Fail CV
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We always talk about our success, let’s talk for once about my failures.
What is insightful CV worth nowadays?
According to recruiters, it is very important to show your personality, motivation, and experience on one page.
Why then do we also have to write a motivation letter in which you have persuade why you are the best pick of all the other candidates?
In this motivation letter, you should act formally a not be bragging about your achievements. Also, you should have prepared a plan for the company, but be not too specify in the details for execution, so they will invite you for an interview.
According to me this too much work. I just show my LinkedIn page. It is always up to date and shows the latest references and you can actually contact the people I have worked with on click of the button.
Furthermore, it saves you time on finding a good template for a CV online and you can show more characteristics of you being like volunteering experience, certifications, languages, besides the classical elements.
Success versus failure
So when I am interviewing a client or solicitant, I am not interested in what experience he or she has or what kind of growth mindset they have.
I always ask the question of how do you cope with failure and which failures did you have and what are the lessons you learned from it.
Someone with an entrepreneurial background will now that the true face of people always show up in a crisis. Business is never a one way street to success.
Why do we as a society than focus on accomplishment instead of persistence?
What modern business needs, is resourcefulness, open-mindedness, brutal honesty and direct communication. Fail fast so you succeed even faster.
My Business Failures
Back to the title, here is a list of some of my failures.
- Trying to manage a start-up by yourself, that requests investments of VC capitalists without being in an incubator program.
- Working in the Crypto-industry because that is where the money is and where you can shine as a growth hacker.
- Thinking that financial freedom is the highest ideal in life.
- Hiring the cheapest freelancer, to save yourself in production costs.
- Not putting a copyright on your marketing ideas.
- Overestimation of niche potential.
- Decision fatigue because of market research.
- Difficulties with delegation.
The lessons I learned
Everyone has their shortcomings and unforeseen traps they run into when starting with entrepreneurship. No matter how many books or articles you read, you need some guidance if you want to transition from a wantrepreneur to a successful entrepreneur.
Making mistakes makes you humble. Imposter syndrome often kicks in if you never making mistakes in your life because you are ‘so cautious’. You can get doubts if your success is deserved in the first place.
People do forgive. I always thought that your faults will hunt you to the end of days. But in fact, you or they either forget or learn some lesson. Unless you scammed people out of their money, most people accept that making mistakes comes with the job.
Experienced professionals are just doing what they think is good. But are just as biased as entree level students who join the workforce. Any business environment which truly strives for excellence likes you to speak your mind. It such shame that the corporate and law world holds experience in such high esteem.
In the end, all that matters is the mindset of an individual. His or her potential for growth, by learning from mistakes, adjusting to systems and learning new methods. Many people I know go ‘bonkers’ when they have to transition to a new program or new organization structure. I would never hire such people.
At the upper level, business is filled with degenerates. You find there sociopaths, psychopaths, scammers, gossip, backstepping. Modern leadership come by very rarely and should be more appreciated. A modern leader is a facilitator for collective effort. This leader should be highly skilled in emotional intelligence and have the ability to change tactics the blink of an eye without changing the entire strategy.
Every company says they value creativity, original thinkers and out-of-the-box thinking. But in the interviews, it is very clear that they are actually looking for someone who works within the industry standard. Aka typical in the box thinker or as I would call it a pragmatic human.
To conclude, you will either work on your dreams or someone else dreams in business. What is it going to be for you?
This blogpost is #2 of the 30-day blog challenge.
