No I don’t mean selling myself for “services”. Actually I’d be terrible and almost certain to lose money. I mean selling myself in the professional sense. We do it all the time whether consciously or subconsciously. Like choosing to wear nice clothes over holey rags.
Yesterday marked a milestone. I added another social network to my list. Under the encouragement from several friends (one in particular), I bit the bullet and joined the world of LinkedIn . I know, I’m so 2000 and late.
It felt like signing up to Facebook for the first time and learning how to navigate it. There are a lot of similarities except it’s now trying to be popular on a professional front instead of friending who I met last Saturday night before lockdown (those were the days…). Finding a serious mug shot of me took a while. As I proceeded to fill in the blank boxes for past experience and listing skills, it got me thinking about this career game we play.
So why self promote?
For the longest time, I withheld from being associated with these kinds of selling services. I mean, if I wanted a job, I’d search for one and apply. Why would I need to have a profile that details my experience before I’ve even applied? I’m not an up-and-coming hot shot entrepreneur or start up.
Well, hustle culture for starters. You are your own success yadda yadda. While generally job prospects are still merit based, increasingly it’s who you know or who you might know that could land you an opportunity to obtain it. Purely sending your CV when job hunting isn’t enough.
Proclaiming to the (professional) world about what you do and how you are as a person already gives a significant insight about you as a person and might have the unintended side effect of predetermined judgement. Which leads me to believe a lot of people embellish to look the best they can on paper so at least a foot is in the metaphorical door. A career selfie if you will. Present only the good side. The one that silently declares to the public sphere “look at me, my skills and what I’ve achieved in life so far”. You want people to find you and look.
I’ve had my fair share of instances when I had to sell myself for work. Interviews are the obvious example where I needed to brag on a professional level how I managed to resolve XYZ while juggling knives on a uni-cyle in a ring of fire. While the knives and uni-cycle is an exaggeration, behavioural questions framed as ‘how’ as opposed to ‘what’ are more the norm. Also no tales of Thai massage parlours here. Now LinkedIn is a passive extension of advertising myself even when I’m not actively looking for a role. I’m not sure why I’m not 100% comfortable with that because it anything, it would be an ego boost that a recruiter might want me.
Popularity Rules
The number of connections you have correlate to how well known you are in your industry or wider sector. My measly connection numbers are easily eclipsed by others with thousands. Which begs the question, do they really know thousands of people on a personal level or are the majority just ‘regular’ colleagues? Regardless, it is quite obvious who takes it seriously and wanting to career climb.
This isn’t intended to be a review of LinkedIn services, but what we are expected to do to progress. My personal take so far is that it draws many parallels to the modern social life. Especially not unlike the number of followers on influencers’ social media in the world we live in. The more followers or connections, the more leverage you stand to have. Whilst I disagree with that notion from a moral point of view, it is inevitable we all have to play the game to succeed.
What do you make of the situation that we play this game of needing to sell ourselves in order to succeed? Are you accepting of it? Let me know your thoughts.
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