It is a great relief that I entered the job market before the term “personal brand” had entered common parlance, because God only knows who I’d have decided to be if I was let loose on the project at the age of 22. 

Back then, I understood that one’s “true” self was something to hide from potential employers, to curtail any doubts about how serious, responsible and committed a worker you might be. I’d set my social media to private after submitting a job application, try my best (and usually fail) to keep the filter on during an interview, and keep as quiet and compliant as possible for the first six months once I got my foot in the door. I imagine I wasn’t terribly good at suppressing myself or my opinions most of the time, but I was terrified of coming across as unprofessional, and the way I saw it, having a personality at work was something you had to earn. 

But the world, and especially the job market, has changed. If we want to stand out, compete, succeed and even survive, it seems it is no longer talent or ability that we must prove and sell, but an identity itself. Women, especially, seem to be encouraged to develop a niche, something that makes us unique, a snappy, bullet-point summary to appealingly define what we’re about and what we’re good at, and we must promote it all relentlessly. 

It isn’t just social media influencers or business owners who feel this pressure – lately I’ve wondered about whether I’m doing enough to define myself as a writer and editor, too. Though if a “personal brand” is, as Jeff Bezos once said, “what people say about you when you’re not in the room”, I shudder to think what must be mine. 

Last week, the British entrepreneur Emma Grede, founding partner of Skims and CEO of jeans brand Good American, posted a video online saying: “We have got to address this personal brand conversation, because I believe that it’s really holding women back.

“Your personal brand is not something that you can sit down and manufacture, and I don’t care what TikTok says,” she continued. “It’s the result of what you actually do: your work, your reputation, the things that you create… The women that we all admire… built something undeniable and then we all wanted to hear what they had to say. The work came first, the reputation followed, and that became the personal brand. You never ever need to worry about looking interesting on the internet.” 

Surely, I thought, this is common sense, and at last, a woman with a platform like hers is willing to point out that “personal branding” is far too often style over substance, and a load of shallow, internet bullshit. Real influence should be the result of a successful career, and not the other way around.  

But Grede has faced backlash, especially among other female founders who believe that their personal branding and public image are exactly what have created opportunities for them and allowed them to forge careers. Our work can’t just speak for itself nowadays, they argue – you don’t even get the chance to work hard and prove yourself unless you get noticed, first. 

They may be right about what the market rewards. But that doesn’t make it a reasonable demand to place on everyone. Men just aren’t expected in anywhere near the same way to sell their interests, their appearance, their personal lives, as a way of making themselves popular and likeable and well-rounded. They can get on with their job and are allowed to have a reputation, not a personal brand.

A personal brand might seem like the modern-day CV, but it is a waste of time that would be better spent on getting good at doing something, not being someone. If you sit down and try to manufacture an identity for yourself, what you’ll end up with is not a personal brand, but a persona to perform. And what good is that to anyone?  

I could decide this afternoon that I’m going to be all about 5am yoga trapeze, 30 plants a week and productivity optimisation, I could commit to the bit and promote myself every day and try to build an audience and maybe I’d get noticed for this new, reinvented, aspirational self. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t change my actual personal brand one bit. In the end, the people who know and work with me in any capacity would still all come away with the same impression, because the true nature of a person is not something they can decide for themselves. Who I am is still decided by what I do, say, and the way I treat people. 

One of Dolly Parton’s more profound aphorisms was, “figure out who you are and do it on purpose”. I’ve always liked it, because rather than the usual “be yourself”, “love yourself”, “be unique” motivational quote fluff, it understands that we don’t always know exactly who we are yet, and it can take a little while and a lot of growing up to get there. Once we have, life is still about what we do – and not how loudly we declare it