you get asked about something that you don’t have direct experience with. Maybe it’s a software, maybe it’s a specific type of framework. I myself was asked this in my interview and this is what I said. They said, do you have experience with this kind of software? I did not. So here’s what I said. I said, no, I don’t. I don’t have any experience with that at all. What I do have is this and my understanding of the software is this is what it does. This is benefit it brings to the business. This is the purpose of it and this is how I’ve implemented that kind of thing in the past. Now notice that the way I say it isn’t like, oh, like, it’s not tentative in any way. It’s not like, no, I don’t really, but what I can do is this and, and I do have, you know, experience with this instead. And I do understand this. It’s not tentative or asking for permission. It’s owning it. It’s like, nope. I don’t have experience with that at all. But what I do have is this, this, and this. And my understanding of that software is that it does this and this and this to create this result. And this is the kind of thing that I have worked with. You’ll notice that it’s not just about the words I say, it’s about the tone in which I say them. It’s how it lands. So the first part where if I’m saying it tentatively, if I’m like, no, I don’t have experience in that, but I do have experience in those other things. And I do understand that it does this, this, and this. Like the tone is going to come from a different place. That’s coming from, hope you accept me anyway. I hope that’s going to be okay with you. I hope that I don’t get disqualified. It’s coming from a tentative, please approve of me anyway place versus the second place where I answer from owning it and just not having an issue with it myself. And I say, no, I absolutely don’t have experience with that at all. And it’s like saying the tonality conveys If you need someone with that experience, that’s not me and I’m totally fine with that. It comes from knowing that and that has been very successful because I’ve been able to own it. And also I know that is not the reason people hire people. I know that I believe that to every spirit of my core because I have been hired so many times without having those experiences that they claimed they needed. I was hired when it said that a bachelor’s degree was required. And I did not have that. I know that. That comes from my experience and my beliefs. My goal is to pass that on to you so that you can feel that. You won’t just hear it in my words, you’ll feel it in my energy, but that is a truth. You do not require it. The proof of that is if you are in the interview, then that is for a reason. If they already knew that you didn’t have that experience on your resume clearly defined, then they know you don’t have that experience. And there’s a reason why they’re interviewing you. And it’s not going to be specifically with that experience. Now I know that people do get feedback saying, oh, well, this person has stronger experience in this and that’s why they got the job. And my take on that is that that is bogus feedback and that you didn’t move them emotionally enough with your stories. People make decisions from emotion. They’d like to think they make the decisions from logic. The decisions are not logical. It’s emotional. The reason I know this is because there was a Harvard Business Review study and in that study, they interviewed Thousands of hiring managers and obviously ideally in a perfect world, they would want to hire the person who was really good at their job and also really pleasant and lovely to work with. But if they were given the choice, if they could only hire either somebody who was really good at their job, but not so pleasant or delightful to work with, or they could hire the person who was pleasant and delightful, but not so good at their job or didn’t have as much skill or experience. They said they would pick the person who had the most skill and experience and could do the job. But in practice, what they actually did was hire the person that they liked better. The person that they felt emotionally connected to, that’s who they actually hired. So people might say one thing, but they actually do another. And that is what is important for you to remember. So if, for example, they ask you a question like, do you have experience as a business analyst in a retail environment? and say you do not have that. Your first thought might be to think, oh, you’re right. Like, I don’t have that. Maybe I shouldn’t be here. You start to feel unqualified or like you don’t deserve to be there. Or maybe you start talking yourself into, oh, yeah, I’m not going to get this job. They are going to hire somebody who’s more qualified, someone who does have experience in a retail environment. And that’s not me. Many people go that way in their mind. And so their answer reflects that. You start to feel unqualified. And when you feel unqualified, the way that you answer is very tentative and it’s like, Oh yeah, I don’t really, but I’ve done this and this and I think this should still be good enough, right? Please approve of me. I want to offer you a reframe for this.  Here’s what most people don’t know. Now listen up is if you are applying for a job where you already have all the boxes checked and you’ve done all of that stuff before, if you’re applying for a job like that, then you are probably going to get bored. and you’re probably not gonna be there very long because if you’re watching this or you’re like any of the people that I work with,  top performers don’t want to go into a job where they have done everything before. They don’t want to apply for a job where they have checked all the boxes. If they have, then they are not growing. So that is not appealing to them. Let that land for a minute, okay?  Because… They maybe think that they need somebody who has done everything before and checks all the boxes. But what they want is somebody who’s going to grow with the company and where does growth come from? It comes from doing things out of your comfort zone that you haven’t done before. If they’re only going to be willing to hire people who have done everything before, then they are not going to retain people. They’re going to have people coming in and then moving to other positions.  So it’s either that. Or you hire someone who’s ready to grow in that position and has the foundational skills to do so, which if you have anything similar, anything comparable, anything that you’ve done that could transfer over, you are the right candidate to grow into that position. And so that’s what you need to convey to them. Your belief influences their belief and how you speak and what you say influences what they feel and how they decide. You have more influence than you think. For example, if somebody were to ask that, here’s a way you can answer instead.  Workshop your own version of your answer so that it works for you, but you can say, no, I don’t have experience in that. And that’s one of the reasons why I was attracted to this position because honestly, I wouldn’t apply for a job where I checked every single box. I am constantly wanting to learn and grow. And I know that if I applied for a job where I already knew how to do everything, there wouldn’t be that growth opportunity. If you’re looking for somebody who has done everything on the job description before, that is not me. And it probably never will be to be honest, because from everything I’ve done in the past, I’ve always been the person who’s jumped in, taken on the project, not because I’d done it before, but because I wanted the growth. that’s what you’re looking for, then we might have a fit. If it’s not. then it’s not me. That’s just an example. You need to workshop the answer so it feels congruent to you. My gut tells me that if you want to apply for jobs where you don’t have every single box checked, it is because you do actually want to grow. Because if you have this problem, it means that you are somebody who wants to stretch yourself, who wants to push yourself out of your comfort zone. Because if you didn’t have this problem, then you would be applying for jobs where you knew everything. And you would not have to watch this video because you wouldn’t have this issue. So if you are wanting to apply for jobs where you don’t have all the qualifications listed, the first belief you need to have is people hire based on emotion and they think they need all the qualifications listed, but really what they’re looking for is something I can give them. And I just need to show them how I do that. And I need to show them who I am in the role. I can demonstrate that with lots of different stories, lots of different examples, lots of different things that I have done in the past. Now, not all of them are going to match up exactly. And that is okay. That is not the point. If everybody had to be a hundred percent qualified, nobody would ever get hired. Trust me, because job descriptions are a bunch of BS. They’re a wish list. a wide net, they’re going to actually hire the person who they have emotional connection with, who has resonated with them, who has told them the stories in an honest, truthful, congruent way. And they want to hire somebody who wants to grow with the company. That being said, if you are struggling with that question, I want you to ask yourself, do I really want to apply for a job where I’ve done everything before? Because if you do, then just go and do that. and the problem goes completely away. But it’s a good problem to have. It means you want to grow, you want to stretch yourself, and you want to up level in a way that not everybody does. If you believe that you can actually sell that to the interviewer, that’s your next level belief. You need to be able to believe, hey, you know what? They think they want this, but actually what they want is this. And I need to show them that. Here’s another way you can answer it. You can say, The reason I applied for this position is because I haven’t done this before. And if you don’t know me, you might not know that I started in operations and I worked my way into business analysis, having no idea what I was doing. And I tell you, it is one of the most proudest moves of my career because I got to experience the growth of moving from one thing to another without any experience. figuring it out and becoming a top performer in that company to the point where I created results that made a really big difference to the bottom line. I met some amazing people, I had an amazing team, and if I hadn’t have done that, then I would still be in an operations role and I was never meant to stay in an operations role. If you want somebody who will grow, who will take things on when there’s nobody else to take them on, somebody who will jump in and say, yes, I will do that. That is me. If you want somebody who is staying comfortable, they want to be in their comfort zone. They just want to do things they’ve done before. They just want to repeat the same actions. There is value to that, but that isn’t me. Before we move any further in the interview, you should know that. What are your thoughts? What you need to know is what is my belief? Because if your belief is there’s nothing I can do to change their minds. All they want is somebody who’s done it before. I can’t convince them otherwise. There’s no reason they would hire me. Then you are screwed because you will never do what it takes to change anybody else’s belief. You won’t even apply. You won’t even go to the interviews. You won’t give yourself the chance to get the role that changes your career. because you are in those beliefs. You need to question them. Is it 100 % true that everybody who gets hired checked 100 % of the boxes? No, of course it’s not 100 % true. So what did the people do who didn’t check the boxes? How did they answer the question when they were asked about their experience? And what did they think and feel while they were answering? What did they ask? What did they see that the other candidate didn’t see? What mental state were they in? Were they tentative and asking for permission or approval or were they curious and then confident with their answers? Now you don’t have to be 100 % confident all the time. I don’t preach that. I think that there’s a lot of nuance to what gets you the job. And I think the bottom line is being congruent with who you are. So if you don’t have something, it’s very honest and it’s a confident thing to be able to say, nope, I don’t have that. And if you want someone that has that, that’s not me. This is me. and then sell yourself. And if you have a problem with doing that, then you have work to do, my friend, because you know you have a lot of other things to bring to the table. I know you know, I know you know that. But when it comes to saying them, you find it difficult for a reason because you haven’t been precise, you haven’t practiced with precision, so you don’t have a lot of experience selling yourself. What you do have experience is getting great results or doing the work you’ve been doing. And that’s great, but it won’t get you anywhere if you don’t know how to communicate it. A lot of people spending tons of money on education,  on college degrees, on more certifications, but you can collect those all day long, all year long, you can collect them for 10 years and still not be making the money you want to be making, not making the money that you thought you should be making with those certifications and degrees because you have not learned how to communicate that properly yet. The skill you actually need is to learn how to communicate it properly, learn how to sell yourself, not go get more stuff. I actually did the opposite that everybody else tells you to do. I went to college because I thought I had to. That was the next move. I was either going to be kicked out of my parents’ house or I had to figure something out. I decided, okay, I’ll go to college. I met someone in college who hooked me up with a high paying job right away. And it was because of a conversation I had, a conversation I had where I provided some value. I was a bit introverted. So it’s not like I was out having lots of conversations with lots of people. It was one precise conversation where I helped somebody out, didn’t expect anything back from it, and then got a job offer from that conversation. Basically he hooked me up with it and then I went for the interview and then I got the job offer. From then on, every other experience has been similar to that. So that is why. I am such a proponent of connecting with human beings. I’m not going to be the person who’s going to tell you that you need to beat the ATS or to get those keywords on your resume. I’m going to say all of that is useless if when you get in front of a person, you don’t know how to communicate your value, right? You can spend a lot of time trying to get through the ATS and then finally get an interview and then freeze because you have no idea what to say when they ask you what’s your experience with said thing you don’t have experience with. I hope that was helpful for you, my friend. If you want to learn what’s getting in your way of owning your value, articulating it, getting you where you know you can go, because you know you have skills, you know you have capabilities, you know you can do a lot more than you’re doing, but something’s getting in the way of that. Either you’re not putting yourself out there enough and you know you should or you could. Or when you do get in front of the people, you do get the interviews, you’re not conveying your value strongly. I have a free quiz that’s going to help you with that. It’s going to give you a Personal life results. There’s one thing that you will need to focus on right now. This is based on me working with hundreds of clients and knowing exactly what it is that holds them back. I’m to tell you the one thing for you that you need to do personally to start owning and conveying your value accurately so that you can get paid what you know you should be getting paid by now.  Click the link below if you want to grab that. Give me a thumbs up if you liked the video, thumbs down if you don’t like the video, and leave me a comment. Let me know what else you’d like to hear, what other content you’d like to see me create. I’ll be back here next week. See you then.

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