I have a DropdownListFor:

@Html.DropDownListFor(m => m.SelectedOccupation, (IEnumerable<SelectListItem>)ViewBag.Occupations, new { placeholder = "Select Occupation", onchange = "form.submit();", style = "width:170px" }) &emsp;

This is populated from the following code:

public IList<SelectListItem> GetOccupations(string CurrentOccupation)
{
    var Occupations=_MapsContext.OccupationDesignations.OrderBy(e=>e.Occupation).ToList();
    List<SelectListItem>OccupationList=new List<SelectListItem>();
    OccupationList.Add(new SelectListItem
    {
        Value = "Select Occupation/Designation",
        Text = "Select Occupation/Designation",
        Selected = true
     });
    foreach(var item in Occupations)
    {
       OccupationList.Add(new SelectListItem
       {
           Value = item.Occupation,
           Text = item.Occupation,
           Selected = item.Occupation == CurrentOccupation
        });
}
return OccupationList;

The controller calls this with:

ViewBag.Occupations = _mapRepository.GetOccupations("");

This works fine when the page opens showing the message "Select Occupation/Designation", an occupation is selected and the data on the page filtered accordingly. If a different occupation is selected that all works fine. However, there is a 'clear' button on the form which resets this and other filters. I want this to return to dropdownlist to show the original message "Select Occupation/Designation", I've tried clear the m.SelectedOccupation which resides in a virtual model - vm.SelectedOccupation="". I've checked the above code that populates the list and it shows the first item (item 0) as 'Selected', but the DropDownListFor goes on showing the previous selection.