2 attributes you must have in your job search

First, I fully admit that I have a lot of skin in this game.  I am not only a corporate recruiter, I am also an employee and soon to be co-worker.  I want us to hire people I want to work with.  Who do I want to work with?  The people I like working with the most have two main attributes…

Self Awareness

This may seem trivial but if it does, you probably don’t have much of it.  I was speaking with a co-worker about this the other day and it seems that very few people can get out of their own skin.  They see everything through a myopic point of view.  They are just in their here and now.  There is no thought given to how others will see things or how their actions will affect the future.

I confess, I sometimes have this same issue but I work to seek others’ input and get their points of view.  Yes, sometimes it hurts.  Sometimes I feel like yelling “But you just don’t understand!  You are being selfish!”  Newsflash… we are all selfish.  This started in a garden long, long ago and it is still true today.

We all need to take time to reflect.  Try to see your own perspective from outside.  What if someone else said what you just said?  What if you received an email like that?  As my Mom says “If the problem is not with me, I can’t fix it.”

Resiliency

Guess what?  Crap happens and it happens often.  Let’s look at my own life… One of your kid’s goes deaf in one ear, your family takes a 60% pay-cut, you get Cancer… life happens.  You CAN build resiliency.  It is like a muscle that needs to be exercised.  Don’t believe me?  Just Google it!  There is TONS of advice available from organizations like the American Psychological Association and the Mayo Clinic.

Just like in exercise and sports we all have God-given abilities to start with and some have been given more than others.  For some of us resiliency comes more easily while others must constantly work at it.  Resiliency is not ignoring the feelings and thoughts that created by adversity.  It is feeling them, acknowledging them and then making the conscious decision to set them aside.  The Black Knight is not resilient, he is ignorant.

From MindTools.com there are a few main keys to building resilience….

  1. Get enough sleep and exercise, and learn to manage stress.
  2. Practice thought awareness.
  3. Practice Cognitive Restructuring to change the way that you think about negative situations and bad events.
  4. Learn from your mistakes and failures.
  5. Choose your response.

Want to know the SECRET to interviewing?  Demonstrate these two things in your resume and your interviews.  Sure, there are a lot of other things you need to have and demonstrate to be the best match for a company.  But in my mind, these two are non-starters.

I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
George S Patton Jr.

 

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