Führung: Wetten Sie heute auf Sie morgen

As we all know, leading-while-female is all about confidence, especially when considering a major career change. But, apply to any job or ask for any promotion, and one of the questions you will be asked, either during the application process or in an interview, is what skills or experience you have that qualifies you for the job. The job market is highly competitive in this way, especially during this current climate. Those with the right experience and skills are more likely to get an offer. Employers want to hire individuals who have the skills right now that will put the company in a better position to succeed. Few employers want to hire someone who is still acquiring those skills.

This presents quite a predicament for anyone applying to these jobs who is lacking experience. How do we channel our fullest confidence when tasked with a job search, starting a new business, or reconsidering your career? How are you supposed to have all the requisite skills and years of experience if you can not get a position because of your lack of skills and experience in the first place?

Female empowerment is not about embracing leadership in the immediate situation. Instead, it is a lifestyle, a mindset. By betting on yourself, you can take steps today to help you embrace your leadership prowess and start moving forward. Here’s how:

Hire yourself. 

Engage with your inner entrepreneur and learn the skills you need, at the very least, to get started in your field. Nowadays online learning platforms such as YouTube, Skillshare, oder Udemy make it easy to start learning a variety of marketable skills. Or, use
networking sites such as LinkedIn to connect with others and see if you can learn from them.

For example, let’s say you want to get into digital marketing. You could spend 4 years studying marketing at a university, but nothing says you need a degree to be successful at marketing.  Instead, you could spend only a few weeks learning the basics of website development, SEO, and social media on your own. You can then use those skills to start taking on projects of your
own in your own business or in leveling up at a company. Here’s the key, you are almost certainly going to have no idea how to complete your first project, but you will figure it out. That learning experience is enough to get you started and start building confidence to keep you going.

Reframe the question. 

An alternative option is to reframe the question that interviewers ask you. Rather than simply admitting that you lack the experience, confront the underlying question. The underlying question is something along the lines of: why should I still hire you given your lack of skills and experience. This can be accomplished by detailing the skills you do have, what sort of
leadership roles you have taken on, and, most importantly, the type of mindset that you have. Simply saying something such as “Every project I’ve worked on required a steep learning curve and I was still successful” can go a long way in the eyes of the interviewer. The ambitious and entrepreneurial mindset is often looked at positively.

Are men or women more likely to jump in headfirst?

Men in fact, are more likely to answer more confidently to such interview questions, start projects, or accept roles they lack the necessary experience because they are more likely to take risks. Men, especially younger men, are more prone to risk-taking behavior than women including gambling.

Taking on a project you are truly unprepared for is certainly a gamble of sorts. You are gambling on yourself. If you are starting a business this may certainly involve risking money to get some of the equipment, software, or property you need to get started. It involves foregoing other, potentially safer options – enter excuses here. 

What lessons can we learn from this?

There are safe options for getting to where you want to be in your professional career. However, if you want to learn more and advance quicker, you may have to bet on yourself. This is not to say that you must become an entrepreneur and start your own business to get things going. You can become a leader by simply being an intrapreneur (someone who creates change from within an organization), doing your job better than anyone else, or getting involved in the community.

It ultimately boils down to having the right mindset. Feeling as though you lack the experience and skillset can be intimidating. This could cause you to skip certain job postings because you “just know they won’t call you back.” However, getting a new job or promotion was never meant to be easy. The sooner you come to terms with this, the sooner you can start getting creative with your professional career. You can start looking for opportunities in new places. Even if you strike out going down this path, the journey alone will equip you with a new skillset and a new sense of confidence. People or companies seeking to employ your services will embrace that mindset.