Brand: Corporations, politicians and celebrities all have one. Thinking of your brand can be intimidating, or it can remind you of those inevitable pesky Thanksgiving dinner questions your aunt and uncle never fail to ask. And I hate to be reminiscent of the nosy adults we all have in our lives, but these are the questions we need to be asking ourselves.
It’s true, the job we may have in five years might not even have been created yet (or you might be doing it already, unpaid intern style), but when you’re applying for that dream job, whether it’s next year when you finish college or in ten years, you have to think about how you have presented yourself to the public up until that point. Technology is going nowhere but up, folks. A quick Google search done by any potential employee can bring up your Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and anything else with your name on it. For example, when I Google myself I can find the names of my family members, every Pin I’ve ever liked on Pinterest, the Odyssey articles I’ve written and all my social media profiles. And that’s just what can be found on the first page.
Thanks to Facebook’s new(ish) memories option, we can all get a daily reminder of every status and picture we’ve posted since that one time Myspace was cool. I don’t know about everyone else, but in 2008 I felt the obsessive need to update my friends list on everything I did and who I did it with. The shame I feel now is an excellent reminder that while there’s nothing incriminating going on, that is not necessarily what I want a potential boss to see when he or she is deciding if they want to interview me or when I’m on a short list of potential job candidates.
That being said, I’m not suggesting you run straight to your Facebook account and scrub it clean of everything you’ve ever posted. Use it to your advantage, and use it to create a brand for yourself. When you apply for a job, you send in your resume and maybe answer a few questions (I just applied for an internship that asked what my personal hashtag would be). If you’re using your online presence to your advantage, it can be a great tool to help flesh out the person behind the resume. It can show your interests, your passions and the most important question of all: Are you a cat person or a dog person? Tina Fey said in her incredibly hilarious book, "Bossypants," “Don’t hire anyone you wouldn’t want to run into in the hallway at three in the morning.” Use your social media presence to show potential employers and coworkers you’ll be a great professional and personal addition to their team, even at three in the morning.
Moral of the story is, everyone should whip out their phones right now and Tweet about how hard they’re studying and how much they’re enjoying their Monday, Wednesday, Friday 8:30 a.m. lecture. Just kidding. Kind of.
At the end of the day, we’re in control of what we put out there for the world to see (with our name on it) and like with all power, it comes with great responsibility.
