You gotta have confidence
I often get asked by recent graduates for pointers on interviewing………and I tell them they need to communicate passion and confidence. For example, if an applicant is selected to come in for an interview, I first look for eye contact and no tattoos above the collar, or cell phone in sight. The best interview I ever sat in came from a young kid just out of college that said this, when I asked: “Tell me why I should hire you.” He replied: “I just graduated from Business school, but I don’t know squat about your business. I owe 50k on a student loan and my parents are not well off and I had to work my way through college. I don’t care what you pay me, or what job you want me to do-----I will learn anything you have to teach me and do any work, any time of the day or night. I just want to work. I have to work and I need this job. Just give me a chance and you won’t be sorry.” I wasn’t sorry.
As for the confidence factor, my uncle Walter told me this story about a friend of his that faced bankruptcy in the depression. He was a business owner who was deep in debt and could see no way out. Creditors were hounding him and suppliers had his company on COD. As he sat on a park bench in New York, head in hands, wondering if anything could save him, an old man suddenly appeared in front of him. “I can see that something is troubling you,” he said. After listening to the executive’s problem, the old man said, “I believe I can help you.” He asked the man his name, wrote out a check, and pushed it into his hand saying, “Take this money. Meet me here exactly one year from today, and you can pay me back at that time.” Then he turned and walked away as quickly as he had come. The business executive saw in his hand a check for $500,000, signed by John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world at the time!
“I can erase my money worries in an instant!” he realized. But instead, the executive decided to put the uncashed check in his safe. Just knowing it was there might give him the strength to work out a way to save his business, he thought.
With renewed optimism, he negotiated better deals and extended terms of payment. He closed several big sales and within a few months he was out of debt and making money once again. Exactly one year later, he returned to the park with the uncashed check; and at the agreed-upon time, the old man appeared. But just as the executive was about to hand back the check and share his success story, a nurse came running up and grabbed the old man. ”I’m so glad I caught him!” she said. “I hope he hasn’t been bothering you. He’s always escaping from the nursing home and telling people he’s John D. Rockefeller.” And she led the old man away by the arm.
The executive was stunned: all year long he’d been wheeling and dealing, buying and selling, convinced he had half a million dollars behind him. Suddenly, he realized that it wasn’t the money, that had turned his life around; It was his newfound self-confidence that gave him the power to achieve anything he went after.
The moral is: People will believe anyone that appears sincere and honest; if you can fake that, the world is your oyster.