Within the personal branding movement, people and their careers are marketed as brands complete with promises of performance, specialized designs, and tag lines for success. Because personal branding offers such a startlingly overt invitation to self-commodification, the phenomenon invites a careful and searching analysis. This essay begins by examining parallel developments in contemporary communication and employment climates and exploring how personal branding arises as (perhaps) an extreme form of a market-appropriate response. The contours of the personal branding movement are then traced, emphasizing the rhetorical tactics with which it responds to increasingly complex communication and employment environments. Next, personal branding is examined with a critical eye to both its effects on individuals and the power relations it instantiates on the basis of social categories such as gender, age, race, and class. Finally, the article concludes by reflecting on the broader ethical implications of personal branding as a communication strategy.

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This article explores the function of the ubiquitous question, "What are you going to do with that major?," in advancing particular meanings of work, higher education, and the work-higher education relationship. Analyzing 110 student descriptions of encounters with the question suggests that the colloquialism powerfully shapes student interpretations of work and education, cementing vocational understandings of higher education and perpetuating a linear view of careers. Such interpretations pressure students to make early commitments to particular identities and induce significant anxiety, particularly in those whose majors are not seen as preparing them for preferred forms of work.

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