Tell us more about yourself

Since I was in high school, I have always envied people who knew exactly what they wanted to do with their lives. There was that girl who at eight decided she wanted to be a doctor, and now she is graduating from medical school with a residency lined up. Her goal was defined early on and all her effort has been towards that goal. Unfortunately, I am not that girl. My first dream was to be president, then I moved on to volcanology, then law, then psychology, then economics but today I am nowhere near any of those fields.

Unfortunately, time doesn’t wait for the indecisive and now I am forced to make choices and decisions about the direction of my career. Since I do not have a one-track mind, I have applied for so many different types of jobs in so many different organisations. Now, after sending out application after application I am left wondering, do I really know who I am and what I want in relation to my career. Discussing my strengths, my weaknesses and my aspirations is no challenge but every single time I come across that dreaded question “tell us why we should consider hiring you”, I have a mini-identity crisis. Is it possible that I possess competencies that allow me to have such a wide range of choices or am I just casting my line into the ocean and hoping that any kind of fish will bite?

On my journey of self-discovery, I have found that the best way to gain a better understanding of myself is to ask questions. Questions like what do I want out of life, who do I want to be, where do I want to go, when do I want to get there, or how am I going to achieve my goals? I have no trouble answering these questions but when the why questions begin, I feel flustered. I think I struggle with those “why” questions because I am so much better at dealing with things in retrospect than as prospects.

I tend to be a very logical person, I make decisions based on facts and after a great deal of research, thought and debate. I often seem to take a long time to make decisions but when I do, it is nearly impossible to change my mind. It is for this reason that I always hesitate when people ask me “why?”. It is so much easier to explain your intentions after the fact than it is before. Perhaps my fear of answering that question stems from my fear of failure. I really want to work with you, but I can’t promise we’ll be a good fit, I can’t promise to be an outstanding employee. How can I justify my worth to you without implying such promises?

There is so much pressure around job applications, some of it is external but a lot of it is internal. There is that fear of rejection, but even deeper than that a fear of being a fraud. A fear of writing such a remarkable motivational letter, acing your interview and setting your employer’s expectations so high that you may never reach them. But you will never know what you are capable of if you never try. There are only two options: fail or succeed. And when you fail, it is a learning opportunity for you to do even better at the next try.

Life is a journey, and we do not know our destination until we get there. But when we look back at all the twists and turns that brought us to where we are, we realise we didn’t need to be totally prepared for everything. All we needed was a little faith, and a whole load of self-awareness. After all, you can’t know what you can do if you don’t know who you are.