It can feel uncomfortable ‘selling yourself’ in applications and interviews. It might not be something you’ve done before and you might fear it comes across as arrogant or over-the-top.
The thing is: you have to do it and you have to get used to doing it. If you don’t tell a recruiter how impressive you are, no-one else will do it for you. And that means a recruiter will just choose one of the other hundreds of candidates.
But what if you don’t feel like you are impressive? Or that you have anything that stands you out?
In our experience, most of the time this is just an untrue belief. Our brains like to spend so much of our time focusing on our flaws and rejections, that we often don’t take the time to appreciate how good we actually are.
If you’re not used to selling yourself and talking about your strengths, it’s going to take time and it’s going to feel forced at first.
One of the best ways to get used to this is to start making a log of your achievements and successes, no matter how small they might seem at first.
You might start on a big picture level, taking a look at everything you’ve done so far and writing down: What are your unique selling points? What makes you different? This can then feed into the narrative you tell at interview.
This is also a great thing to do at the end of each day. The more you write down and celebrate your successes – rather than spending a disproportionate time on your failures – the more you’ll train your brain to appreciate why you should be proud of who you are.
And note, your achievements and strengths don’t have to be ‘formal experiences’. They can come from your background, your challenges and hardships, whatever you’ve done to become the person you are today. These are often the most powerful examples.
