You know you're good. Your last or current employer knows you're good. Your spouse or partners tells you you're good. So why is it so hard to toot your own horn when it comes to putting together a job application and presenting yourself at an interview?
I don't profess to understand. What I do know is that it's usually the candidate who presents her/himself the best who gets the job, not necessarily the best-qualified.
The days where you could rely on your supervisor to recognize your abilities and promote you appropriately are gone - they went, in my opinion, during the recession in the 1980s, when large corporations most obviously showed their lack of loyalty to their employees and fired huge chunks of their workforces. More jobs are being created in small and medium sized businesses in Canada in the last 15 years or so (see http://www.rbc.com/newsroom/20061030smallbiz.html, http://ehobdxsqtwdqeete.nqi.com/articles/article_details.aspx?ID=600 and http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/sbrp-rppe.nsf/en/rd02101e.html), and there is often much less room for promotion in small business since there is usually already a large amount of responsibility placed on each employee.
So how do you promote yourself and your abilities to a new employer? I suggest starting by asking yourself the following questions:
What am I proudest of, specifically?
And come up with some powerful examples of your work to answer these questions:
Not just what did I do, but what did I do WELL?
What positive feedback have I received on performance reviews? (keep these!)
What are the top 3 skills or experiences I bring to the job I am seeking to get?
Examples are powerful tools. Think of every laundry soap commercial you have ever seen. What's the one common factor? Clean laundry. Show your "clean laundry" to an employer - it's a strategy that has worked for laundry soap for years, why not you too?
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