There was one very specific passage in all of the readings that got me thinking and triggered a mental chain of events. In the piece "The Top 5 Interview Tips That Nobody Mentions", the section titled "Ooze Enthusiasm" struck me profoundly. When I read that employers commonly hire unqualified employees because they were fooled by their energy level, I thought to myself "Can it really be that simple?" I'm a reserved person by nature, so that fact sort of works against me. On the other hand, I think I'm capable of at least faking it long enough to get through an interview.
Initially, this gave me hope. If all it takes is a little extra coffee to land a job, I'm in the clear. Once I delved deeper into the implications of this, however, I realized how phony that is. Remember how everyone would always tell you to "just be yourself" when you were growing up? Apparently that was some really terrible advice when it comes to getting your career started. Employers aren't looking for people who are themselves, they are looking for entertainers and type-A personalities. Let's say hypothetically I get a job because the deciding factor was my energy level. I will obviously be happy and relieved, but the price would be essentially selling myself out. I will have told myself that who I really am wasn't good enough, and that I got the job mostly because I became someone foreign to me. Not to mention the guilt that would come from knowingly manipulating someone into thinking you are someone you're not.
The business world is cut throat and brutal, so job seekers need as many weapons as possible to make it in the big, bad real world. Enthusiasm is apparently a powerful weapon, and to natural type-A personalities, there is no problem. To those who are more stoic and shy, there seem to be two options open:
1) Stay the way you are and risk losing out on a job because you weren't peppy enough.
2) Fake enthusiasm and potentially land that job because you successfully escaped your own personality.
I would take the ladder 100 times out of 100, but I wouldn't be entirely happy about it.
Initially, this gave me hope. If all it takes is a little extra coffee to land a job, I'm in the clear. Once I delved deeper into the implications of this, however, I realized how phony that is. Remember how everyone would always tell you to "just be yourself" when you were growing up? Apparently that was some really terrible advice when it comes to getting your career started. Employers aren't looking for people who are themselves, they are looking for entertainers and type-A personalities. Let's say hypothetically I get a job because the deciding factor was my energy level. I will obviously be happy and relieved, but the price would be essentially selling myself out. I will have told myself that who I really am wasn't good enough, and that I got the job mostly because I became someone foreign to me. Not to mention the guilt that would come from knowingly manipulating someone into thinking you are someone you're not.
The business world is cut throat and brutal, so job seekers need as many weapons as possible to make it in the big, bad real world. Enthusiasm is apparently a powerful weapon, and to natural type-A personalities, there is no problem. To those who are more stoic and shy, there seem to be two options open:
1) Stay the way you are and risk losing out on a job because you weren't peppy enough.
2) Fake enthusiasm and potentially land that job because you successfully escaped your own personality.
I would take the ladder 100 times out of 100, but I wouldn't be entirely happy about it.