I have no need to “sell myself”. I’m an obsolete dinosaur with weird skills that are of no practical use to anyone. If anything I understate my skills since I have nothing to prove and no one to impress.

People who just sit there and won’t reveal their competence or skills are just as damaging as people with unrealistic views of themselves. Peers are in the dark when it comes to people who won’t speak up about their talents. So peers will turn to more open people (who have stated what they can do, and do well) because they feel more confident and sure with such people.

I hear ya though. People who live on soap boxes with hand painted “look at me” signs irritate me to no end. Honest people who know their limits and will admit so are rare and golden.

i know what i can do & what i can’t honesty is the best policy when dealing with anybody especially with homeowner’s , contractor’s or softball coaches within minutes they will figure out what you can do or can’t it’s bad to be labeled as a liar on top of being incompotent

Describing your abilities doesn’t have to be arrogant but it makes many of us uncomfortable to be asked by job interviewers to toot our own horns. I personally don’t like it and have had to write things down and practice saying them in order to not sound taken off guard or like a braggart.

I think that you may suffer from being your own harshest critic. What if you described yourself as if you describing someone else?

Isn’t it true that you would describe yourself more generously?

I think that in today’s working world, it is somewhat necessary for us to be our own sales reps.

It is difficult for me since my experiences (and thus my skillset) covers a wide range, and I am a quick learner so I can usually figure out within a couple of months stuff that would take most people a year or more to learn. Therefore, I consider experience to be a bogus measure of the degree of aptitude.

When I do start listing my skills, I run into many of the problems that @stranger_in_a_strange_land does, and that doesn’t count the fact that people measure knowledge with a calender, or they don’t believe me and think I am lying, so I often don’t even get a chance to demonstrate my capabilities.

Might be why I’ve been unemployed for a year :(

I would never try to sell myself as a “team player”, which I’m not and couldn’t fake if I wanted to. Since I’d work alone on projects, what co-workers know of my skills is not important. I’d rather be underestimated and thought of as less intelligent than I am. If I were to apply for a job, I’d list only the skills and education I have that is relevant to the job description. I don’t consider understating my skills and education as unethical, but protecting myself from being classified as “overqualified” or an employer trying to extract more from me than he is paying for.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land Same here!

@jerv with the economy on the skids I wouldn’t feel right competing with someone who has to feed a family, I can easily live on my military pension. In my current depressed state any job interview would be a farce anyway

@stranger_in_a_strange_land If I had a pension or some other income then I’d feel the same, but my wife’s 30 hr/wk job isn’t enough for us so I gotta try. Unfortunately, interviews for me are a farce…

A lot of people do overestimate themselves. But I will take that chance when judging my own capabilities because I have more data points about myself than anyone else. I have seen myself be very smart and be very stupid and I have seen myself at my ugliest and at my prettiest. So I feel reasonable well-qualified to comment on my particular strengths and weaknesses.

You do have to have a lot of chutzpah to say good things about yourself. And in most cases, having a lot of chutzpah is a pretty useful quality. I definitely believe that people live up (or live down) to expectations, both internally and externally generated. If you expect big things from yourself, you’re more likely to achieve them than if you expect yourself to be a total fuckup. Don’t you think?

@jerv I feel your pain.

Some of us have the experience and insight to accurately describe our capabilities. We do better at it when we do not feel under pressure to prove (or promote) ourselves.

@hungryhungryhortence I refuse to “toot my horn” or play silly interview games, so I’m probably better off considering myself retired even though I’m only 53.

Giving credit to one’s self is equally as important as self-criticism. It creates balance. Everything must have balance in order to function well. Think about nature, and what happens when it is not in balance, then consider what happens to the Self when it isn’t in balance. It’s a direct correlation. That is not an accident.

@nikipedia There is an entry about illusory superiority, but none about illusory inferiority. I wonder why. I tend to assume that everyone else is doing better than me. They are smarter, more dedicated and hard-working; they like themselves better, etc., etc. Why? Because they say so. They tell me how smart they are and that they have a great job making a lot of money, and that they work hard, 80 hours a week or something.

So here I am, actually working maybe 20 hours a week, if that (most time is spent on fluther—before that computer card games), making, well, I don’t know how it compares to my peers, but it always seems like not very much. I can’t get a gig. I’m not doing much music. I don’t have a lot of friends left. So it just seems like everyone else must be doing better than me.

Worse, anything I do can’t be measured. My work is about helping people in an intellectual way. That happens inside people, and I can’t see it. I don’t know how I do compared to other support personnel. I don’t know how much I help people. It always seems like it’s just a simple little nothing.

I could pretend that I’m some great, inspiring educator or whatever, and I suppose no one could gainsay me—except for word-of-mouth. Which, since my boss only talks to me when the word-of-mouth is bad, I have no idea if anyone thinks anything good.

In any case, I have to be a total fuck-up since I goof off most of the time. Either it is really easy to do my work, or people expect very little from me. Neither case provides much support for my sense of self. How can I sell myself on such a basis?

Don’t worry. I’ll find a way, if I have to. I know how to puff up inconsequential things to make them seem like earth-shaking accomplishments. I know how to pretend I know all the things I need to know, or to be able to learn them. I pretend to be confident and have it all together. I do it because that’s how it’s done. But it makes me sick. I have no idea how I compare to anyone else, so I don’t ever know how I’m doing, and because I don’t have a positive frame of mind, in the absence of information, I assume I’ve fucked up.

I know that’s a bad thing, but it’s the way my mind goes. Hell, even saying “it’s the way my mind goes” is a bad thing since I’m supposed to be able to channel it in more positive ways. I mean, that alone says that I’ve given up, which means that people can write me off as someone who doesn’t try.

Now I know there are some people here who do appreciate what I have to say. A couple even seem to think I’m a decent person, despite all the shit I’ve told them about myself. But I do totally believe that I don’t try. This is just for fun. It doesn’t really count. I don’t get paid to do it. I love doing it, but I get paid to do something else, and I’m robbing my employer because I spend all my time here. So, no matter how you look at it, I’m a fuck-up—and a dishonest one at that.

Maybe other people can pretend they can accomplish big things. Maybe they do actually accomplish something (I doubt it’s big—I don’t even think I could name one thing that I would consider a big accomplishment short of building a large company or something). I just can’t fool myself that my big thing list will ever lose even one item.

Probably not.

Throw me in the “weird skills that are of no practical use to anyone” group.

Plain and simple, just be yourself and don’t worry about what others think because the importance is; you are not trying to please everyone – especially when it comes to people you don’t know. I never let others get in the way of my expression. I always carry an accurate thinking (at all times) while that just gives me more self-confidence in myself to accomplish whatever obstacle that get’s in my way.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land Considering that you can retire from the military with a full pension as young as 37, that may not be a bad thing.

I feel very comfortable being aware of what I can do well and the areas where I am a klutz, uninterested, too old or simply missing the right gene. Skills and accomplishments are not necessarily the same.

For a job or something, I can accurately describe what I have accomplished, but that might not be an accurate description of what I can do. For any other purpose, I can’t see where is would ever come up.

It’s possible to describe my capabilities. Accurately? Very often capabilities are hard to measure. Standardized tests do have limitations.

Can you change a tire? Can you build a dry wall? Can you make a coq au vin? Can you whistle with thumb and index finger loud enough to have a taxi pull up?

Can you do your own taxes? Can you spell “definitely” correctly? Can you yank hair out of a clogged drain with a coat hanger? Can you pull a splinter out of the bottom of your feet with your teeth?

Can you ID a tree in winter from its bark alone? Can you trim your cat’s nails?