This year multiple elections are taking place worldwide. I believe it is appropriate to think about your job chasing, promotion-seeking efforts as if it were an election campaign.
I have always found it helpful to take some of the formality and, let’s call it bureaucracy, away from career development and to paint what you’re at in simpler terms.
When you go for a job you are hoping to convince the electorate. You do that by telling them what you do, how you do it, why they should believe you and all that goes with that. While a job will not involve as much public campaigning, it is the same spirit that fires it.
The similarities
I’ve always respected people who’ve got the capacity to run for election, not just because they are willing to fail in public, but because they are also willing to talk themselves up. This has led to some notable distances between candidate and ability, but as a general theory, I think it is sound.
They identify what they stand for, what they believe in, or at worst, what they feel the electorate want to hear. And when you get to there, as a person, you have stopped, you have got out of your own way.
Candidates need to get out of their own way, sell themselves and know their strengths.
It’s not a bad analogy to consider if you’re going for a job.
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