Am I good enough? An interesting question that rose to the surface during my day volunteering with Smart Works.
Smart Works provides high quality interview clothes, styling advice and interview training to women in need. They give women the confidence, the self-belief and the practical tools they require to succeed at interview and start a new chapter in their life.
At the beginning of 2018 BarrettClark Executive Search committed to support Smart Works – a charity supporting women in need. As our charity of choice, we are raising £10,000 to help them with their work and each member of the BarrettClark team has committed to give one day of their time to the charity.
My appointed day arrived last week, and I reported to the Charity’s Islington office to conduct the “interview training” part of the experience. I had spent some time beforehand preparing, thinking about how each lady could get the best outcome from the meeting with me. After 20 years in the business and over 3000 interviews at executive level I thought I was ready, but it’s the ability to learn that really strikes me and I learned a lot that day. I re-connected with the key emotions that are elicited by interviews – lack of confidence and vulnerability It does not matter the level of the candidate, everyone is asking themselves – am I good enough? I met six ladies in back to back interview preparation meetings and it struck me how different all their backgrounds were. Three were rehabilitating from prison, one was a stay at home mother, another was hoping to take an admin role in public service and one was a newly qualified teaching assistant There was a common theme for each meeting – how to break through the “interview phobia” I had taken for granted my knowledge of positive psychology, growth mindset, strengths-based approaches and strategies around body language in preparation for a successful outcome – I quickly found ways to translate all of this into very easy tools for each lady I hope I was good enough to give them the confidence they needed to have a great interview and at writing I don’t know any of the results!
If you would like to contribute to the great efforts of Smart Works please donate here. We would be very grateful.