It is conventional wisdom that building a personal brand is good for you. But in a tough job market, it can become your competitive advantage. Something that will set you apart. Something that will give you an edge. Something that will get you a foot in the door. But how does one build a personal brand without any work experience? Is there a way to do it without coming across as inauthentic and cringe? Where does one start?

This week’s listener was exactly in this predicament.

On this episode of TFTY, host Akshaya Chandrasekaran consults Karthik Srinivasan, a communications strategy consultant and author of the book Building Brand YOU. Well-known for out-of-the-box thinking, Karthik shares surprising tips that can make anyone go on their own personal branding journey. Karthik describes it using this analogy: Imagine you live in a house with 100 windows. If you open all 100 windows, the world can see you all the time – that would be like living your life on a 24×7 video stream. But, if you carefully pick only five windows and open them, the world sees you through those windows and forms an opinion about you.

If you liked this episode, share a note with the host at [email protected] or take this form and tell us about your early-career problems, both big and small. We might have you on the show!

The First Two Years is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive business stories, deeply-reported newsletters, and a whole lot of stuff.