Holly Clark: just like a chocolate milkshake only crunchy

So I recently joined LinkedIn in the hopes of becoming Australia’s Next Top Communications Professional.

It’s a very interesting concept, thinking about yourself as a brand.

As communications graduates we have spent a few years and many thousands of dollars analysing the summary of impressions and attitudes which culminate in an organisation’s brand, and how we may hope to shape these.

Now, on the cusp of a professional debut into the industry, we are told to imagine ourselves as a brand and position our personality as our biggest asset. These are interesting terms to think in, and frankly may take a while to sink in.

But at the end of the day, when you kick off the Senso’s worth a few month’s hard labour at an internship, and think about your career prospects with a weird mixture of excitement and abject horror, the good news is that you happen to be the world’s foremost expert on your own brand. You may in fact have spent years cultivating it, grooming yourself physically by covering up zits with the text bar on snapchat and ideologically by studying hard and knowing what the abbreviations CMS, SEO and PRIA stand for.

It doesn’t have to be such a dirty concept if you imagine brand management as a realisation of the person you want people to think you are…. a leaked trailer of a movie which will be amazing but isn’t quite finished yet….or a sneaky peak of the person you will evolve into with the employer’s help and guidance.

When I walk into job interviews I always feel empowered by the fact that I have so much control over the snapshot the employer gets of my personality. The interviewer has not perchanced to run into me in the loos of a nightclub or in the changing rooms of target on a fellow quest for shapewear. I’m in there prepped with hours of research on the company, its values, the position and the interviewer’s LinkedIn profiles, with hopefully a killer winged eye and a good hair day.

They have about 30 minutes to judge whether I am a complete sociopath or worth investing thousands of dollars in. Will the candidate be the type to steal their stuff from the fridge? Will they sniff all the time? Will they turn into a dithering mess on the first sign of pressure?

Terms such as “self motivated” “strong verbal and non verbal” and “collaborative” are pretty easy to drop in into an interview if you’ve had some practice. But if I were an employer I’d be asking these simple day to day questions, because I feel that the candidate who is incredible at using HR buzzwords, showcasing left and right brain excellence and speaking for hours about how they were a Roman Emperor in a past life may do extremely well in a job interview but might be an absolute nightmare to walk into the office and greet of a morning.

For now, I’m going to spruik the fact that I am simply nice and talented and see where that gets me, because I think a brand is easiest to sell if its based on truth and integrity.