Is Humility Holding You Back?
There’s no room for humility when it comes to your career, and especially your job search, yet it often stops people in their tracks. It can be uncomfortable to promote your achievements. You’ve probably been raised like most of us to be a team player, and all of a sudden you need to self-promote. It can go against your beliefs to promote what you’ve done as an individual.
When I’m either helping someone prepare for an interview, or even prepare their resume, they often stumble when asked “what are your achievements?” Firstly they don’t know how to talk about themselves in terms of achievements and secondly, they don’t reflect on what they’ve done as an achievement.
Preparing your achievements in your resume can be a great warm up exercise for talking about them in an interview.
So here’s two ways to help you reframe achievements in your mind, so you don’t see it as big-noting yourself or having to sell yourself, but serving an important purpose to help show a potential employer that you can help them:
- Take the focus off of you and shift it to your target audience, the employer. What is it they need to hear in order to know that you’ve got what they’re looking for. Think of the information you are conveying from their perspective. I often find when I get out of my head, and focus on helping someone else, it takes away any anxiety.
- Separate yourself from the picture and talk about the facts and the results. Think of it this way, you’re telling a story.
These tips might help you recall some of your achievements:
- Reflect on what you are most proud of, or your legacy in previous roles.
- Go back to previous performance reviews and draw out the positives.
- Think about your farewell speech and what people would say about you.
- Ask former colleagues or managers what they observed about your achievements, often others notice when we don’t.
- Read job advertisements and pay attention to what they’re asking for, it may prompt your memory, and might help you see what you’ve simply considered as ‘just doing your job’ as a valuable commodity.
If you want to really get a clear idea of your value proposition, download my Ikigai Exercise here
(Remember to get your copy of Careers Awakening: How To Align Your Career With Your Soul Purpose here.)
