Samenvatting

Personal branding is a huge trend in the United States. Young professionals use personal branding to obtain a stronger position on the labour market. In the Netherlands this trend is just in the beginning phases. Most people are unaware of the meaning, importance, influence and advantages. The central question of this research is: How can young professionals best use personal branding as a communication strategy to enter the labour and entrepreneur market?

The first chapter explains the essence of personal branding and several relevant elements of this trend. A trend pyramid illustrates the development of personal branding in the United States. The thesis focusses on a specific target audience namely young professionals in other words generation Y. This generation will enter the labour market for the first time, a strong personal brand could be beneficial.

Personal branding comes from branding and can be considered as a communication strategy. The second chapter illustrates a number of similarities between branding and personal branding. Methods which are used when branding products could also be used for personal branding such as the SOSTAC and SMART method and a SWOT-analysis. A good start when creating a personal brand is doing a brand assessment. Here the match between someone’s identity and image will be found.

The third chapter gives a description of personal branding in the Netherlands. There are some differences in the approach on the labour market between the Netherlands and the United States. The reason can be found in the cross-cultural communication differences.

The questionnaires reveal interesting facts in the fourth chapter. The main conclusions are that young professionals are unaware of the trend personal branding however, 25% believes that personal branding could work in their advantage. The results also indicate that the target audience is familiar with certain communication tools but they do not know how to use these tools in an effective way to make their personal brand visible.

The entire research concludes that personal branding is an effective communication strategy for young professionals when entering the labour market. Therefore, a personal branding guide for Dutch young professionals, which gives a step-by-step plan to establish a personal brand, is created.