It is far too easy to distort your abilities and undersell them, writes Jim Bright.
Traci from Fitzroy asks: ‘‘Is it necessary for most people to pretend to be someone they aren’t in order to obtain a job?’’.
Traci asks this because she believes she has ‘‘basically no employability skills’’. She says she cannot multitask, lacks confidence and is shy. Furthermore, her current role as a receptionist is not her passion – her dream job is in a totally different area.
She wonders whether most applicants simply ‘‘lie’’ about their abilities and attitudes. I suspect there are many people who can relate to Traci’s situation.
She raises several issues that are interrelated. It seems pretty clear that Traci has low self-esteem, which leads her to a self-limited view of her abilities and attributes. This is exacerbated by her working in a role her heart is not in.
It is not hard to see why she may be feeling overwhelmed and disillusioned by the whole jobhunting process.
Job advertisements can be intimidating for job seekers. Typically they are stuffed with superlatives such as ‘‘superior’’, ‘‘outstanding’’, ‘‘excellent’’ and ‘‘truly exceptional’’. I’d encourage Traci to understand the employer’s perspective here. If you were hiring
someone for your own business you’d hardly be likely to put words in your ad like ‘‘average’’, ‘‘mediocre’’ and ‘‘middling’’.
So Traci should be encouraged to take the view that if the employer chooses to label themselves and their job with lots of superlatives, it is appropriate for her to do so too.
Is this lying? Not necessarily. I would never condone any applicant intentionally making false statements. However, there is a lot of room between lying and brutal honesty and it is highly likely Traci’s self-limiting attitudes are distorting her own perceptions of
her ability.
For instance, Traci is a graduate. It is simply impossible to graduate in anything without possessing some employability skills such as writing, researching, organising, reading complex documents, time management, acting on feedback, taking notes and understanding guidelines.
Traci can boost her confidence and develop a more positive selfview by completing my simple achievements exercise. Take a large pad of paper. On the first sheet write the heading ‘‘achievements’’. To make it easy, I will give Traci her first entry, ‘‘I was born’’.
The idea then is to write down every single achievement from that point on without leaving anything out. For instance, I learnt to walk, I learnt to talk, I learnt to tie my shoelaces.
This may seem a little crazy because early childhood achievements are rarely going to be directly relevant to a job. The point is that by the time you get to an age when your achievements are job relevant, you will be so wellpractised at spotting achievements your memory will be primed to recall them far more readily.
Not only does this help you recognise achievements but you should end up feeling more positive about all that you have achieved in life. Finally, Traci would benefit from seeing her current work as contributing directly to her vision of training to work in her dream job by providing the necessary money.
This may motivate her to see her current circumstances as moving steadily in her preferred direction. Encouraging Traci to change her self-limited thinking about her abilities, to change her thinking about the role her current work plays in helping her towards her dream job and to change her thinking about the language of job ads will help her realise she does not need to pretend to be someone else to get a job. Traci has far more to offer than she thinks.
Jim Bright is professor of career education and development at ACU and a partner at Bright and Associates, a career management consultancy. Email marked clearly ‘‘FOR PUBLICATION’’ to brightside@jimbright.com.