Learn not to give a damn when this happens
It happened again.
Two top candidates presented a version of this phenomena within a few days of each other.
“Courtney, I’ve been interviewing and I haven’t heard from them for..
one day, one week one minute, insert some amount of time that's well within the normal response range.
Now you're getting nervous.
You start thinking..."Maybe I did something to offend."
"Maybe jerk boss at your last job dissed you in some way."
Oh the mind goes wild.
Years ago, when I first started doing this work, I noticed this pattern.
I love patterns. They are so deliciously revealing.
Amazing candidates getting nervous too soon, getting needy too soon. Worrying needlessly and poisoning the well of better possibilities.
I'll explain.
But first a story...
Friends of mine switched their son from public to private school.
First big difference they noticed:
At private school, everyone has to play a sport. It’s mandatory.
You have to choose one in the fall and one in the spring.
Their son’s pick? Cross-country.
From my brief observations of their son, his preferred sports are beer drinking and fishing but those were not on offer at St. Richierich**.
I don't know if cross country is a spring or fall sport.
Perhaps he chose it because, like beer drinking and fishing, if you’re passionate enough, you can do it any time of year.
So, his parents roll up to the St. Richierich campus to cheer him on in his first cross country race.
The firing gun goes off and a lot of what I imagine are tall thin teens set off running all over.
Early on, while the runners are still in a clump, the course takes the group into the woods.
They go in together and apparently the course is quite long through the woods, because the pack thins out and runners start emerging from the forest one by one or two at a time.
My friends wait for their son to bound out of the woods.
And they wait,
and they wait.
Waiting leads to worrying.
The imagination is a powerful thing and it tends to the negative:
Injury
Animal attack
Weird unknown health ‘attack’.
Just as their imagination starts running away with them, their son runs out of the forest.
At the finish line, his father asks,
“Son, seems like you were in the woods for a long time. Did you fall? Are you okay?”
His son replied.
“I stopped and took a rest.” He really did. He's got a mind of his own, that kid.
True story.
That’s it.
No drama.
No injury.
No animal attack.
There is something about the alchemy of our brains that goes negative when it could just as well go positive.
My top, blue chip, golden-haired God and Goddess clients share worries about getting passed over or ghosted and … frequently right before an offer comes - No joke, that's the pattern.
Sometimes the offer doesn’t come, or it’s a pathetic one that may or may not get better with negotiation.
When I first started this work, before I knew the pattern, I thought, "How could you doubt yourself? YOU’RE AMAZING!"
But this is a legit pattern.
Here’s the reality I’m privy to through my work:
the better the candidate the longer the job hunt.
There are exceptions, but the machine loves the medicore to above-average, needy candidate. Insecurity makes one so easy to manipulate and needy candos don't negotiate.
The better you are, the more likely you are to make people nervous.
(Unless you're a surgeon or a pilot or something where people don't want to die.)
People aren't going to announce their insecurities to you when it's so much easier to let you think there’s something wrong with you.
Sometimes you get No’ed, passed over, under-appreciated and it is absolutely for the best. IT HAS TO BE, cause they weren't into you. Learn to love that they said 'No', instead of hating it, and you'll be well on your way to freedom beyond your wildest dreams.
When you don't let pauses and passes trigger self-doubt in you, it's liberating and lovely. It's bloody profitable, too!
Here's a great summary of this idea from a guy who builds his business around being himself and letting people take him or leave him.
Word to the wise, you can do the same thing.
This is from a podcast interview with Ben Settle. It sums it up pretty well:
“The math is on your side. Ok, it’s supply and demand. If you’re good at what you do and have something to offer the world, whatever it is you do, there’s less supply of you than there are of people who need or want what you have, so why do you care if someone gets offended or doesn’t like it, let them go…”
Let them go. Cause there are people out there who want what you're bringing. And they want it bad. Give them a chance to appreciate you. Puh-lease!
Welcome the "no thanks" from "Lukewarmers" and anyone who’s not hot for you.
To hell with "Maybes" and "Meh." Leave that for the tools.
Bottom line:
you’re hot as hell and I’m cool with you acting like it.
Run your own race.
P.S. St. Richirich* - not it’s real name.
Vintage Photo by Annie Spratton Unsplash
P.S. Slight change of topic here. Did you know that vintage photos are one of six types of photos that connects with people and gets their attention? If you clicked because of the photo, well there you go.
There are five other types and when I learned them I thought, "That makes perfect sense." It's one of those things that once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Knowledge is power, (somebody said that before me.)
I talk about this in my next post which you can get delivered to your email by signing up here (well, there. Below.)
https://www.courtneykirschbaum.com/emailsthatmakryoulaughandthink
You can also read what people say about my emails in case his is the first post of mine you've happened upon.
I email frequently and give cool free stuff away from time to time and not all emails make it to blog-post land, cause I like to keep some content just for them. My list is definitely not for everyone though. If it's for you, I welcome you.
PSS - if you want to know more power info. like that little tid-bit about the power of certain type of pictures ... then get on it. Here's that link again.
https://www.courtneykirschbaum.com/emailsthatmakryoulaughandthink