Dealing with a blow to your confidence.
We’ve all been there.
By Jacquie Liversidge
Aside from all of the other external factors that applicants
for roles can be affected by, the biggest factor, one which may or may not relate to external factors, is your confidence in applying for roles.
Your level of confidence completely dictates how your application will read to employers, because it dictates the way you frame your skills, the skills you feel that you can list, the achievements you can perceive and the roles that you choose to go for.
When your confidence is affected, you are likely not going to apply for roles that are actually within the full scope of your ability.
You will apply for minor roles that don’t actually challenge you—because your concept of self is diminished and what you perceive as a challenge is wildly exacerbated by the lack of conviction you have in this moment about your capacity.
I see this all the time in the resumes.
Mothers with Masters Degrees entering the workforce in customer service roles, people re-entering the work force after disability within the same industry at minor levels, and worse yet, they don’t even need to tell me this.
It actually comes across in your resume.
And like the nasty and vicious cycle that a lack of confidence is, a career drop tends to cycle unless you get your mojo back.
Employers are looking at the resumes of highly skilled workers and wondering what it is that actually happened.
Candidates aren’t outlining the full responsibilities and achievements within their roles to get out of the cycle. And so on, so forth.
A lack of confidence is something that all of us experience at some point.
Unless you’re a sociopath or psychopath, in which case, you’re more likely to be excelling in upper management at this moment, and you haven’t identified with this article to read it.
“Mothers with Masters Degrees entering the workforce in customer service roles, people re-entering the work force after disability within the same industry at minor levels, and worse yet, they don’t even need to tell me this.
It actually comes across in
your resume.“
So! What can you do to escape a lack of confidence?
In this situation, a lack of objectivity is
completely holding you back. This is your biggest barrier.
Get a friend or an associate with an objective eye to look
over your resume.
And when they invariably present you with the achievements, the duties and the challenges of your role that you might have overlooked, don’t downplay them or doubt them.
Next: List!
List down everything, everything you do. Even the things you do badly. It doesn’t matter. Then put these in your resume.
Try to tell a story in your resume
If a lack of confidence, disability or motherhood has put a defined stop or slow-down in your career trajectory on paper, focus on the next
roles following the career drop. What were your achievements, and would could possibly be interpreted as achievements? What were the major challenges of the role? Try to tie your roles together to tell a story.
Don’t outline what happened
If you can craft your resume well enough, there shouldn’t any questions about career-drops or gaps. Mentioning the reason behind the career drop is not going to serve you well; it draws the employers attention towards it.
Leave it out.
Get someone else to check it… again
Everyone has different ideas about what should be on a
resume all based on their individual experiences, and if they’re not professional resume writers, that is completely to be expected! So get an objective eye from someone, accommodate their suggestions, do some work on it yourself and then get someone else to look at it as well.
If you’re in the thick of a confidence drop at the moment, reach out to other people.
The biggest thing that other people can bring to
your application material is objectivity, and being in our own careers with our own challenges and perceptions, we don’t tend to perceive our careers as positively as other people do.
Good luck reader, you’re awesome. I’m off to stress about
this post now, because I don’t believe I’m very good at them 
