Career Confidence (eBook)

No-BS Stories and Strategies for Finding Your Power

Robynn Storey (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
238 Seiten
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-394-22092-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Learn how to bet on yourself and build the professional life you want as you grow in your career path

In Career Confidence: No-BS Stories and Strategies for Finding Your Power, recruitment, hiring, and job search industry veteran Robynn Storey delivers a detailed roadmap you can use to navigate the increasingly complicated and fast-moving world of work. You'll learn how to find a job that fulfills and sustains you while also helping you flourish in your chosen career path.

Through relatable client stories, the author burns down commonly held hiring myths and explains how to define and demonstrate your value to employers, showing them what you're really worth. She draws on her extensive, two-decade career in which she's helped over 300,000 clients find their dream jobs to give you the info you really need to get the job you really want.

You'll also find:

• Dozens of real-life stories and anecdotes of professional interactions and experiences that are at once humorous, inspiring, and sometimes shocking
• Strategies for combining the personal moxie that makes you truly unique with your professional work experience to create an irresistible package for employers
• Techniques for defining your value in both your professional and personal life

A must-read guide to a complex employment arena, Career Confidence will earn a place on the bookshelves of job seekers, interviewers, career changers, and professionals everywhere.

ROBYNN STOREY is the CEO and founder of Storeyline Resumes, the #1 most searched resume company on LinkedIn, where she has a million dedicated fans who enjoy her daily stories and advice. She has over 23 years' experience and has helped countless clients gain career confidence and land their dream jobs.

Textauszug

10
I'm a Fraud; You're a Fraud

I hate the term imposter syndrome. I know it is one of those fancy schmancy terms that people use to talk about stuff they don't want to talk about, but here is the deal, at one time or another in your life, you are going to get lucky. You'll get a job that you aren't qualified for. Land a deal you didn't think you had the balls to close. Land a boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse who is way above your paygrade or land a pair of $500 shoes at the thrift store, unworn, with a designer label for $10.

The textbook definition of imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their accomplishments, skills, or talents and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud” despite evidence to the contrary. People experiencing imposter syndrome often feel that their achievements are the result of luck or external factors, rather than their own abilities. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, anxiety, and a constant fear of being “found out” by others.

I am no psychiatrist and cannot even begin to explore why people feel this way, but it is more common than you think.

While we would like to believe that all the people we look up to, admire, and hope to emulate are in jobs or positions because they are so smart, so brilliant, so driven, so capable because they are akin to business superheroes, it's just not true.

Most of us have had a lucky break from time to time, and a lot of the people you admire, while they may be smart, famous, or successful, probably didn't get there entirely on their own.

Let's deep dive into politics for a moment. Have you ever seen or heard a politician speak and think to yourself, “This person is a blathering idiot?” Or how did this person get here? They cannot string two sentences together, or I cannot believe a group of voters collectively thought this person was the best for the job. Yep, been there. But, here we are. We have elected people to roles to make decisions for our country or state who cannot tie their shoes without assistance. They probably never once think they don't deserve to be there. No imposter syndrome at all.

Yet, every day people are often mired in self-doubt, questioning their abilities to do their jobs, or worried that once they've reached the top, someone is going to come and knock them down. They are consumed by negative thoughts, worried about someone “finding out” that they are not as qualified or capable as they appear and worry their entire lives about being found out.

I am here to tell you that this is so incredibly common, so prevalent, and if you feel this way, you are not alone at all.

So what should you do to overcome it?

The first step is to acknowledge that you are experiencing imposter syndrome. Recognize that these feelings are common and that many successful people have gone through similar struggles.

Share your feelings with someone you trust—a friend, family member, mentor, or therapist. Opening up about your feelings can help alleviate the isolation and provide a different perspective on your achievements.

Make a list of your accomplishments, skills, and experiences. Reviewing your achievements can help you gain a more realistic perspective on your capabilities and remind you of your strengths. Looking at things on paper can bring clarity to your accomplishments, much like taking a list to the grocery store can help you come home with food you can actually eat for dinner, instead of Doritos and donuts, which is what I do when I go to the store. As soon as I hit the bakery, I am all of a sudden unable to remember the ingredients for the salads I was going to make for dinner, and instead, think it is a much better idea to eat cake and cookies. Don't do that. Write it down.

Encourage positive feedback from others. We have our resume clients get a few letters of recommendation or nice quotes from people they've worked with. Having someone say something nice about you, while a simple exercise, can be the words and sentiments that help you cement the idea of “Hey, I am pretty good at my job!”

Stop trying to be perfect all the time. We are a society obsessed with perfection. Size 2 dresses, perfect skin, perfect hair, picture-perfect lives. That is not attainable. It's not realistic, nor should it be. Even your favorite social media stars have bad days, get zits, can't fit into their jeans, and sometimes, their yachts break down.

Enjoy your wins. Got a raise? Celebrate it. You deserve it. Be honest with yourself and recognize the effort, dedication, and skills that contributed to your accomplishments.

And be kind to yourself. Treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you would offer to a friend or a peer.

I have a client who worked as a marketing assistant in a very well-known advertising agency in Chicago. She was amazing, smart, ambitious, innovative, and super creative, but she kept getting passed over for promotions she applied for. Why?

Every time she got an interview for a higher-level job, she kept talking like an admin. She could not get past how she would help “coordinate” events for clients, how she created reports to track budgets and expenditures, and how she “assisted and supported” the teams to win new business. She kept referring to herself as someone who was not in charge of anything, when, in fact, she was the reason, in many cases, why events were so successful, and why the business development team was so prepared to go into client meetings and win their business.

After several years in the same role, she came to us for resume services, and we created a narrative around why she should be in a management role. We talked about how she coached, mentored, and helped new staff to be successful. We talked about how she innovated new processes that automated client project milestones, and all kinds of other cool things she did that required a much higher level of expertise in marketing. She no longer looked, sounded, or talked like an assistant, and within a few months, she landed a marketing manager role. She was now in charge of a small team, had three major accounts that were valued over $1 million in sales, and moved from making $65,000 a year to $100,000 a year.

When she got the offer, she called me. And then promptly burst into tears. She was excited and terrified all at once. She said there was no possible way she could lead people or be in charge. I told her she was already doing these things and she absolutely could. “And besides,” I said, “what's the worst thing that could happen?” I told her to “fake it 'til you make it” and just continue to do and be all the things that we both knew she can do. That was about 10 years ago.

She came to us a few years ago to get her resume updated for a chief marketing officer position for a tech startup. She got the job. Once she got over thinking about all the things she couldn't do, and started actually DOING all the things she could, that is who she became.

Another client we worked with was running information technology for a large school district. They had 11 school buildings and thousands of students, teachers, and staff. He'd been there about 11 years. He was making $125,000 and stayed in the job because his son, a special needs kiddo with autism and ADHD, was a student in that district. He wanted to be available for his son, keep an eye on his education, and make sure that the teachers knew him and that he was involved.

Despite the fact that he'd come from a much bigger IT background, was severely underpaid, and knew that his career could stall, he stayed on because he wanted to be where his kid was.

As they do, the years flew by, and pretty soon his son was a senior in high school. So, it was time for Dad to get a new position.

Here's the thing. While he was titled as an IT Manager, he was really a Chief Technology Officer at heart. He took an entire IT infrastructure from zero to hero over his time in the school district. Working with very little money, very little resources, and a small staff, he built a robust infrastructure for the district, invested in the right products, and when the pandemic hit, he moved teachers and students to a remote system within two weeks. He was smart. Solid. Accomplished. And that is how we treated his resume.

He was a bit shocked (and excited) when he got his resume draft and we had “Chief Technology Officer Candidate” splashed across the top of it. His immediate feedback was, “Hey, I am not a CTO,” which is classic imposter syndrome behavior.

But I asked him to tell me all the ways he was NOT a CTO. He managed people, managed budgets, made tech buying decisions, drove strategy, kept up with the latest and greatest tools for teachers and students, fixed things that were broken, and built all the capabilities the district needed without a lot of fanfare.

He was a CTO in every way except the title. And when he started applying for jobs, employers agreed. He ended up taking a CTO role with a smallish manufacturing company and once that CTO title was on his resume, with a CTO job behind it, that was his new “professional identity.”

I tell everyone this … if you wish to move into the executive stratosphere, try to get a job with the highest-level title that makes sense. I don't care if that company makes $1 in profit. Once you have that...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.4.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Beruf / Finanzen / Recht / Wirtschaft ► Bewerbung / Karriere
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management
• Schlagworte: Business & Management • Business & Management Special Topics • Business Self-Help • Career Change • Employee Satisfaction • finding new job • Führung • happiness at work • job fulfillment • job hunting • job interviewing • Job recruitment • Job Search • job searching • Karriere • Looking for a job • Management • Management f. Führungskräfte • Management / Leadership • professional fulfillment • Ratgeber Wirtschaft • Spezialthemen Wirtschaft u. Management • Wirtschaft /Ratgeber • Wirtschaft u. Management • work-life balance
• ISBN-10: 1-394-22092-8 / 1394220928
• ISBN-13: 978-1-394-22092-2 / 9781394220922