Is It 'Imposter Syndrome' or Do You Just Suck at Your Job?

Maybe you’re just unqualified

Photo by Icons8 Team on Unsplash

You can fake it until you make it! You deserve a great job with a top salary, so go for it! If you feel incompetent or in over your head, that’s just “imposter syndrome” and you should ignore it because it’s just not true, darn it! 

But what if it is true? Think about all the people you’ve worked with over your career. How many of your colleagues were objectively terrible at their jobs? How many times have you wondered what HR was thinking when they chose a certain candidate?

Sometimes, there’s a good reason people feel incompetent, and that reason is not imposter syndrome.

Our common hiring processes suck

Poor hiring processes don’t just hurt the individuals who don’t get a job they’d be good at or people who end up floundering in a job they should never have gotten. It’s not good for the company, either, because it ends up with unqualified workers.

Instead of everyone acknowledging that our hiring processes aren’t very good, we explained away the problem via the invention of “imposter syndrome.”

Hiring managers often think they can trust their gut, which usually means they end up favoring someone for arbitrary reasons or hiring someone whose background is similar to theirs.

That is what the Harvard Business Review says in the article In Hiring, Algorithms Beat Instinct.

When I was still job-hunting, I regularly held my nose and tried to get noticed on LinkedIn. I remember my dismay when I read a woman’s post in which she said she hires the “person” not the “skills” because she “can train the right person.” Translation: “I will hire people who look and sound like me.”

A lot of people, even reasonably intelligent people, have very poor judgment in certain areas. Exhibit A: Your otherwise smart friend who is dating a loser. Exhibit B: Every Trump supporter. Exhibit C: The new person in your department, who somehow beat out dozens of better-qualified candidates for reasons you will never understand, who has to be shown how to do things they ought to already know.

We’ve all seen it. That’s not to say algorithms are perfect; they’re only as good as they’re set up to be. Did you hear about the HR team that was fired after the manager’s own resume was auto-rejected?

Being personable isn’t everything

I know someone who is impossible to dislike. I’d never be able to describe why, but you just can’t help but like her. Is she always competent? Oh, hell no! But I saw her come out on top over more qualified people multiple times. Each time, I surmise, somebody was following his gut.

But in a lot of jobs, “being personable,” while a nice plus, may not equate to “being good at doing the core job duties.”

We have to talk about privilege here

Meritocracy be damned, all kinds of privilege figure into hiring and promotions. Names that are read as non-white get fewer call-backs than white-sounding names do. Taller people do better than shorter people. Attractive people make more than less-attractive people. And, of course, if you value your hireability, be careful not to age! 

Sometimes, the privilege just comes from being born into the right family. If your family owns a business, your career is assured. You may be groomed to take over all or part of it from an early age. I know of a man who inherited the family business he runs like some kind of hotshot. He’d never make it in a non-family business. I can’t even count the number of times I heard him say things about the attractiveness of various women who worked for him. 

If hiring were done right, we’d all fare better

Most jobs would have more or less equal numbers of men and women, and the racial makeup would reflect that of the community. 

We wouldn’t need to argue about “diversity hires” because they’d happen naturally. To believe otherwise is racist and sexist.

I’ve never had imposter syndrome. I’ve felt very well qualified for every job I’ve had, although naturally there are always some new things to learn. I never applied for jobs that I didn’t believe I could do well. 

But then, I’ve never believed the world owes me a job that I haven’t put the time in to qualify for. 

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me here or on Medium. My new book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class.

J.D. Vance doesn’t speak for the working class, but I do:

Did you know that originally the term “bootstrapping” was used sarcastically to describe an impossible task? Yet now, the meaning has morphed into the opposite.

I invite you to give it a try. Reach back, grab your bootstraps and pull with all your might. How did that work out for you?

There’s a reason we tell people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps even though we know it can’t be done. It’s one of the ways people in power keep the rest of us from complaining that we’re being screwed. We keep trying and trying and blaming ourselves when we have trouble. Of course we blame ourselves. Who else can we blame? 

This is not a self-help book because you cannot single-handedly fix what’s wrong with the system by working harder or working smarter. There’s a good possibility that some of your problems are out of your hands. 

This book was not written for the top 10 percent or for anyone who had life handed to them on a silver platter.

Instead, this book is for every working-class, lower-class and even middle-class person who has done everything right but still feels strapped.