Boost and Sustain Your Confidence for a Successful Job Search

Confidence is a powerful tool in many areas of life, including job searches and careers. Selena Rezvani (she/her) is a sought-after speaker and the author of the upcoming book Quick Confidence: Be Authentic, Boost Connections, and Make Bold Bets on Yourself. She joined the latest episode of #GetHired with Andrew Seaman to talk about what job seekers can do to build and maintain their confidence during the process.

Rezvani defines confidence as the ability to predict success or learning in the future, acknowledging that it won't always go perfectly. She highlights common obstacles to confidence, including dealing with intimidating people. Rezvani also suggests that job seekers focus on what can be controlled — rather than what can't. You can learn more about these techniques and more on the latest episode of the podcast.

Read a transcript of the conversation below. You can also listen to the episode above or wherever you like to listen to your podcasts,?such as Apple Podcasts.

BONUS:?Selena will also join LinkedIn News' Brandi Fowler live on Monday, March 27, at noon ET to answer your questions about the topic on?#GetHired?Live. You can RSVP for that conversation by clicking the image below or?by clicking here.

TRANSCRIPT: Boost and Sustain Your Confidence for a Successful Job Search

Andrew Seaman: At times, I'm sure we all wish we were Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music. Her character, Maria, has confidence. Heck, she sings a whole song about it. She has confidence in sunshine, rain, and even that spring will come again, but most importantly, she has confidence in herself. That last one isn't always easy, especially if you're in the middle of a job search or a tough time in your career. Fortunately, there are things you can do to find and build confidence. We're talking all about it on today's episode.

From LinkedIn News, this is Get Hired, a podcast for the ups and downs, and the ever-changing landscape of our professional lives. I'm Andrew Seaman, LinkedIn's managing editor for Jobs and Career Development. Taking time to build authentic confidence can be a powerful skill. Selena Rezvani, who is the author and sought after leadership speaker is here to help us master it. Her upcoming book, Quick Confidence, uses empirical data to create routines that boost your confidence and help you overcome intimidation. Before we get to that conversation though, I want to let you know that Selena will join our weekly Get Hired live show on Monday, March 27th at noon Eastern Time, to go deeper into this topic and answer your questions about confidence. You can find the RSVP link for Get Hired Live in the show notes. Now, back to today's conversation with Selena.

Your latest book, like you said, is called Quick Confidence: Be Authentic, Create Connections and Make Bold Bets On Yourself, which is great. I'm going to start off with a very sort of basic question, but also I think is often one of the toughest, which is, what is confidence?

Selena Rezvani: I think about confidence as your ability to predict success or learning in the future that we can be successful in situations and knowing it won't always go our way a hundred percent of the time.

Andrew: And the other thing that I want to make sure that we touch on right at the top of this conversation is that it's normal not to be confident in a lot of areas of your life, right?

Selena: Absolutely yes, and I had this mistaken belief people who had this lasting kind of long-term confidence, they must no longer experience or question their belonging in a situation. I think that's so wrong now. I see it so differently that the point of a well-lived life isn't to insulate yourself from those experiences to out muscle self-doubt, it's proof that you're pushing your edge, that you're stretching what you can do and what you can learn. So, I think it's a great thing when we feel that. I think the big thing that changes with confident people though is telling yourself the right stories, so that when you're faced with that yucky, can I do this feeling, that you switch to a different channel, that you create a little distance from maybe judging or shaming yourself to kind of adopting more of a coach voice. What does a great coach do? They don't just nail you to the wall for your weaknesses. They also acknowledge what you're doing well, where you're really making an effort.

Andrew: I wanted to have this conversation, especially when it comes to job seeking and difficult career times, because I think we're in that spot now, with the economy in rough shape, it's easy for your confidence to take a hit, because if you're job seeking, you probably are getting more rejections. And in your book you go into nine common obstacles that shape people's confidence or at least stand in the way of them being confidence. Can you go over some of those nine obstacles that you've identified in your book?

Selena: Yeah, I think one of the most common ones I hear from people is around dealing with intimidating people, and that might mean executives within your industry that you really admire and would like to approach and know better and learn from. And I think a lot of that intimidation can be normal, but one of the things I like to tell people is approach it peer-to-peer. There's an old saying, "If you put somebody up on a pedestal, don't be surprised if they start to look down on you." And it's true, there's no need to create that hierarchy of you're here and I'm down here. It certainly doesn't serve our confidence and fuel us, so I think that's one of the first things is approach that person like a smart peer who you respect.

Andrew: And for job seekers and people who are maybe struggling in their careers, are there any other obstacles that maybe you think apply to them?

Selena: One of the ones that comes to mind in all of these situations is to separate for yourself what you can control directly versus maybe what you can influence or what's out of your control. You can control, for example, how well-prepared you are for that interview, the homework you've done, maybe the networking you've done on LinkedIn to talk to folks who know about that company. I find that that can really fuel your confidence when you focus on what you can control, and doing that also helps you make a little bit of peace with what you can't control, what's not the decision you're directly going to dictate. The most confident job seekers, they keep the promises they make to themselves. So, if they say, I'm going to apply to this wonderful opportunity tomorrow, or I'm going to broach the subject of a promotion next week, they keep those promises, and this can really build our esteem and our confidence that we follow through and I think that's important for people looking for job opportunities, networking meetings that we follow through.

Otherwise, the danger is you kind of start to look at yourself like that flaky coworker. You don't want to do that to your own confidence, so it's a small thing but not so small impact.

Andrew: Is there an element of forgiveness too where people, I think they hold themselves maybe to such a high standard that any ding to that armor they take maybe too deep?

Selena: I think that's really important, self-forgiveness when... Again, maybe you did make a big mistake and I think there's a few ways you can approach it. I think you can do something I recommend like a ritual, like an actual physical act to maybe let go of that thing and create a little space from it. Maybe you feel like you tanked an interview and just, I don't know all the wrong words came out of your mouth, doing something physical to let that go, going out in nature and throwing a stick in the stream and watching it go away and float away. There is something therapeutic about saying it's okay to feel bad about this, but then I'm going to draw a line in the sand. I'm going to try in this visual way to help myself let it go.

Andrew: We're going to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere because we'll be right back with Selena Rezvani.

Andrew: And we're back with the author of Quick Confidence and leadership speaker, Selena Rezvani. For job seekers or people who are in their careers and maybe they have an important meeting coming up or maybe it's the key to the next step in their career, what is your advice to them to really build their confidence to sort of move forward?

Selena: Yeah, I think we could take so many examples in life, whether it's that job interview, the presentation, the networking meeting. I think there's a few things you could do. One of my favorites as a dog owner actually comes from the animal world and I call it dog code, and what I mean is if you think about a person visiting your house for the first time, what does the dog in that house generally do when you open the door, they go right up to you. They initiate contact and I think, like let's say you are newly in an organization and you are getting ready to give a big presentation or you're entering that really important meeting, initiating contact, being the first is such a great way to double your social confidence because you end up habituating starting conversations and it can really take the scariness out of doing that.

I'm talking about being the first to smile at somebody as they enter a room, being the first to walk up to them and maybe shake hands and say, "Hi, I'm Selena." So, I think that's an important one and signals a lot of confidence to maybe your audience or the executives you're getting ready to speak to. I think one other one that I laugh about a little bit is simply being able to introduce yourself in a comfortable way.

Andrew: Yeah, I think all of those pieces of advice are top-notch, because I know over time I've had to become more comfortable introducing myself. Just as an example, this morning, the way things work at LinkedIn now post pandemic is, we don't really have a signed desk, that means you meet a lot of new people, so I sat in the area that I always sit and someone that I had never met sat next to me. I don't like just sitting there not greeting someone. I said, "I'm Andrew, who are you?" It breaks the ice and you have end up having a good conversation. The other thing I wanted to ask you too, and I know we touched on this a little bit earlier, is when something goes wrong, I think a lot of people, they sometimes turn inward too much and they can become closed off. So, when your confidence has taken a hit, how do you rebuild after that?

Selena: We have all been there and in my case it requires some Milano Cookies and Rosé.

Andrew: Do they go together?

Selena: They do.

Andrew: I've never had a Milano Cookie, to be fair.

Selena: Oh my goodness.

Andrew: I know.

Selena: Well, next time I see you, I know what to bring.

Andrew: There you go.

Selena: But yes, whatever that is for you, maybe that comfort food, and giving yourself a chance to maybe grieve that opportunity, to feel really lousy about how the outcome turned out, give yourself that. I think once you've had that opportunity though, there's a few things you can do and I think of a story of running a workshop and having two women share their stories with me. One woman said, "I got rejected for a promotion and I went to my car. I had a long cry and I really stewed in that for two weeks." And the other woman said, "I felt really lousy, I got rejected for a promotion. I actually went to my mentor within the company who immediately told me, 'Oh, that happens all the time. Don't take it personally.'" One rebounded very quickly by having that rejection normalized, and one soaked themself in it and really kind of suffered, and so I think turn to your network, so many people there can give you a perspective on what's just happened and some feedback. It's so often not personal.

Andrew: Yeah. And something I want to ask you, and I don't know if there's a perfect answer to this, and I assume there's not, but especially for women and people from marginalized communities, sometimes confidence for those people come off to other people within the organization as, "Oh, that person's too pushy." Or, things like that where it's basically coded sexism or racism, things like that. Do you have any words of advice for them?

Selena: Yeah, that certainly happens. And my feeling on it is, you deserve a sense of belonging whether or not the people or the environment around you foster that. You know deserve it within you, systems most certainly need to be improved in the workplace to de-bias them, and to be more welcoming, and inclusive of people as full well-rounded individuals, right? Not people who just modulate their emotions into this perfectly socially acceptable place where they can't be angry or they can't be frustrated. We know that these are some biases that marginalized groups are held to. They're given less latitude to express themselves in these acceptable ways. I think one of the things that we need to do is be open to the idea that in these moments we can push and lobby for some more awareness. It's certainly not only the job of people who are marginalized to do that, but it's really hard to change systems without awareness.

If you have grassroots efforts in an organization to build some awareness about these bias issues, it's a lot easier to call it out. It's a lot easier to say, "Hey, I think we're measuring these two job candidates kind of unfairly. I think we're asking this person to prove it and prove it and prove it again that they're qualified, and this person seems to be getting a pass." But the last thing I want to say on this is, I think one of the most important allyship type behaviors that we can all do is to give somebody else a vote of confidence. Notice, maybe your coworkers overlooked in that meeting and to put the mic back in their hand, I think we can help people in that way to give them a vote of confidence.

Andrew: Yeah, I appreciate that answer so much and thank you for offering it, because I think people see it all the time where you see people who maybe are silenced or they're pushed off to the side. Like you said, it's not on them to fix the system that oppresses them it. It's up to people who have that voice and not being marginalized to amplify it and fix things. My other question, how do you walk the line between confidence and arrogance?

Selena: I think of over confidence and confidence in general on a spectrum. I think being 65 to 70% reassured that this is a good idea is often enough. I think the other thing about healthy amounts of confidence is we don't have a death grip on the outcome. This has to be beloved and embraced by everybody for me to say it and for it to be a good idea. I think confident people, they have some of that 65 to 70% certainty, but then they let go of the outcome of what they can't necessarily control, which is how people may receive it.

Andrew: Yeah, I'm completely on board with that because I think that last 25% or even 20%, I think, is a healthy level of doubt. I think one of the healthiest things I sometimes see within organizations is they may go all in on something, but then they will admit at that same time, maybe it'll go belly up.

Selena: Yes, I love it. I think you're so right, Andrew, and down to the manager level, I think it's one of the best gifts they can give their people is just what you're talking about, this experimental mindset.

Andrew: Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for being here.

Selena: It's my pleasure. I love your work, Andrew, so it's an honor.

Andrew: That was Selena Rezvani, who is the author of Quick Confidence: Be Authentic, Create Connections and Make Bold Bets On Yourself. Remember, it's up to you to put our advice into practice. Still, you always have a community backing you up and cheering you on.

Connect with me and the Get Hired community on LinkedIn to continue the conversation. In fact, ask Selena your own questions on Monday, March 27th at noon Eastern Time on Get Hired Live. You can find the RSVP link in today's show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, leave us a rating on Apple Podcast. It helps people like you find the show. And of course, we'll continue this conversation next week, right here, wherever you like to listen.

Get Hired is a production of LinkedIn News. This episode was produced by Alexis Ramdaou, Assaf Gidron engineered our show, Joe DiGiorgi mixed our show. Dave Pond is Head of News Production. Courtney Coupe is head of Original Programming for LinkedIn. Dan Roth is the Editor in Chief of LinkedIn. And I’m Andrew Seaman. Until next time, stay well and best of luck.