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When it comes to looking for a job, your personal brand is defined as:

The way you want potential employers to

perceive, think, and feel about you

compared to other candidates.

Just as name brands exist in our minds, your personal brand as a college grad exists in the minds of recruiters and potential bosses in the way they perceive, think, and feel about you when they compare you to other candidates. Let’s dive deeper into this definition, and focus on three key words: perceive, think, and feel. They’ve been carefully chosen for a reason.

Perceive: In marketing, the way you perceive something is reality. When it comes to your college grad personal brand, it doesn’t matter who you think you are. What matters instead is how the interviewer perceives you. If a potential boss sees you as very different from who you actually believe you are inside, you’re probably not communicating the personal brand you want. You’ll need to do some work to make sure you’re presenting your best possible brand in interviews.

Think: On the one hand, our brains have a lot to do with how we think about brands, so branding is a fairly rational exercise. There are some good solid reasons we choose one brand over another. The same holds true when it comes to personal branding for a job search — you need to consider what your potential employers will think about you. What are the reasons a potential boss might believe you are better for the job than another candidate?

Feel: On the other hand, branding is also a very emotional process. Stop and consider that one brand from earlier in this chapter that you said you are intensely loyal to. What do you feel when you think about that brand? Trust? Reliability? We establish relationships with name brands, and these relationships are based on much more than just what the products do for us. We’re loyal to these brands because of the emotional connection we have with them. It’s the same in personal branding. The way recruiters and potential bosses feel about you can make or break your success.

Here’s the stark reality: Interviewers hire people they like. In fact, some recruiters estimate that as much as 40% of the hiring decision is based on whether or not you were liked in your interview. If you think about it, this is also the case with name brands. After all, you buy name brands you like, right? The same holds true on the job. Don’t you prefer being around people you like, and, if the hiring decision were up to you, wouldn’t you hire someone you’d like to spend time with?

It’s no different with employers. They hire people they believe they’ll like working with, and YOU^TM are no exception. The truth is: Interviewers will hire you because they like you and because you’ve made a connection with them. This doesn’t mean, of course, that you’ll be hired if you’re completely unable to do the job, but even if your skills aren’t as good as someone else’s, you could get hired if you hit it off with the recruiter.

The stronger the connections you create before, during, and after your job interviews, the more powerful your personal brand will be throughout your entire job search process.