Interview Prep Pt.1

I had a phone interview two days ago with a recruiter from a company I would be excited to work for. The pay part of this job wouldn't be as great as what some of my peers are getting at some of the larger tech companies in the area, but it would be a much better fit for ME, where hopefully I could stay for several years and start to grow a career.

The next stage in the process would be a phone interview with an actual PM that works for the company. I have her first name, so tomorrow when my LinkedIn resets from the commercial use limit, I should be able to find her profile and at least get a notion of who she is. 

I feel reasonably confident that I WILL in fact be invited to participate in this next stage of the process. My call with the recruiter went pretty well - she didn't ask any really tough questions and I suspect she was screening more for cultural fit than anything else and since I love animals, I'm sure I passed that part. But still, we will see.

What I need to do now is to start the process of figuring out some of my own issues - my feelings about myself that have been holding me back. Back in March, I wrote on this blog about the results of some personality tests that I took. My feeling at  the time was, in a sense, that I was kind of doomed. The fact is that low conscientiousness correlates highly to lack of professional success. 

But, if I look back at where I've mostly gone wrong the last few years, it wasn't lack of work ethic that fucked me. Rather, it was the neuroticism -  the feeling of not belonging, of not being wanted, of being suspect, of not having any real worth in the eyes of the people and organizations I was working in - along with my deep seated fear of negative feedback - that really screwed me.

I think one of the reasons I'm so scared of negative feedback is that I know that I have avoidance tendencies when it comes to aspects of the job where I have to learn how to do something that confuses me. For example, when I was in that IT role a few years back, Steve was on me to build out a dashboard showing our numbers, but I avoided that task like crazy because I didn't know what I was doing in terms of rendering it on SharePoint. But when it came to aspects of the job where I felt more confident, I was generally more energetic and "conscientious" about getting the work done. 

But the thing of it is, for the most part that role was a pretty positive one. There was some tension between Steve and me, but overall I did a lot of good work there and one on one's were almost always positive. Let's see, there was that damn dashboard and there was that stupid telemetry project, but not a whole lot else that were issues between us. 

What I really need to do going forward is to confront these issues. If I'm feeling lost or confused, I need to use the concept of mindfulness to own these feelings and get past them. 

End of pt. 1

  

My Personality Is Holding Me Back

My personality is what is holding me back. Primarily, I seem to be low in conscientiousness. That's the main culprit.

I've taken two different personality tests online and the results are generally the same with some variation that probably more to do with how questions are phrased and how I'm feeling about myself at that particular moment.

The way these tests work is by presenting you with a series of statements which you basically rate from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree". Mathematically, I imagine the way this works is as follows:

Strongly Disagree - 1

Disagree - 2

Neutral - 3

Agree - 4

Strongly Agree - 5

Answers are scored something like the above, though I think in some cases the values associated with answers are reversed, so a "Strongly Disagree" answer might result in a 5 instead of a one. It just has to do with how the statements are phrased. I imagine they do that to try and keep people honest. 

The tests are an attempt to measure where we stand in terms of the Big 5 personality traits, sometimes referred to as the "Big 5 Inventory".

Here are the 5 traits and how I generally score for each:

Openness - Middle to Above Average

Agreeableness - High

Extraversion - Very Low

Concientiousness - Middle to Below Average

Neuroticism - High

So basically, I'm a somewhat intellectual and imaginative neurotic introvert that's nonetheless easy to get along with, but lacks a super-strong work ethic. 

That last part is the real killer I think, just in terms of career. I KNOW, that I do not have a strong inherent work ethic. I'm not high energy. I don't feel driven to get things done - most of the time. There are occasional exceptions to that, but generally that's the case. 

One of the ways that I've dealt with this over the years is by performing well under pressure. This isn't always pleasant, of course. When the pressure is something I create for myself by procrastinating on a task (like creating a PowerPoint deck), the usual result is that the time I spend not doing that task is time spent in misery and dread. 

But there are other pressure situations that actually are kind of fun. Working on a project with other people is one of those situations.