How impostor syndrome kills your job search
Back when I was a reporter, I used to have a recurring nightmare.
I was in the newsroom, and men in dark suits came in to escort me out.
“You don’t belong here,” they said as they led me away.
While I loved the research and the writing aspects of being a newspaper reporter, the “getting an elected official to tell the truth” and “ask a grieving widow about her dead husband” aspects of the job were not my speed.
When I first was leaving my job on an afternoon paper in Michigan, I was interviewing for other journalism jobs.
I tanked them all.
I remember being nervous and sweaty and tongue-tied.
It was only much later that I realized, all those interviews failed because I didn’t really want to be a reporter. I was a decent reporter, but I felt like an impostor. My colleagues seemed to be so dialed in to being reporters. I didn’t. Thus, the nightmares.
I’m a writer, but not a reporter.
When I came back to Wisconsin, I got hooked up with a tech temp agency and started interviewing for jobs doing work on the web, something I loved and was good at.
I got every job I interviewed for.
Part of the reason for that was that those interviews were just the final step in the process, since the temp agency had already recommended me.
But I was also supremely confident in my abilities working on the web, and I enjoyed every minute of it.
That made all the difference in the world.
The nightmares stopped.
What I’m trying to say is that if you are feeling like an impostor, look at what you are doing. Look at your goals. Maybe that impostor feeling is trying to tell you something. Maybe it is telling you that you’re not going in the right direction.
Once you are doing what you are meant to be doing, that rumbling in the pit of your stomach will go away.
It’s a great feeling.
See you next week.
Great story and great advice! Thank you, Adam.
This is an interesting topic, because many people feel impostor syndrome even when they're following their calling and what they're good at. It may be diminished when you're doing what you're meant to be doing, but that doesn't mean it goes away. I guess it could depend on the intensity of the feeling. Something to think about!