paper was to provide a framework of methods and skills for employer-oriented personal branding among business school students to create an effective digital curriculum vitae for employment and to test the students' awareness of personal branding techniques. Design/methodology/approach This was a mixed methods study which followed an exploratory model, where the findings of the qualitative first stage helped develop the hypotheses for the second (quantitative) stage of the study. The rich detailed data collected from the qualitative phase were used to develop the instrument for stage 2. Responses based on Likert scale were used in stage 2 to test the hypotheses. Findings The study tested hypotheses relating to personal branding, demonstrating that most of the skills and methods studied are held in high esteem by business school students. The study clearly establishes that these students possess a high degree of awareness about the need for employer-oriented personal branding and use various methods and skills to build their brand, validating our hypotheses. Research limitations/implications This study focused only on two top-tier Indian business school students. A larger and more inclusive study in other emerging market nations may validate its findings. Students from non-business disciplines could be studied to find out differences in approaches to employer-oriented self-branding. Practical implications Students may be able to brand themselves better through the use of the methods and skills tested in this study. Within the business schools, faculty mentors can use this methodology to support students in further consolidation of their brand with the help of social media profiles such as LinkedIn, Facebook and others. The skills learnt in the business school will stand the student in good stead, and the company will benefit from their personal branding efforts translating into commercial benefits for the firm. Originality/value This paper provides a structured approach towards employer-oriented personal branding of students, missing in earlier studies.