Gaining career confidence

December 20, 2020 10:42 AM

I've still been thinking a lot about the feedback from my previous question and I've decided that I need to develop a plan of attack to (somehow) increase my self-confidence when it comes to my career and professional situations like interviews. My question is... where do I begin? Have you gone from poor professional confidence to a healthy amount? Is it even possible?

I've always had chronically low self-confidence for a variety of reasons. I think it really comes down to the fact that I was raised in a super emotionally neglectful household and I was left to figure things out on my own as a child/teen. I had no one encouraging me, etc. It's taken me a long, long time to really understand that the roots of a lot of my difficulties start there.

However, therapy has helped me A LOT, but based on feedback I've gotten from supervisors, colleagues, etc. in professional situations.... I'm still NOWHERE where I need to be to even be moderately successful, I guess. In my personal life, I've found it much easier to gain confidence away from work. I have social anxiety, but it rears its ugly head the MOST at work and in professional situations. In lower-key situations, it's definitely there but I have better methods of managing it. At work or in job interviews it's a different story.

After reading the feedback mentioned in my previous question (ugh. I'm still a bit pissed off about it, but the advice from you guys has put it into perspective) and after coincidentally finding feedback from a practicum I had aaaages ago where the supervisor went on about how I needed to be more "confident." I have decided that, wow, I really have to work on this. I truly never, EVER, ever, EVER want to be told "you just need to be more confident" from someone in a professional context again. I need to *somehow* develop enough confidence that a) I'm confident and b) people won't give me that advice!!!

Now, I just don't KNOW where to begin. In terms of my career... in all honesty, I feel like I'm a total loser.

I feel stupid for choosing to become a librarian (god, why didn't I listen to the "no, don't do it!!" advice. It's not that I think librarianship is a stupid profession, lots of great people are in the field, but it's just... I don't really feel drawn to it anymore, it was just something that "made sense," but I can't truly say I feel "passionate" about it anymore (of course in job interviews... yes I am passionate). I feel disappointed in myself, ultimately, for choosing this profession. I don't have the technical or mathematical skills for a more technical job. I definitely do not have the temperament for any job in the medical field. So, a lot of my lack of confidence comes from the fact that I'm just not happy that I'm in this profession, but I have no idea what else I can do. I'm stuck.

I've never been given the opportunity (or, ugh, been industrious enough to make my own opportunities) to be innovative, or do really GREAT things in "libraries," which every employer seems to expect. I've had 2 interviews for relatively lower entry level library positions and both asked me about what ~innovative~ thing I've done at work. HUH? When could I have had the opportunity to do ANYTHING innovative at any of my previous positions? I pulled something out of nowhere, but okay. The same thing happened when I was asked about my "greatest career achievement" so far, lmao... WHAT? Where on my resume does it look like I've ACHIEVED anything? Shit, I guess my biggest achievement is probably being employed in libraries in some way for 6 years, when it's hard as hell for people to break into the field. Obviously, I couldn't say that, but the REALITY of the positions I've had doesn't make me feel like I have anything to offer, especially when I get the impression I'm supposed to be some sort of innovative amazing librarian. Ugh, that's just not me... yet

I've also never had a position where I felt like any of my thoughts, ideas, opinions mattered, so I don't fight for anything, because why bother? No one cares. Might as well "compromise" and be a pushover, because the opposite is getting reprimanded. Yes, I need to work on assertiveness, but I don't see how being assertive could have ended well in any of my previous positions.

All of these factors combined just make me feel like I'm not that great. Obviously that isn't beneficial in the work-place and I can see why people aren't RUSHING to hire someone with low self-confidence. I just don't "get" how I am supposed to gain self-confidence and come off confidently when that's the reality when it comes to my career. What is there to be proud of? Nothing, if you ask me.

I guess my question is, can I somehow start to develop confidence with regards to my career when this is the situation? Is there a book I can read that might unlock some ideas? I wish I could somehow transfer the confidence I've gained over the last few years with regards to my personal life over to my career-life.

It feels like there's a "personal life VirginiaPlain" who is much more confident (but not perfect) and a "professional life VirgniaPlain" who is a damn mess! All I know is that I have to somehow get my professional confidence up, because I cannot handle having to be told "just be more confident" (as if I hadn't thought of that before)! one more time. I just cannot do it!

posted by VirginiaPlain to Human Relations (24 answers total)

I really hate "be more confident" as professional feedback, because honestly, it's behaviors that people can action on, not feelings. It's OK to *feel* insecure, but you can deliver a presentation *as if* you were confident, which might mean things like, dropping the "uhs, hms", looking directly at the audience, practicing what you're going to say and preparing how you'd respond to likely questions, etc.

Taking a step back, when you get "be more confident" at work feedback, it usually isn't about you. It is about the employer wanting the effects of how someone who acts as if they were more confident might be able to do ABC differently in the organization and thus drive more impact, make the department look good, hold their ground when people are asking unreasonable things, etc. This might be a helpful reframe. When people have asked you to be more confident, what is it that they really wanted of your work or the impact your work has? Employers actually don't want truly self-confident people, b/c these are people who might have enough confidence to just leave at the first sign of disagreement, and then they'd have to go through the trouble of hiring/training someone new.

Maybe depersonalizing the feedback might be helpful? You don't need to feel confident, to act in the ways employers want more confident people to act in the workplace. And, just b/c you don't feel confident, doesn't mean you weren't behaving in a confident manner. You can "put on" a work self that does the things employers seem to want.
posted by ellerhodes at 11:24 AM on December 20, 2020 [9 favorites]

In the short term, you can use body language to signal more confidence. This will make people treat you with more respect, which will in turn make you actually feel more confident. This is the "fake it 'til you make it" short-term approach.

This includes standing up straight, speaking loudly, making eye contact, and changing your language to be less people-pleasing. You can think of a movie character that comes across as confident (preferably one of your height / gender-identity), and then figure out what they're doing to convey confidence.

In the longer term, get yourself into workplaces where you are respected. This may take months or years. People like to ask, "How can I stay in this job / marriage that's degrading me every day but be confident?" The answer is that no one can. A super-confident person also would not be able to, and the difference is that they'd work toward a new job or getting divorced.

The amount of confidence we feel depends on the situation we're in, and how others are treating us. You were in workplaces where none of "your thoughts, ideas, opinions mattered". Even if we took the most confident person in the world and put them in that situation, they'd feel insecure. The only thing they could do is work continually to getting into a situation where they're respected.
posted by cheesecake at 11:35 AM on December 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

So, I don’t know anything about being a librarian, so please disregard if this doesn’t apply. But in my own field, I’ve gained a lot of confidence by mentoring folks who are still in school or generally more junior. You’ve been doing this for six! years! I bet there’s a lot you’ve learned and experienced that makes you better at this than a rando off the street. When I started mentoring, I quickly realized that I make a lot of unconscious steps and helpful assumptions, that needed to be broken down for a new person. That made me realize, huh, my experience does matter. As a bonus, helping someone else helps me get out of my own head and feels good regardless.
posted by tinymegalo at 11:47 AM on December 20, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'm not sure how to say this in as gentle a way as I want to, but I'm going to try: I think there are two issues here to work on. One is that you are presenting in a way that some interviewers have reacted to as "not confident." The second is that you have some strong negative reactions around receiving negative feedback. I think you should give the second piece (handling feedback that is not presented in the way you would like, or is as not as constructive as you would like) as least as much attention as the first (presenting as "more confident.")

No matter how well you present yourself, someone, sometime, is going to give you negative feedback like that in a professional setting. You can control yourself, to some extent (how you present) but you cannot control how others react. Even if you could be professionally perfect in every way at all times, somebody's still going to wake up on the wrong side of the bed someday and say something you perceive as "be more confident!"

Your strategies for receiving that feedback and going on despite it are a thing you could work on with the same therapy support that has been helping you in your personal life!
posted by Alterscape at 12:25 PM on December 20, 2020 [12 favorites]

Confidence in interviews is slightly different from confidence in jobs. Since your question was prompted by interview, I’ll focus on that, but as an aside it sounds like you may have had some bad bosses and work environments, and it is just plain tough to be confident when you aren’t being allowed, encouraged, and supported to thrive. Be gentle with yourself especially if you haven’t gotten the support you need.

As for job interview confidence, it sounds like you were surprised and deflated by unexpected questions that made you think you don’t measure up. Preparing more for interviews and common questions may be a huge help to you there. Asking for ways you have innovated or things you have achieved are not uncommon questions - you can look for books about job interview preparation or just read a lot of AskAManager. You might still get thrown for a loop, but you can prepare for a lot of questions which helps in the moment.

In particular, those questions you list sound intimidating, but you don’t have to be a “superstar” to have a good answer! Think about what you like about your career, and times you have felt like you did a really good or satisfying job at something: maybe you helped a library patron in way that was really meaningful to them, or you went above and beyond on a task because it was fun for you. For a question about innovation, maybe you figured out a slightly more efficient way to do a task and therefore could get more done than peers with similar levels of experience. Maybe you really haven’t gotten to innovate in anyway, but you can prepare some ideas you’d like to implement but haven’t gotten the chance to yet which is why this new job excites you. It doesn’t have to be something big, but it should be something specific. When you prepare for an interview, you want to think about these anecdotes that you can use to answer possible interview questions. A time you solved a problem, a time you resolved a conflict, things like that.

As an example from my non-librarian life: we were hiring a new admin assistant in our office. One question we asked people was similar to the “biggest achievement” question you mentioned. The person we hired told a story about one time when someone came to the office in distress, and our soon-to-be employee talked about how they handled it and diffused the situation. He didn’t do anything huge, but it showed that he was most proud of working with clients, not backend work, which aligned with our organization’s values. And since we deal with a lot of people in distress, it was good to know he had some experience there, too.

Tl;dr - on the interview side of things, I recommend preparing for answers to common questions ahead of time - confidence can come from thinking in advance about your strengths so you aren’t surprised in the moment and feel like you don’t have anything good to say.
posted by alligatorpear at 12:29 PM on December 20, 2020 [11 favorites]

For what it’s worth, I think having a few negative interview experiences makes it easy to feel a little down on your profession for a while, it’s a normal response.

Just throwing it out there: do you feel like some of this is more anxiety than lack of confidence? The way you write about job stuff sometimes has a certain anxiety spiral-feel to it that reminds me of how I get when I start to freak out about these things.

One thing that I think would help you is to just really try to practice job interview stuff more so that you feel really, really prepared going in. “Describe a big achievement” and “describe a new initiative you undertook” are honestly really boilerplate interview questions and they shouldn’t throw you for a loop. You need to work on having great answers to these kinds of questions loaded up and ready to go whenever you go in for an interview.

Here’s a secret: Most of us aren’t ambitious innovators who live and breathe our work, but we usually have to do a passable impression of one when we interview for jobs. It might help you to consider “describe something innovative you did” as an opportunity to think creatively about the functions of your job instead of going into a “I’ve never innovated anything, I suck” shame spiral. It’s going to be fine!
posted by cakelite at 12:35 PM on December 20, 2020 [11 favorites]

I agree with alligatorpear that interview confidence is a bit different than career confidence. I’ve been interviewing a number of candidates lately, and it reminds me a lot of when I was online dating - there’s a resume in the form of a profile and an interview in the form of a first date. So much of it is selling yourself and practice. Retell your career story in your head, and practice saying it out loud, over and over. Read over all of those practice interview questions available online and sit in front of a mirror and say your responses out loud. Favorite project? Times when you clashed with a boss and how you overcame that? Where you see yourself in five years? Etc etc.

That’s all standard advice, but really work on realizing you’re retelling your own history. Take pride in what you have done, even if it’s a small project. Think of the difficult times and how you’ve overcome them. Be proud of yourself. Internalize all of the good things. You did those. Look at yourself and tell yourself out loud that any new employer would be happy to have you. Remind yourself of this, over and over.
posted by umwhat at 1:24 PM on December 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

I struggle with displaying confidence as well and I find I’ve become a little better at faking the confidence as I get older. Repetition and time can help one feel more comfortable with a certain activity (such as interviews) and this familiarity leads to a natural increase in confidence.

I would suggest to continue practicing mock interviews, maybe through video conference during COVID. See if you can find a friend, acquaintance, or family member to ask you practice questions.

I find that even a little exercise everyday is a confidence builder and can ease anxiety. The exercise can be as simple as calisthenics, Yoga, walking, or getting on an exercise bike.
posted by mundo at 1:28 PM on December 20, 2020

You've clearly got a lot of grievances against the jobs you've had so far, which... yeah, work sucks! Entry-level work sucks especially! Feeling like you're not encouraged to innovate or achieve is an experience so common as to be almost universal. You're not uniquely persecuted here.

I say this not to tear you down, but to underscore the idea that your image of what people are asking for is WAY off. They don't want to know what you've done to innovate or achieve or do great things in libraries compared to, like, Melvil Dewey. What they're really asking is "given that work sucks, what's your greatest achievement? Given that everything about having an entry-level job is lightly to extremely demoralizing and that personal fulfillment under late capitalism is nigh-impossible, what are you doing to try to do good work anyway?"

If you're not trying to do good work anyway, well, there's your answer. But you probably are looking for ways to make your daily experience feel functional and worthwhile. Tell them about that.

The people who have an answer to "what's your greatest achievement" aren't achieving more than you. They simply have a different understanding of what it means to achieve at work. Think of yourself as a scale where zero is set at the wrong place. That's why everything feels so heavy. You need to recalibrate.
posted by babelfish at 3:22 PM on December 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Sorry, I have to ask for more clarification with regards to "achievements." To me, an "achievement" would be winning a library award, creating an innovative library program that did well, having professional recognition from other librarians. I've never done any of those things. I've never won an award and I'll probably never appear in some sort of ~library mover and shakers~ list. Even after reading examples from babelfish and cakelike. I truly don't "get" it.

Like, concretely, what is an example of an "achievement" for someone who hasn't received an award or recognition in their field? I literally have no clue. I honestly don't get it.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 3:39 PM on December 20, 2020

Example achievements could include:

- Being persistent on a tough problem you got stuck on, and eventually solving it

- Helping a customer in a way that went above and beyond

- Creating a more efficient process

- Resolving a conflict between two coworkers

- Taking a disorganized project and making it organized

- Taking unclear instructions and figuring out what needs to be done

Basically, the interviewer wants to learn more about what you value and how you operate.
posted by cheesecake at 3:53 PM on December 20, 2020 [18 favorites]

One good thing here is that you've identified a cycle in your past jobs: you were not treated as valuable so you didn't have the confidence to be assertive, which led you to not pushing for things that would make your programs/libraries better, so people didn't see your value - and honestly, it seems like you don't see your own value either!

I've seen other friends go through this, and it's really hard. They have also been people who grew up in homes where they got a lot of criticism, and it's easy to see how, if you weren't raised with that baseline sense of your own value it would be easy to take feedback personally, to not have the confidence to be assertive with one's ideas, etc. But this is also something that just happens to a lot of people, to varying degrees. I have always been pretty assertive professionally, but I had a series of jobs in my late twenties with bad bosses that really dinged my confidence and it took a while to bounce back.

One thing that has helped me A LOT in the workplace is to try as much as I can to keep the focus on the work, not myself. When I'm in a job, I try to think about what can make things run better - how can we improve our programs/systems/whatever? If I'm successful, awesome. If I'm not, that sucks, but it's not a personal failure or a rejection of me - it's either because there are legitimate reasons these changes don't make sense, or there's someone blocking them, or the system just isn't ready for them.

Similarly, in interviews you don't have to make yourself look like the most amazing leader/innovator ever. All you need to do is figure out what your strengths are and play those up. I bet you are a really great team player - when they ask about innovation, you can talk about changes you were part of even if you weren't the person leading the charge. If you have trouble figuring out what your strengths are, ask your coworkers. I know this could feel awkward, but you could say you're doing it as part of a professional development program (you are - one you are developing yourself).
posted by lunasol at 3:53 PM on December 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think you're skipping something here: You say you've had six years of experience during a period when libraries have been radically cutting back nationwide and the field, as a result, is more competitive than ever. Why did they hire **you**? You have some strength, experience, education, training, volunteer work, background or show of enthusiasm that got you a couple of jobs during probably the toughest period in librarian hiring in modern library history. What made you stand out?

If you can't answer that, here's something else to try: Get a piece of paper (virtual or actual), designate three sections: Label one (1) for strengths, the second (2) interests and the third (3) weaknesses. Then give at least three items per section, and write your lists fast. The results might give you a better sense of what you want to do, don't want to do and might vie for.

I've found, deep down, people recognize their strengths but they get drowned out, or remain inarticulate for a whole host of reasons. In fact, after you start writing, you may find yourself adding stuff to your lists. If so, keep going. The more you think about your professional history, the better you will talk about it. And the more you think about it the better you will be able to define what you want your own place in it to look like.
posted by Violet Blue at 4:07 PM on December 20, 2020 [5 favorites]

I would broaden you definition of achievement.
- Cleaned a storage closet that everyone was ignoring = Used initiative.
- Consistently encourage colleagues, listens and reflects on ideas = good team skills
- Think about small ideas you've had, projects you've tackled.
- Maybe you train new staffers, streamlined the order process, eliminated the backlog of new acquisition processing.

Search online resumes of library staff and look at what others describe. I suspect you don't enumerate or value what you do adequately.
posted by theora55 at 4:29 PM on December 20, 2020 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Interesting, lots of the examples given for "achievement" are thing that I've always thought you were just basic tasks that you're supposed to do at work. Not special praise-worthy or achievement-worthy things. Definitely something to reflect on. Thank you all, so far!
posted by VirginiaPlain at 4:40 PM on December 20, 2020 [2 favorites]

When you grow up neglected or abused, a lot of your experience as a kid is finding out brutally that there are things you don't know. Examples from my childhood: deodorant, modern clothing. So you kind of start to approach life like everyone else has this body of knowledge or achievement that you don't have access to. And then things that other parents take joy in and praise, aren't commented on.

So your meter for these things gets all wonky. Understandably.

It sounds to me like you are approaching this stage of your career this way. You're not brand, brand new, but you are still in the early stages of your career. Anyone interviewing you can see that from your resume, so when they ask you about your achievements or your creative innovation, they really are asking within the context of your jobs as you have had them.

These librarians also were junior staff at one point and they do understand the level you're at.

Part of how you prepare for an interview could be to list out some things you feel you did particularly well. It could optimizing your schedule, or [a bunch of things I don't know about, not being a librarian]. Things you've done where people have said "hey, great job" are achievements. Things you've done where people have said "hey, that's great, I would never have thought of that" are creative solutions.

If you really don't have an answer, that's an opportunity in an interview to say something like "I think of myself as well-rounded, so nothing stands out particularly, but could you give me an example and maybe I can speak to that?" It's maybe not the ideal answer but it shows how you handle a question under pressure, and they might say "well, like figuring out how to get teenagers to stop smoking in the bathrooms" and you can be like "OH I did that."

I think the best advice I can give you is don't assume that people have mysterious other information or mysterious other abilities than you do, at your level of education and expertise. Unless you are getting bad performance reviews (which we here at MetaFilter know you're not from your boss's attitude), whatever your experience is, is solid.

In my current role, I interview a lot of people who have never worked before, or have only worked a little bit. I don't expect them to come in with anything groundbreaking my field. They talk about their schoolwork or group projects or watching their little brother...and that is fine. I get a sense of them.

It is just fine to talk about your actual work in a positive way, including the language they are asking you to use.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:18 PM on December 20, 2020 [1 favorite]

I strongly recommend picking an achievement along the line of cheesecake's excellent examples. I have had success with this. To be honest it wouldn't even occur to me to think about something like an award (not that I even have one; if I did, it'd be on my resume where the interviewers could already see it). It's an opportunity to tell a story about how you work and what's important to you, not to point to a line item. Some things I am personally proud of that wouldn't make it into my resume but I would want to talk up in an interview: specific times when I've mentored colleagues, managed to work with difficult people, solved a problem others didn't know existed. Good luck!
posted by ferret branca at 7:35 AM on December 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

I would focus on your impacts on your patrons. Talk about how something really mundane had an outsized impact, e.g. you weeded the 800s and circulation increased.

1) You might feel more comfortable talking about other people, and it's a good frame for what you might feel is too small an achievement to list.
2) Patron-focus is a huge priority and it shows that you're not out for your own glory. To be a bit cynical, even if I had won a big award, I'd list something along the lines of how the decisions I made helped a patron. The question is as much about your mindset as anything, and you want to emphasize that you keep other people front and centre.

I was once asked about my experience working on a project, and I had never led a big project so I talked about how I did quality control for a project and the effect it had. Turns out they were not looking for another leader, and I was hired because I presented as a team player.
posted by pierogi24 at 7:44 AM on December 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

Going forward, collect all positive feedback from colleagues, bosses, and patrons. Keep a little note on your phone or send them to your personal email. Go back to that list regularly and read those notes over and over. Practice how you would re-tell these stories in an interview.

If you have trusted colleagues or patrons, it really helps to ask them what they think your strengths are, or what stories they remember from working with you. Often we discount our work as totally ordinary, but it actually has a big impact on others. But make sure you pre-screen the people you ask; especially if your workplace is toxic/dysfunctional, and/or you are emotionally vulnerable, some might see this as an avenue to attack your self-confidence further!

Finally, I would suggest going through some exercises to determine your top professional values. For example, for me I get really enthused about building communities/connections/relationships, and that feeling of helping people. Once you've identified your top 3-5, you can use them in a few ways:

1. You'll probably find that these are areas where you naturally go above-and-beyond (because it is personally important to you) so you'll be able to find more "achievements" anecdotes from that list.
2. Practice framing your interview answers to line up with these core values - this trick will probably help you sound a bit more confident, because something lights up emotionally when we are talking about stuff that's personally important to us!
3. Once these values come up in the interview a few times, your interviewers will remember those buzzwords and help define an identity for you in their minds, i.e. VirginiaPlan - the one who was all about open communication, collaboration, and service to others.
4. If/when you get more rejections/feedback as you did last week, it will be easier to see them as values misalignment rather than a personal failing, because your values are top-of-mind for you and you'll have a stronger sense of your professional identity, rather than just, "Tell me what kind of employee you want and I'll become that!"

posted by tinydancer at 9:41 AM on December 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

I used to be a librarian (mostly public, and for about a decade) until I moved and couldn't get a librarian job and switched fields. I miss it, but your questions about librarian job interviews are a definite area of the field that I DO NOT miss -- those panel interviews with the Word doc of bog standard questions are just the worst, and feeling like you have to apply for anything that comes your way because the pickings are so slim and feign interest during the rare interview... I once interviewed for a children's librarian job (I do not like children) and the hiring manager, whom I knew from working in the system, told me after I was passed over for the job, "I know you COULD do the job, but I don't think that you WANT the job." And I didn't; I wanted the paycheck, and the benefits, and to use my degree. So trust me when I say that I know where you're coming from.

Something hopefully useful: an "achievement" in the library word doesn't mean you got named to Library Journal's list of Movers & Shakers -- I mean, it *can* mean that, but for most of us it doesn't. An achievement is like... you recognized that the board books were impossible to find and created a new labeling system for them; you found a section of the library where there were a lot of books on the shelf that weren't in the catalog and worked on getting them in the catalog; you set up some creative new displays that increased checkout of X genre of books/movies/music by XX%; you created handouts on frequently asked questions and set them up somewhere; you started blogging about new titles to increase awareness/circulation; you saw unengaged teens hanging out after school and formed a teen library board; customers asked about a specific genre of book club so you started one up; etc. I could do this all day :) Basically, you recognize something is a problem --> you think of a way to help solve it --> you implement this solution. You're not curing cancer, you're just trying to help people find what they're looking for and hopefully keep them coming back.
posted by jabes at 10:51 AM on December 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Generally when people are talking about achievements in a recruitment context, they really just mean things that you did in your job that were successful. How big those things should be depends on the level of job you are going for (and so how much responsibility you might have) but the level of success is about the same. I don't have any librarian examples, but it's more 'what have you done in the recent past that is evidence that you would do a good to excellent job here' than it is 'across your whole life what major achievements have you accomplished'. Unless you have always failed miserably at every single aspect of every job you have ever had (which seems like an almost impossible feat) then you have enough achievements to fill a job interview.

The thing I find helps me most with confidence in interview situations is preparation and practice. Once you have done a few interviews, you can usually start writing interview questions in the style described for yourself based on the job description (if in doubt, start with 'tell me about a time...'). Then formulate answers to them and practice saying the answer out loud. If you get an interview that goes badly try and write down the question that you struggled with. I once completely lost the ability to string a sentence together to the first question was "what would you say were the biggest challenges facing organisation X". It's such a straightforward one to prepare for, that I now always make sure I have a good-to-go answer.

The other thing I'll throw out as a suggestion is imposter syndrome. I always think most people know about it already and then someone mentions it as a revelation. So, if you've not heard of imposter syndrome, look it up and realise that widely-esteemed world leader Jacinda Ardern also suffers from imposter syndrome at times.
posted by plonkee at 11:05 AM on December 21, 2020

Lots of great answers here for the medium and long term aspects of the problem.

In the short term, I asked this question about how exactly to "fake it until you make it" a few years ago, and it generated a lot of practical advice.
posted by rpfields at 1:15 PM on December 21, 2020

Every so often, I decide that I should really start exercising. I do this grudgingly and unwillingly. I'm sure that I'm going to hate it, and I'm resentful of the need to do it at all. Not surprisingly, I have never, ever stuck with it.

I mention this because the tone of your question is extremely familiar to me. It sounds like you're dreading this, like you're mad that you have to do this at all, and like you already know it's going to be like pulling teeth. I'd suggest that if you approach this project in that spirit, you'll be about as successful as I was the 20 times I tried to start running.

What if you instead tried to look at this as an exciting new thing you were doing? A superpower that you were going to develop? Something that you're genuinely curious about? I don't have many practical suggestions about how to shift that way, because the thing about me exercising is literally something I realized while I was reading your question (so thanks for that!)
posted by Ragged Richard at 1:45 PM on December 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I think you have a good point, Ragged Richard. I think I just resent glib feedback "Just be more confident!!", in general, so my my anger dial went to 100 after I heard that feedback from employer I interviewed with. I resent it because I *AM* working on being more confident, but it pisses me off that it's still not enough for employers. It really feels like I'm never going to have *enough* confidence to make other people happy with me(hmmm... okay after writing that, that sounds like something to discuss at therapy, eeek), which makes it all seem like a losing game. So, it really does match those feelings towards exercising you had, I think. Haha, I really do have to re-frame how I'm looking at this project, for sure.
posted by VirginiaPlain at 2:08 PM on December 21, 2020 [1 favorite]