Earlier this week I enrolled in two workshops at the university Career Center. The βWelcome to the workshop!β-email contained an assignment to be done before the course: I have to ask 5 people from different areas of my life what my biggest talent is, what I talk about most, how I do things and how they feel about my interactions in a group setting. Great.
Apart from not wanting to bother people in my life with this kind of stereotypical βI am enrolled in a job application courseβ-assignment, I also realised that the answers arenβt going to help me in any way. One person will answer βSleeping inβ, βToo Many Zoozβ, βRight before the deadlineβ and βGroup setting? What group setting?β, while the other person will reply to the same questions with βEditingβ, βHer zine writing progressβ, βExtremely organisedβ and βHelpfulβ. The three other people will probably answer something completely different from the previous two, and put together they will most likely paint a (more) complete picture of who I am, but none of this will give anyone enough information to conclude if I am suited to perform a particular job.
The line of thought that just by knowing βwho you areβ and βalways being yourselfβ you have enough tools to get a job and develop your career, just doesnβt make any sense at all. The only thing that makes less sense is the saying βItβs better to regret things you have done than to regret things you havenβt doneβ, because thatβs just pure nonsense. According to that saying, it would be better to regret stabbing somebody to death than to regret not having stabbed them. When you put it that way, I donβt think thereβs many people whoβd agree with that. Itβs just utter, utter nonsense.
Of course I believe that itβs good to know who you are, I even think that βknowing who you are and whyβ and (re)evaluating this regularly is one of the most important things in life. When you know what you stand for as a person, itβs easier to filter out who and what you want to spend your time and energy on. I do agree with βbeing yourselfβ in this regard: getting a job at a butcher when youβre a vegetarian for example is just not the best idea.
However, βbeing yourselfβ is something that is not possible for everyone. If you depend on an environment that is completely different from you and you donβt want to constantly have conflicts or even get ousted, you will have to adapt. There are horrible examples of this dynamic all around, but to keep it in the realm of βworkβ a personal anecdote: back in the day when I used to work as a secretary, I was only able to be about 3% βmeβ and I was still the odd one out. Them considering me a βweirdoβ actually meant βyou have a different education level than we doβ, βyour private life is different from oursβ and of course βyou are way more foreign than we are/we are comfortable withβ.
Because what usually happens once I enter a room for a job interview and introduce myself as βmeβ with my obviously-not-from-here foreign last name, is that people already feel that I am βbeing myselfβ too much. IF I even get the job interview in the first place, because name based discrimination is a thing.
I believe that anybody who differs from what the norm is in a particular place will recognise this. Of course, the βnormβ differs: where in one place being 3% of βyourselfβ is already overdoing it, in other places 70% βyouβ is just fine. This is why I think that it would be more realistic to teach people that it is not only important to know who you are, what skills you have, and what you enjoy doing, but to also have them think about how much you are willing AND able to adapt yourself to a certain situation and what your βhard noβsβ are.
Because unless you are privileged enough to be somebody whose βmeβ fits right into the socially accepted average and also be lucky enough that there is an industry for which you are a perfect fit, the whole βbe yourself and a job will followβ is not helpful at best and a toxic lie at worst. I would much rather hear the honest truth that my name, my heritage, my personality, my looks, my age, my life up to now, my education and/or my health will be deal breakers for certain employers, than the βJust be yourself, and everything will work out fine!β-blah blah that just ignores reality.
That way I can look at who I am, what my skills are, what I want and what an employer expects of me. This is the only way I can figure out how to make sure that Public Me β’ , a βpersonaβ that as a person βdeviating from the normβ I will always have to maintain in one form or another, doesnβt stray to far from Actual Me β’. βBeing yourselfβ, if even possible at all, is a luxury unfortunately not available to everyone. And the first step in the process of changing that, is to at least acknowledge this in these type of job application courses and to provide realistic advice on how to deal with these issues.
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