How proactively building personal brand equity can help employees’ marketability
基于信号理论，研究通过两项实验（荷兰学生和在职员工）发现，主动的职业规划能帮助员工建立个人品牌资产，进而提升内部和外部市场竞争力，尤其对性格主动的人效果更明显。
In a rapidly evolving job market shaped by automation, artificial intelligence, and organisational instability, employees face new demands to enhance their marketability beyond traditional skill sets. Despite a growing body of research on adaptability, little attention has been given to structured career planning as a means of fostering sustained marketability. In this paper, we draw on signalling theory and posit that intentional career planning can help employees build personal brand equity (PBE) and, in turn, enhance both internal and external marketability. We propose that a proactive personality moderates this relationship, with proactive individuals more likely to successfully leverage career planning and PBE with positive consequences for their marketability. We test our model in two studies: Study 1 involves an experiment with 585 students from a Dutch public university, and Study 2 involves a time-lagged survey study with 278 Chinese employees. Our findings suggest that career planning has a positive indirect effect on perceived internal and external marketability via PBE, particularly for individuals with a strong proactive personality. We discuss these findings in light of future research and practice.