Someone once told me that resumes are not tools to hire people; they are tools to weed people out of the hiring process. “How odd,” I thought at the time, “that a document of our ‘best’ would be used to evaluate us for our worst.”
After recently interviewing people for an open position at work, I know that the it’s true! I scoured resume after resume discarding at the mere mention of key words and not thinking anything of it. But that wasn’t the most shocking part of the inteviewing process. What was most shocking was that as I evaluated the confidence, experience and skills of the interviewees, I became aware of the same for the people with whom I already work.
My colleagues, it turns out, are self deprecators. They say the most incredibly mean and terrible things about themselves.
I don’t understand this!
I guess I was fortunate because I was taught early that the only person whose opinion mattered was my own. I was also taught that the only person you could truly count on to be your eternal champion was, well, yourself.
Most of my colleagues (and it turns out, most people in general) are their own worst critic. Don’t get me wrong, I believe strongly in the importance of self evaluation and self awareness. And I am often hard on myself — I have extremely high expectations for myself. But I don’t share my critiques of myself with the public. I don’t hand people the tools to make me feel less than I am. They are already looking to do that on their own.
Instead, I have learned the grace and value of accepting a compliment. “What a nice thing to say. Thank you.” It’s an extremely difficult lesson – but absolutely necessary.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.” —Marianne Williamson
Muse 