In the contemporary U.S. workplace, corporate personhood is increasingly becoming
the metaphor structuring how job seekers are supposed to present themselves as
employable. If one takes oneself to be a business, one should also take oneself to
be an entity that requires a brand. Some ethnographic questions arise when job
seekers try to embody corporate personhood. How does one transform oneself into a
brand? What are the obstacles that a person encounters adopting a form of corporate
personhood? How does one foster relationships or networks that will lead to a job,
not just a circulation of one’s brand identity? Based on research in Indiana and
northern California, this article explores the conundrums of marketing oneself as a
desirable employee on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, and so on. I address the
reasons why the increased use of social media contributes to popularizing a notion
of self-branding. I also discuss the quandaries people face when using social media
to create this self-brand. In sum, this article investigates the obstacles people face
when they try to embody a form of corporate personhood across media, a form of
self putatively based on the individual, but one that has been transformed into a
corporate form that people can not easily inhabit.