Listen to how people answer when someone asks what they want next. A lot of them start with the gap. "I haven't managed people directly, but..." "I know I don't have the title, but..." "I'm not sure I'm ready, but..."
I understand how they get there. It's honest, and it feels like the responsible thing to say. But read it the way a panel would. Nobody on the panel had raised a doubt. Nobody had asked. The candidate raised it for them, before anything else they said.
I call it disclaimer language. It feels like honesty, and honesty feels like credibility, so it's easy to mistake for good judgment. It rarely lands that way. In the rooms I've sat in, people hold on to what they hear first. When the first thing they hear is what you lack, many never get to what you have.
So the work is finding the real answer underneath. When I sit down with someone, I ask what the gap actually is, and what they've done that answers it. The honest version is usually narrower than the disclaimer, and it comes with something attached. "I haven't held the title" becomes "I've led that work for two years, and here is what came of it." The work goes first, and the limit comes second, if at all.
The opposite instinct fails too. Say nothing about the gap and hope the listener connects your background to the role, and you've left it to chance. A panel comparing you with people who hold the title won't do that translation for you. You do it, before anyone has to wonder. You're hired for your skills and expertise, not an HR title, so put those first, in the words the role uses.
Try it on yourself. Take the sentence you use to say what you want next and underline every clause about what you lack. Next to each one, write the work you've done that answers it. If that column is thin, better to find out now than in the room.
The Two-Sentence Career Check takes about 20 minutes and puts that sentence next to the one you want said.
→ Get the Two-Sentence Career Check
Onward, Laurie
