Why are candidates who claim to be the best, often the worst?
Some people advise that when asked about your weaknesses in a job
interview, you should stick to talking about your strengths (e.g. "I'm a
perfectionist").
If you're dealing with an experienced interviewer, this is a Very Bad
Idea. It's not just that your interviewer may be slightly disturbed by
your willingness to begin your professional relationship with a blatant
attempt at deception.
Her key concern is that you might really believe what you're saying.
Skilled judges of people are aware that overconfident individuals can be
the worst, most dangerous employees.
Why is a lack of awareness of one's limitations a mark of poor performance? Compare a schoolyard bully
with ten years experience picking on smaller kids, with a black-belt
martial artist of the same age, with ten years serious training and
several championships to his name. If asked in an interview about the
weaknesses of his fighting technique, the bully is likely to respond,
"What's it to you?" The martial artist, in comparison, is able to
describe a long list of specific imperfections. "When I front
kick, sometimes I drop my weight forwards when I'm placing my foot back
on the ground, instead of keeping my balance." "Sometimes I overextend
when I punch." The bully might have these same flaws, but would not be
aware of them, or understand why they are important.
It's not just that the martial artist is more humble. He has had ten
years of constant feedback on what he needs to improve, from expert
trainers. He has learned his strengths and weaknesses, and he has
learned to self-assess his performance and what he needs to improve. He
has spent ten years fixing what needed to be fixed. He knows he is not
perfect, but he is much better than when he was untrained. The bully's
learning has been much more ad-hoc, and he continues to be unaware of
his most important flaws. If these two meet in the ring, the results
could be pretty ugly.
In
many professional fields, overconfidence can have equally serious
consequences. For example, doctors or pilots who believe they are
impervious to error sometimes stop listening to advice and warnings from
others, with fatal results.
The best job candidates are like the
black-belt martial artist. They are confident enough to acknowledge that
they are not perfect, which gives them the power to improve. They are
able to describe specific skills or aspects of their personal style that
they want to develop, and they can describe the actions they need to
take to get there.
How can you achieve this? Learn what top
performance in your field looks like, by observing others, and by
reading and study. What do top performers do? What results do they get?
Compare your own performance against these criteria, and seek advice
from people who can give you frank and informed feedback. When you find a
gap in your performance, be happy. You've found a way to get better.
If
you want to keep moving forward, you can't afford to be content with
sitting still. If you want to keep improving, you can't afford to be
satisfied with your current performance. Find something to improve, and do something about it.
Source:
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar