Careers & Brands

Steve Shu has an interesting piece up over at his blog on the importance of brand name recognition in employing firms:

But fact of the matter in professional situations, like when I'm in a room introducing myself and there are brand names like Booz Allen and McKinsey at the top of people's minds and perhaps sitting at the same table, people will often give me less attention until I back up my pedigree with actual experiences. Only then am I able to get myself ahead or on level ground. In some ways, it's another level of explanation that I need to get through before I can get across the message of the "real me".... in things like startup and engineering environments, where relationships are more closely knit, organization structures are small, and where interactions are more frequent between people, the notion of brand name will not matter so much. In a larger company, however, there may be many more one-off interactions (in certain areas of a company like business development or consulting), and brand name of your past employers may matter "more".

This seems like a pretty fair summary to me of the importance of brand name recognition in the working environment - most notably, that it's impact and importance varies from situation to situation. I would also add that training in a brand name environment is great from an anlaytical point of view - if you're in something like analysis or consulting, perhaps - but probably not the best option if you are looking at a purely results-driven discipline such as sales. The problem with sales training in environments where there is large brand name recognition is that the recipient of the training tends to learn to rely on the brand name of the firm to do his/her job rather than foster real skills and relationship development: it is, after all, here that "backing up your pedigree with personal experience" is the object of the excercise. The best way to do this really effectively is by having to.

Comments

[Steve Shu]

Dan,

Thanks for the link and for the additional comments. You raise some interesting points about cutting your teeth in a brand name environment with respect to certain functional areas. Sales and consulting are two areas that ring home close to me. There are definite tradeoffs there. As an example for consulting, I actually chose to go with a firm that enabled me to get more CXO exposure and vertical industry focus as opposed to a big brand name firm. Many other tradeoffs come to mind to though. I wonder what other tradeoffs people see, esp. MBA types.