Det finns bara en av dig och det är du… : -personliga varumärken som ansökningsstrategi-

The climate at the labour-market in Sweden today means that students who have recently passed their examinations find it quite difficult to find work. The competetiveness calls for a strategy to find advantages in the employment process. The strategy explored in this thesis is called personal branding. We believe that by building a strong personal brand you can increase the possibilities to influence the decisions of those responsible for recruitments in our society. The question we ask ourselves in this essay is how to build a personal brand with the power to give students a competetive advantage in the employment process. To find out what elements of a personal brand that may be important in this respect we have interviewed ten recruiting specialist. We wanted their personal opinions on what they consider to be of importance in the search for jobs, the application papers and during the interviews. By matching these opinions with earlier research on personal branding we have developed a guiding manual that will help young univeristy graduates building their own individual personal brand with the purpose to advance in an employment process. The results of this thesis are that we belive that young graduates can achieve a competitive advantage in the employment process by finding out one’s true self and transforming it into a personal brand. The work of building a personal brand is a continuous pursuit that runs parallel with the different phases of the employment process. During the execution of this thesis, we the authors, built our own personal brands with the aim to reach further in the employment process. We are glad to say that the guiding manual in this thesis helped both of us to get fullfilling employment positions