Strategy #11: Build Confidence And Self-Belief

Would you like to flip the odds decisively in your favour when it comes to any job search? Instead of allowing employers to select or reject you, which is what happens during nearly every conventional hiring procedure, would you like to be in control of every key stage of the hiring process?

I’m guessing that you would and to do this properly, it’s essential to re-calibrate your attitude to a job search. A big part of this regards your perception of who holds the best cards in their hands. Is it you or is it the employer? The fact of the matter is that the choice is yours, depending on the job-search strategy you use.  

One of the most important things you can do is boost your confidence and self-belief by knowing your true value to an employer. You do this in two ways. First, by understanding how your unique skillsets intersect with an employer’s highest needs. Second, by developing a super-effective way of presenting these skills in the right way. An introduction to these things is the subject of today’s strategy article, and honing these mental skills will go a long way towards giving you the upper hand in any job hunt.  

Self-confidence is hugely beneficial in most aspects of life. It applies in most work situations and undoubtedly so when you’re looking for a new job. Genuine belief in your professional skills and personal abilities gives you a powerful force-field that repels the knocks and blows that inevitably come along as part of a work-search project that’s often unpredictable. Is there a way of developing these attributes quickly and effectively? I believe that there is and I’m going to give you some ideas about how to do it right here.

I’m not talking about building fragile confidence and a hollow belief in your value, by the way. You see this happen when someone talks themselves up, even if there isn’t much evidence to support their boastful words. This most certainly isn’t what I’m talking about. Ditch any notion that belief in your value requires you to unjustifiably puff yourself up or blow smoke rings to charm easily-impressed people.

It’s about implementing a practical two-pronged approach. To begin with, you conduct an honest yet positive appraisal of your highest-level and most unique skills, plus an investigation of how these skills dovetail with an employer’s most pressing needs. Next, it’s knowing how to construct a perfect pitch that presents your message in a way that will hugely impress any employer when you go for a position you really want.      

It might sound simple when I put it like this but believe me – very few job applicants get anywhere close to doing these two things competently. As a result, their lack of self-belief and confidence becomes apparent. In all my years as a professional recruiter and interviewer, I can genuinely only recall a handful of people outside my training programme who implemented effective job-search strategies that really, truly work. And this is out of well over fifteen hundred people I’ve personally interviewed, not to mention the countless job candidates I’ve observed as part of my interview consultancy services. These few people’s self-assurance was palpable, and that’s part of the reason they succeeded and others failed.

My course participants are a different matter. I train them to boost their belief in themselves and their confidence in achieving a successful outcome, because this creates the strong foundations of the entire job hunt. A major part of doing this is understanding their value to an employer and the best way of conveying this value. And not just to one specific employer but to almost any private-sector employer you can think of, which covers around 80% of all the organisations that employed people work for.

So, let’s think of the two ways you can build massive confidence and self-belief by comprehending and expressing your high value. The starting point is to think about what attributes employers want in their employees. Of course, every employer will have specific hiring criteria for the particular job they need to have done and the profile of the worker they need to do it, but there’s one common feature amongst every single private-sector employer.  

Almost without exception, anyone who works for any kind of organisation must demonstrate that they’ll make money, save money or improve efficiencies for the employer in some way. Knowing that you’re proving this in a convincing manner is at the core of the first part of the confidence-building process. The second part requires you to do it in a way that totally engages the interviewer who has the power to hire you. This is pretty obvious stuff, if you think about it, but that doesn’t stop this pair of activities becoming a major glitch in the vast majority of job applicants’ minds.

What I’ve just described lies at the centre of the Vocation Master training programme. If you nail the substance and delivery of your value proposition to an employer, your belief in your abilities will sky rocket. In turn, this will supercharge your confidence which will empower you to perform at the highest level, particularly when you’re sitting across from a hiring decision maker.

I mentioned at the start that this is only an introduction to this subject. I’ll be exploring employers’ needs and dynamic presentation methods in upcoming strategies but I want to emphasise the importance and benefits of doing this now.

At a practical level, proving that you understand a potential employer’s single most business-critical problem within your area of expertise, then demonstrating how you’d solve it in an effective way, goes straight to the heart of virtually every hiring decision. I’ve already said it and I’ll repeat the point – this happens way less often than you’d imagine and I’ve got the recruiting experience to tell me as much. Making sure that you’re one of the minority who do this properly will set you apart from the crowd and knowing that you’re exceptional will give you huge reserves of confidence and self-belief.   

At a psychological level, high confidence in your abilities feeds on itself and increases the likelihood that you’ll do what needs to be done. Belief in yourself and the direction you’re heading will also strengthen your determination to continue doing what needs to be done. It’s a double whammy but in a very good way indeed. It’s hard to think of any downsides connected with building confidence and self-belief, starting with adopting a job-search strategy that fosters these very qualities.

If you prefer to watch training materials rather than read or listen to them, follow this link to my YouTube channel where you can access the video version of this article;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2m-fFCmtMY&t=487s

And finally, if you have any questions about the issues I raise here, or if you'd like to contact me personally, please get in touch via LinkedIn;

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vocationmaster/