Who you are and who you know: managers' employability, networking competence and personal brand

Weronika Szymkiewicz, Marzena Fryczyńska and Christina Ciecierski

Central European Management Journal, 2026, 1-20

Abstract: PurposeNowadays networks are one of the key factors supporting career development, while personal brand ensures visibility on the network, thus increasing chances of employment. Together, networking competence and personal brand allow finding new opportunities for career development and achieving professional success. The purpose is to identify and provide an in-depth assessment of the interdependencies between the variables of employability, networking competence and personal brand of managers in the latest journal publications.Design/methodology/approachThe first stage consisted of a systematic literature review (SLR) conducted using PRISMA 2020 guidelines. The second stage involved a bibliometric co-word analysis (BA) carried out using VOSviewer software for data visualization.FindingsNetworking competence and personal brand impact employability, but among managers this impact is limited to networking competence contained in social media.Research limitations/implicationsManagers can increase their employability not only by delivering high-quality knowledge-based work, but also by demonstrating networking competence. A manager's personal brand creates a strong, consistent and specific association between its owners and the perceived professional value they offer.Originality/valueThe originality and value of the research result from the recognition of networking competence and personal brand simultaneously as determinants of managers' employability.

Keywords: Employability; Networking competence; Personal brand; Managers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/cemj/article/doi/10.1108/C ... ho-you-know-managers (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/cemj/article-pdf/doi/10.11 ... j-10-2025-0303en.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:cemjpp:cemj-10-2025-0303

DOI: 10.1108/CEMJ-10-2025-0303

Access Statistics for this article

Central European Management Journal is currently edited by Associate Professor Pawel Korzynski

More articles in Central European Management Journal from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().