HealthyGamerGG - Why You're Not Getting a Job After You Graduate

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

Today Doctor K talks about getting a job after you graduate, feeling unemployable, and what to do in interviews! Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/healthygamergg/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I didn't learn anything. There's so much I don't know. I'm so incompetent. No. Instead of what you say is here are the skills that I learn. I'm proficient in A, B, and saying you've got to be proficient in something if you've got a portfolio. Here are the six things that I'm really hoping to learn because I think they'd really enhance my ability to, like, make graphics. All that stuff that you don't know.

Okay. I feel like I won't be employable when I graduate. Right now, right? So I'm a graphic design student. and I mean you know how the jokes of the unemployed art student go. But even if I have trouble finding a job due to mostly external reasons, I think I can cope with it. If things are looking pessimistic, I can accept lower paying jobs and move towns, et cetera, not an insanely big deal. However, the thing is that my university doesn't really teach us how to design.

They just give us projects and make us try our best. It's too late for me to transfer and I'm honestly very frustrated with my uni, but you may say, why don't you teach yourself how to design? That's the thing. When I tried to do that, I barely had time for the insane workload I was given. It's always a balancing act between learning the basics of what you're in uniform and doing assignments. I just don't know what to do anymore. There are so many things I don't know and I don't trust myself to learn them over the summer as the past two were spent being depressed in my home. I'm already picturing the crappy state of my portfolio as I try to apply for jobs. No one cares if it's because my uni is a uni, a job is a job. I'm already seeing

this now as I struggle at my work internship and I honestly feel horrible, like a mix of self-hate and incredible frustration towards my uni. I seriously don't know what to do. Okay. So this, unfortunately, is a problem that I've seen a lot during, especially COVID. So what's happening is I've seen a lot of university students feeling more and more pessimistic about their opportunities, their work opportunities after college. So a lot of people are feeling like really, really, you know, not good about this. So what I'm seeing a lot of is that sometimes we have college students who are like afraid that their university is not preparing them the way that they're supposed to be.

Universities aren't teaching, right, especially with like online school and stuff like that. Like, it's been really hard because the quality of education that most people are getting is going down. Furthermore, they're so busy and or so mentally burnt out that the independent learning that they should be doing to fix things is like just so hard because they're either mentally burnt out or there's a lot of busy work or other crap like that. So it's sort of like you're placed in this situation. You can't transfer. You're not getting the skills that you need. You don't have time to teach yourself the stuff. and so you're kind of just like doomed, right?

And there's this kind of attitude that people have that I'm screwed because I'm not going to be employable. And like I can see, you know, it's sort of like you're on a train that's headed towards a cliff. And you can see the cliff coming. You can see that there's a railroad. There's like railroad tracks that are going straight towards a cliff. Like you can't change direction.

You can't slow down the train. You're like committed. And like there's the cliff and you're kind of screwed. So it can be very, very, very scary. for people to like be in the situation where they feel like they're not getting adequately prepared. The tricky thing here is that there are a couple of different pieces to this puzzle that we have to consider in order to understand how to navigate towards like becoming employable. The first is, it's kind of weird, but where is your idea of how employable you are, right?

So the first question you've got to ask yourself is how qualified, are you to know how employable you are? So this person was kind of saying, I have a crappy portfolio. I can envision the piece of crap portfolio that I'm putting together. Whereas you have to really stop for a second and think a little bit about like, do you know what people who are looking for entry level, you know, graphic design artists are looking for? Right. So you're going to get your first job out of college. Like, what are they looking for? What are the requirements? How much of what you actually do in the workplace do you even learn in college? right so let's kind of start there for a second because the truth is that chances are you're actually

going to be totally fine we'll get to that in a second but like most people you know who are hiring for the first time understand that you're coming right out of college most people also understand in the workplace that when you hire someone out of college what really college is for is or uni is for is developing a foundation upon which you build your skills so just as an example like you know in medical school is intense right so medical school is like four years and there's a lot to learn in medical school. You're studying a ton. And you probably learn, like, I probably learned, like, five to ten percent of what I use as a psychiatrist in medical school.

In the next four years during residency, you learn, like, 95 percent of psychiatry. So it's kind of bizarre. But that's true for a lot of other professions, student graphic design, I think, is, generally speaking, in a sense, no different. Is that people know that, you know, if you're out of college, you're out of college, you're not going to be expected to be perfect. So then the question kind of comes in. Like, then why does this person feel this way, right? Where are these thoughts coming from? Where is the pessimism coming from?

And let's kind of take a second look at the post and kind of highlight a few things. Okay? So jokes of unemployment right at the start. If things are looking pessimistic, so this seems kind of optimistic, right? Doesn't teach us how to design. They give us projects. but they don't really teach me anything. I don't know what to do.

They feel like they're learning the basics. They kind of spent some time depressed at home. I'm already picturing the crappy state of my portfolio as I try to apply to jobs. No one cares, right? Like, I'm already seeing this now as I struggle at my work internship, and honestly, I feel horrible. So this is kind of tricky. But, and this is something I've seen a lot during the pandemic, like I said. So I'm going to point out to you all a little bit about what's going on in the mind

and how this person is coming to conclusions. So if you're someone that thinks that you're not prepared for the job market, you have to remember that your mind is making that conclusion, right? But how qualified is your mind and what is your mind influenced by? Let's take a look. So if you feel, if you're a college student who feels unprepared, let's start to understand a couple things. One is how qualified are you to know your employability? Second thing is where does your mind get the idea that you're unemployable?

Okay. So, first thing is that you're not really very qualified. Because, like, how many people have you interviewed for design positions? Do you know what companies look for when they're hiring? Are you part of HR? If you, you know, like, you don't know, right? Like, I know it's kind of weird, but, like, you have no idea what people are looking for. And actually, this person seems quite attractive in terms of a lot of the things that they're doing.

So this is kind of weird, but, like, the short answer is, like, you're not an expert in, like, hiring graphic designers. you have no idea what people are looking for. So we're not saying that you aren't, maybe you should be pessimistic, I don't know. But let's just start by sort of understanding if you're a college student, you have no idea what people who are like actually hiring or looking for, the skill set that matters to them,

things like that. You just don't know. Right? So you're just, first thing is, you know, how qualified are you? The answer is not very. So if you're not very qualified, why are you freaking out?

Right? And it turns out there's a really good reason for this. So in college, especially like pre-pandemic, so in college, what we get, what a big part of college is developing confidence. And what I've seen more and more often is that like this confidence kind of comes from things like grades. It comes from being, you know, a junior or senior and working like being a TA for freshmen, for example. Right? So like, it comes from grades, comes from junior, senior, comes from generally speaking, like learning more advanced things over time. It also comes from feedback, from peers and professors. So this is really important, right? Because a lot of confidence isn't actually learning the on-the-job stuff. It's like learning things like work ethic, deadlines. This is really what college is about.

And then we get these different kinds of things that give us confidence. So here's what I've noticed. During the pandemic, during online schooling, so as more programs move to online, these kinds of confidence developing things get decreased. Because you're not interacting with freshmen as much. You're not quite a TA. Even if you are a TA, if it's online, you don't really form relationships with people. It's kind of like you're just kind of reviewing work and stuff like that. So what's happening is that as our college situation and our pandemic situation changes,

I'm noticing a global decrease in the amount of confidence that people have coming out of college. Okay? And then this is creating further problems. So once you lack confidence, now we're answering this question a little bit better. So once we determine that we lack confidence, then what happens is our mind concludes we are screwed. Now, is this person applied for a job? No. Do they know what employers are looking for? No. And yet, their mind still comes to the conclusion that they're screwed. But where does that conclusion stem from? It stems from a lack of confidence.

I'm not blaming this person for doing that. That's what happens to everyone, right? So unless we're given confidence through some of these reinforcing measures, unless one of your professors, because I think this is the problem their face, is like their professors are too mentally checked out. They're not saying, hey, you're doing a really great job. What I'm not hearing from this person at all is anywhere in here, someone telling them, Hey, you're doing a good job. You're doing great. You're managing the workload.

I know it's a lot. We're not seeing any positive reinforcement. And when there's an absence of positive reinforcement in our college experience or in any other part of life, that leads to a lack of confidence. It's not a personal failing on this person's part. It's like it's not their job to be naturally confident. Confidence comes from the reinforcement of people who are more experienced than you are. And in the absence of that, they're going to naturally end up with a lack of confidence. then they're going to conclude that they're screwed.

This, in turn, is going to activate the Ahamkar. Right? So remember, Ahamkara, A-H-A-M-K-A-R-A, the Sanskrit word for ego, is a defensive mechanism that arises to protect you when you are feeling bad. So when we lack confidence, the Aham-Kar activates a-hum-car to the rescue. And then the Aham-Kar unfortunately does a couple things that can be weird. One is it makes comparisons, right? So how does this person know that their portfolio is going to look like trash?

It's because they've looked at other portfolios, right? So even if you look at this, how does this person, okay, so that's the thing. So like it's always a balance act between learning the basics of what you're in uni and doing assignments. I don't know what to do anyway. There are so many things I don't know, right? So they're aware that there are a lot of things that they don't know yet. They're aware of the growth that they need to have. That's actually really healthy.

We'll see that in a second. But all they're focusing on, they're not focusing on the things that they do know and all the things that they've learned. They're not focusing on the fact that they've successfully completed assignments. What the Aham-Gar is going to do when we lack confidence and we have the Ah-Hump card, this is going to result in cognitive distortions. Okay? And these cognitive distortions are all going to be negative in nature. So they're going to focus on all the things that you don't know. Because you're not even going to appreciate, you're so buried with all your workload

that you're actually doing, that you don't even appreciate how much you've learned because all you've felt week after week, month after month after month, is that you're like alone in the ocean stranded by yourself with no sense of feedback. You're trying to navigate through fog and you can't see anything. So of course you're going to feel lost because you're not getting any feedback from anyone. This, in turn, is going to resolve. in I'm unemployable because you're going to look at all the other people. You're going to go look at like design portfolios of professionals who have websites and you're going to compare your crappy design portfolio to theirs.

And then you're going to conclude, oh wow, look at how awesome that person is. Forget the fact that they have like eight years of experience. You're going to conclude, I'm unemployable because this is my competition. Now, this is where things get really tricky because once you start looking for a job with this attitude, what do you think this attitude is going to do in terms of shaping the job that you get? Here's what's going to happen. Okay? First thing that's going to happen is you're going to avoid the best jobs. Okay?

You're going to avoid the best jobs for sure. Because there's no way that this person would hire you. Right? Because you're unemployable. So the first thing that you're going to do is not. out the 50% of jobs that are awesome, or like not awesome, that are good, right? So the top 50%. So let's say here's all the jobs that you can get. This is the perfect job. This is the shittiest job that you can get. The first thing that you're going to do is X out this. So now all that's

left is the bottom half. Next thing that's going to happen is like when you go in interview places, because of your lack of, like, confidence in yourself, you're going to naturally attract toxic workplaces. I know it's kind of weird. But this is almost a situation, kind of like when you have been abused growing up, you look for partners that will continue to abuse you. Because it's like it feels right, right?

Even if it's not good for you, it feels right. So when someone, when you go to a lot of, an interview and someone treats you with a little bit of disrespect or they're like, yeah, you know, I don't know if you actually have what it takes, but we'll give you a chance. That's actually going to align with your internal sense of self. So you'll be like, oh, like these people like know what to expect from me, so let me work there. So over time, what you're going to do is you're also going to shoot yourself in the foot in terms of negotiations.

And because you think, because you think so little of yourself, you lack that confidence, right? And so, like, what you're going to end, this is what gets really tricky. So when I say toxic workplace, why do I say toxic? Because someone with more confidence would be able to walk away from, like, mistreatment during the hiring process. Right? Someone with more confidence who recognizes the value they bring to the table if a boss is like, are you willing to work nights and weekends and not get paid for it? Are you willing to get me coffee?

And like, someone with confidence is going to be like, no. Whereas, like, you, if you're worried, right? So look, look at how much they're already willing to compromise against themselves to make it work. Right? Self-compromise. You're going to shoot yourself in the foot. You're going to compromise. Right?

It's tricky. Then what's going to happen? This is the worst thing. They're going to get a job. It's going to be toxic. They're going to burn out. And then what is this going to do? Reinforce.

their original beliefs. I knew it. I knew I was unemployable. I knew I was unemployable. Now you're burnt out. Now you can't even work, right? We're back to the summer where, where is this?

They gave us, why don't you teach yourself? It's a balancing act, yeah. Like, I barely had time for the workload I was given. Like, burning out, you can't learn stuff during the summer. The summer's supposed to be a break, right? It's not supposed to be where you learn. You knew it. I told you so.

Your mind is like, hey, you're a humpgar. I warned you about this, buddy. I tried to protect you by telling you that you shouldn't expect to get a job. Look at you, dumbass. Thought you could get a job. Becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Right? And then this cycle just repeats.

Now you make more compromises. It's tough. Right? This is what our mind does. I think this person is awesome for the record. But that's what our mind does. right? So like, like, we see this a lot where like our mind will tell, like, warn us, hey, don't try. And then when we try, our mind is like, I told you so. Why did you bother?

I tried to protect you from this. You should have never applied for the job in the first place. And then we end up getting stuck because we don't want to, like, our mind is like, don't apply for the job. Don't apply for the job. I'm so anxious. I tried to change my life and I got smacked down. We can sometimes start to form negative opinions about the world. Oh, then all workplaces are toxic. Right? Like all kinds of things can come out of that. So, here's the crazy thing. I think you are very employable. Why? Because you are self-directed. You get your stuff done without guidance or support. You have humility, maybe a little bit too much. You know what you don't know. A couple of other things that I'm sort of picking up here is that you're isolated. So here's what I'd say. say, we're going to kind of start at the end and we're going to work our way backwards. Okay? When you apply for a job, you can say, hey, I have a design degree from this.

I've completed this many projects. I'm highly self-directed. So unfortunately, the university I had didn't have a whole lot of handholding. Like, they just sort of gave us projects and they were like figure it out. So the funny thing is like, this is how a graphic designer works in the real world now. Right? So, like, we even employ them at HG. Like, we employ designers.

and like self-direction is huge because what happens is someone comes to you and they're like, hey, we want you to make this thing. And then it's like up to you to figure it out. Right. Like companies are going to hire you so that you can do it. So you're actually perfect. This is great. If you had a bunch of handholding, like, oddly enough, I'd be more worried about you in the job market. Your university experience actually mirrors what a lot of like work experiences can be like. This is great. It's a huge thing. Sucks for you. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that like I didn't wish things were different for you. It'd be really nice, especially people could give you feedback. That's what I think is really missing. But you're like, you're self-directed. You can manage project timelines. You are good at, like,

learning skills on the fly, right? So this is what I would say, like in your application. So I'd put together your portfolio. Don't worry about how crappy it is because it's, it can only be so good, right? And you're, like, people understand, you're new at this. So like, this is how you spin it. So you can just say, look, so I'm good at managing project timelines. I'm self-directed. I have a list of stuff that I'd like to learn more about that I didn't get a chance to learn in university. So you have to change the way you say things, right? You didn't say, I didn't say, I didn't know.

I'm so incompetent. No. Instead of what you say is here are the skills that I learn. I'm proficient in A, B, and C, and you've got to be proficient in something if you've got a portfolio. Here are the six things that I'm really hoping to learn because I think they'd really enhance my ability to, like, make graphics. all that stuff that you don't know. Right?

And I'm good at learning skills that are needed and I'm good at managing my own work. I went to a university that was actually, I wish I had a little bit more structure. Now, here's the cool thing. You're also going to be careful about where you work because you're isolated. So when people at the job interview, this is where the lack of confidence comes in. When people at the job interview are like, do you have any questions? questions for us. If you lack confidence and you're not selective, you're going to say, you're going to ask some generic question that you Googled, what questions should I ask in a job

interview? Instead, you are going to be very careful about the questions that you ask. So you're going to ask them, what is like the community environment here at your workplace? Do people work sort of siloed or do they work like together? Okay? And you're going to pick the place if you're feeling isolated that people collaborate. You can even tell them, I'm really interested in collaborating with other designers to learn from other people and share what I have. Is that something that I'll get to do here? You want to know that ahead of time. Okay. Second thing is what are the learning opportunities? Because remember, the problem you need to fix is this, right? You don't trust yourself to learn them. So what you're going to look for in a

workplace is I'm really interested in structured learning opportunities or opportunities to learn these particular things. Like, and how does that come across to your, your prospective employer? The way you come across is not, like, demanding or ignorant. In fact, it comes across, like, the exact opposite way. Hey, this is someone who's actually, like, interested in, like, learning more. And they're kind of, you kind of come across as a go-getter. It's going to increase your esteem for most employers.

Right? You'll get that? And so suddenly, like, with this situation, you're actually a pretty strong candidate. If your portfolio sucks, it sucks, but like, you have no idea if it sucks or not, right? You have no idea what an entry-level designer should be capable of. I don't know. I can't judge that. Maybe it does suck.

I just don't know. But I guess, based on the mental stuff that I see here, your cognitive bias is actually making your work appear far worse than it is. Okay? So, I know it's kind of weird, but this is the last step. Before you do that, what you need to do is, offset your emotions. Okay? So like you need to do some like internal processing here and really think a little bit about answering these questions. Where does my lack of confidence come from? Right?

What does it feel like to be a student at this university? What would have to happen or have to be different for me to feel confident? And now this is kind of interesting. So this is like a tricky a question that you can get trapped by a lot. So what's what your cognitive distorted mind may say is learn all that stuff. If I knew how to do all that stuff, if I had a really beautiful portfolio, then I would be confident. But those aren't real goals. I know it sounds kind of weird, but that's not like a real thing you can do, right? It's just sort of like this weird, vague idea of I'll be confident when I'm confident. Like having a beautiful portfolio, what does that even mean? Like, how do you measure whether your portfolio is beautiful? So this is tricky.

your mind will say, oh, if I had a brilliant portfolio, then I'd be confident. But that's kind of like your mind is setting you up for a task that can only fail, because how do you have a beautiful portfolio? Who measures that? How can you move 1% towards a beautiful portfolio? How can you grind 10%, 15%, 20% towards a beautiful portfolio? You can't, it's an unachievable goal. Now, for those particular skills, you can pick one and start to learn it,

but be careful. So what do you all think is going to happen if this person picks a skill and starts to learn it? Do you think this will increase their confidence or decrease their confidence? Tricky. Right? Now, do you think this will actually increase their marketability

or decrease their marketability? It'll increase their marketability if they learn a skill, but it'll decrease their confidence. Okay. Now hold on a second, hold on a second, hold on, hold on, hold on. if this is the situation that they're in, what do you think that says about the relationship between their confidence and their marketability?

Uh-oh. It's almost as if the two are inversely proportional, right? So as the confidence goes down, the marketability goes up. So skill acquisition is our X-axis, right? And then, so like the fun. funny thing is they could be right here, which actually means they're quite marketable and lacking confidence, which is how we get to this post. You'll see that? So you have to be really, really careful

about how your mind works, because sometimes your mind will, like, sort of have the opposite effect that you think it's going to have. Okay? So you've got to process those emotions. And then hopefully over time, what I'd say is that last thing to kind of consider is that, like, let me just think about this if I did this right. So yeah, employability, offset your emotions. Yeah, and what I'd really try to do is get some feedback. So this is going to be really important. So a lot of times people in this situation who lack confidence avoid feedback. They avoid it. Okay. And why is that? It's because you're afraid that someone else is going to tell you what you believe could be true about yourself. But as long as you don't hear it from them, like you could be wrong, right?

So when you ask for feedback, what you're actually taking away is hope. Unless you get feedback, like, there's the hope. So it's kind of tricky. Because when you ask someone else what they think of you, it's so difficult. But this is the problem, is that, like, you're kind of stuck now because the confidence is actually going to come from positive reinforcement from other people to a certain degree. I know we've sort of said that it comes from within, but that's a little bit more complicated. And so now you're kind of tricky, but like I'd say start getting feedback, because if we're really talking about your employability, you should like, you need to get feedback because that's really what's going to fix it. And be aware that you're going to be afraid of what they're going to say. So just be aware of that kind of going in. Right? That's where we have to kind of offset your emotions. And this is where like offsetting your emotions, this is where like going to therapy, you could work with a coach. You could talk to friends. You could do introspection. Go for hikes.

Right, but just like get the F off the internet. And you don't just compare yourself to random portfolios for people who have paid people to have really strong SEO. Right? Because like if you're Googling portfolios, like there's going to be all kinds of factors that go into that. You're not getting a fair sample. When you Google a portfolio, Google knows which portfolios are the most attracted to look at. So it's going to show you this, the top point 0.000. 1% of portfolios on the internet.

Right? Like there's all kinds of crap that is going into your. your cognitively distorted head. And search engines are not helping, right? So, got to be careful about that. So offset your emotions and get some feedback, right? So ask people, hey, what can, here's my portfolio. Would you be willing to take a look?

What improvements do you think I can make to make myself more marketable for my first job? It's a question you can ask your professors. Make sense? So you got to get feedback. And the other wild thing may happen when you get feedback. Actually, I think it's pretty good. I think you're well positioned for an entry-level graphic design job.

And then, boy, one of two things will happen. So if you get good feedback, oh boy, what a mess. If you get good feedback, one of two things will happen. One is you'll gain confidence. I'd give those a 25% chance. The other thing that'll happen is mental gymnastics to convince yourself that you are unemployable

75%. And what does this look like? He's just saying that because they are my professor. You'll get that?

Or it can manifest in other ways. What it could do is he says, oh yeah, overall they look really fantastic. I'd consider adding more color. Then what your mind is going to do is ignore the positive and jump to the negative.

And really pay attention. Pay attention, right? Because that's what this bad boy is going to do. So just pay attention. Pay attention to what they actually say. Right? So it's tricky. So get some feedback.

Manage your emotions. Because you want to go in like not feeling like you're the worst person on the planet. because if you enter the job search that way, it's going to be tough. It's hard enough as it is, even for someone who's confident. There could be all kinds of other stuff, like imposter syndrome is huge here. And then ultimately, I think, you know, you may be more employable than you give yourself credit for. So just to kind of summarize, you know, I know it's tricky because a lot of times we feel like, especially as college students, like we lack the feedback with the pandemic and with more online learning

in some of these degrees like graphic design that are a little bit more siloed. Like as college students, it's like really hard to be confident about your job prospects. Pile on top of that, like everything you're seeing about how the world is falling apart,

and it's just food for your cognitive distortions. And then your cognitive distortions get really, really, really big. You lose your confidence, and then your lack of confidence plus your ego, which sort of arises as a result, then creates conclusions for you

that you're not really qualified to make. you have no idea what an intro level graphic design person is looking for, right? And remember there's that famous joke or whatever about, you know, the, the, there's like a famous piano teacher, let's say, and they have two students that come to them. And one is like, hey, I'd like to learn piano. And they'd say, okay, how much experience do you have? And they say, I've never played a piano in my life. They're like, great, I'll charge you $100 a week.

The second person comes along and they say, I want to learn piano from you. And they say, okay, how much experience do you have? And they said, I have five years of experience. Great. I'm going to charge you 300 bucks a week. And they said, well, wait, hold on, but I already know how to do half of it. Why are you charging me more? And they're like, yeah, well, like, I have to teach you to unlearn a bunch of crap. So I have to like wipe your slate clean, whereas this person's slate is already clean. There are a lot of jobs that really just prefer good, especially for intro level positions, really are looking for good work ethic and good self-direction.

They'll teach you what you need to know or they want you to do things in a particular style anyway. So you have no idea how employable you are, but your lack of confidence will convince you, despite the fact that you have no objective information, you have no experience hiring intro-level graphic designers, so you don't really know what they look for. But your mind doesn't tell you that it's ignorant, right? Instead, what does, the lack of confidence will start coming up with answers for you. And it'll tell you, hey, you're screwed. And we see this a lot in online learning, pandemic-related stuff, siloed fields, because you, You don't get that kind of feedback and confidence from your peers, from your professors,

things like that. So at the end of the day, you've got to be careful because if that lack of confidence is what's in the driving seat when you look for a job, first thing is you're going to ignore all the best jobs that you, those may have been the right places for you. Because with your work ethic and the right kind of community, maybe you could have really knocked it out of the park. But you're not going to apply for those because you don't think you're going to get them. reminds me of my first research assistant position at Harvard Medical School, which I got because I was the only applicant.

I applied for 140 positions. And the ones that were at the medium-level universities had the most competition. And some of the most, like, there's like a glut of mediocrity for jobs sometimes, where the most competitive jobs don't actually get as many candidates as, like, the medium competitiveness jobs. Right? Bizarre. Because everyone is like, oh, I don't think I can get the job there. Oh, this feels right to me. This is like a better fit. Oh, wow. These people are paying 75,000. I don't, I thought I'm only worth 50. Let me apply for the 51. So you've got to be careful about that kind of stuff. So you may end up being more employable than you realize. And if you're not careful, you're going to select through a selection bias, you're going to pick for worse jobs. And then even in the interview process, you're going to gravitate towards toxic work. that treat you the way that you feel about yourself, because then it's like, then there's no imposter syndrome. You'll get that? If you end up at a toxic workplace that treats you like crap and you

feel like crap, you're not going to feel like an imposter. It's going to feel at least it's fits. Whereas if they treat you really well because you're grossly mis-underestimating your value, you're going to feel like an imposter. You're like, I don't understand. Like, I'm not, I don't know that much. Why are these people treating me so well? They're saying I'm doing a good job. And it's going to take you a little while for that to sink in that maybe you're actually worth something. So what you've got to do in order to overcome this is, first of all, recognize that you may be more employable than you realize. You have a lot of good stuff going for you, right? You're self-directed. You're interested in learning. You want to do a good job. You've completed a lot of projects. It sounds like you can handle high

workloads. So I would emphasize all that kind of stuff, right, that you're a workhorse, you're self-directed, you're interested in learning. And You got to offset those emotions and focus on that confidence. Recognize where all these thoughts coming from. They're coming from some emotional place. And so like dig into that and work on that because you don't want that to be front and center when you go looking for the job. And the last thing is as terrifying as it is, get some actual feedback from people who can advise you about like what, how you can strengthen your portfolio or how to start building one. And the fact that you're thinking about it and it sounds like you don't have one yet.

It's actually perfect. So what, you can even ask your professors like, what makes a good portfolio or ask people who, if there's like a job placement department at your university, ask them like, how does one build a strong portfolio and get some actual answers from people who may know more? And then start moving towards that. And be aware, though, because there's one really tricky thing that we don't want to forget. One tricky, a lot of traps here, but this is the main trap, is that even if you get good feedback, sorry, even if you get good feedback, so recognize this, that as you start to improve and as you start to build your portfolio,

you may get this discrepancy between confidence and marketability, that the better you're doing, your mind may tell you that you're doing worse. And even if you get good feedback, there's going to be another kind of mental trick here where your mind may try to convince you that the feedback is not actually valid, even though you're the one that asked for it. So be careful about those two little tricks. Okay?