"Employee Brand" in the Highly Competitive B-School world..

The Best thing about marketing I personally like and appreciate is that it is one of those subjects which do not have a fixed formula to arrive at a solution. The Scope and Limits of Marketing as a subject is not yet defined and will not be.

Most of us are brought up through our Marketing courses talking about Consumer Brands and Consumer patterns. A Consumer brand can be defined as "Brands of products which a consumer prefer to buy at a given point in time". It talks about the favorite brand to which the consumer is loyal. For instance : in the portable music world Apple's I Pod is favorite brand for many music freaks, these freaks are loyal to this brand when it comes to music.

If a Consumer's preference for his/her favorite product can be analysed as a Consumer Brand then there has to be something termed as Employee Brand which talks about the favorite company a person wants to work for. This is what I was thinking about today after a day long of skimming and scanning through texts on "Consumer Behavior".

As I am a restless guy who is just about to complete my Post Graduation in Management, I could try and connect the term "Employee Brand" to my own classmates and myself who are on the edge of getting into a corporate world. Every student has a predefined goals about his/her career, they have their dream companies where they want to work. But what are those factors which influences or drive this attraction towards these companies to call them as dream companies?

Are they family generated?

Are they generated as a result of the individual's immediate environment?

Does the Market drives this attractions?

Does the Education system creates this? and so on.

These were the questions popping into my brain. I tried to understand it by connecting it to Consumer and stimuli concept. Like advertisements, family background, economic position, social status, lifestyle etc influences the consumers preference for a given set of products; likewise many such factors like family background, friends reference, experts opinion, market condition etc influences an individual to select a company as his dream company.

This culture of "Employee Brand" has become a culture in B-schools scenario. A fraction of students when they join the program know exactly where they want to work in future or what they want to do, the other students just get influence by them and follow. Due to this kind of following few companies have become a target of many which are best in their industry. But in this following system, the students loose connection from what is actually having in the business world around, which industries are booming and which are the best companies in these booming industries. I personally think the students should be provided proper guidance about this kind of career opportunity which could help them in selecting the best suitable "Employee Brand" for them.

I find myself lucky enough to have been guided by Dr.Ravi Paturi and Prof. Ajay Kumar in this context at Aurora's.

Regards,

Rohit Tiwari