Personal Development

The REAL Way to Fake it Until You Make it

We’ve learned it all wrong

When I was in university, my peers and professors would not stop talking about ‘faking it until you make it’. It seemed like this idea was essential to being successful in the occupational world. I took it upon myself to research the phenomenon further; results were very superficial and most recommendations involved acting like someone else, pretending you know things when you don’t, and drastically changing who you are.

I deeply disagree with this advice. As an individual who is good friends with organizational leaders, I can tell you that lying is extremely unattractive to employers.

Further, I currently work in a position that I am under-qualified for; from my experience, I have found that the real form of faking it until you make it is helpful, not the advice projected in my childhood.

Here are two unhelpful ‘faking it’ tips that can be found on the internet and are ingrained in society, and my rebuttal to each idea.

Faking tip 1: Mimic who you want to be

Mental Floss claims, “new research shows that the best thing you can do is mimic someone else around you who displays the required skill sets, even if your first inclination is to worry about appearing like a fraud.” This study argues that by acting like someone other than ourselves, we push ourselves to be better, more open-minded, and progressive.

As much as I believe in this research, I think that fully embodying another person in an interaction is a very risky thing to do. I think it is commendable to implement skills or traits which you find attractive in other people, however, pretending to be someone who you are not can come off as inauthentic and awkward.

Instead: Be your authentic self

Instead of trying your best to be a Hollywood actor, I recommend taking pride in who you are. Take your insecurities and throw them out the window, radically accept yourself in order to rock your world.

An article distributed by LinkedIn shares that the correlation between authentic people and trustworthiness is high; “trustworthy people show themselves as they are — transparent from the inside out. They acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, too — they don’t pretend to know it all. Trustworthy people say what they mean and mean what they say.”

Coaching Breakthroughs explains in a piece that authenticity is also connected to personal effectiveness, inner peace, flexibility, and higher levels of confidence.

I see the benefits of being myself. In my Veterinary Assistant (VA) interview, I cracked a couple of jokes as one of my strengths is my humour. Sure, using humour in an interview has the potential to come across as unprofessional, however, if an employer is not open to my goofy-self, I am not interested in working for them.

All of my jokes landed well, and in-turn I built an open, honest, and trusted relationship with the interviewer after I got hired.

Have you ever met someone and debated the genuinely of their character? Do you find it easy to tell when someone is being fake?

Being your authentic self isn’t just beneficial for landing a job, it is also good for your soul.

Faking tip 2: Pretend you know the answer

A study in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology found participants who expect to know the answers on a test, will get more answers correct than those who do not feel they know the answers. This study was conducted using visual prompt testing. The results of this work do not translate well to interviews, essay exams, or physical testing.

From my research, the advice of guessing answers or pretending to know things that you don’t has a very low chance of going well. In the case of a multiple-choice or true-or-false test, the chances can be up to 50/50, however, in every other case, the odds are not in your favour. From personal experience, pretending to be knowledgable on a topic I don’t truly understand, has ended in tears. It is not fun to be confronted on comments that are pulled out of your a**.

Instead: Answer with what you know

My recommendation is to answer questions with what you know, even if what you know surrounds a question and isn’t a direct answer. Guessing the direct answer to a question and getting it wrong, is likely to result in embarrassment for yourself and concern in your prospective employer.

As an example, in my interview to be a VA, I was asked what the normal heart rate and respiration rate for a dog and cat are. Since I did not go to school to become a VA, I had no idea what the correct answers were.

I decided to answer the question by explaining that I genuinely didn’t know the rates, but from my experience owning and interacting with animals, I notice that younger animals i.e. kittens and puppies, have higher rates than adults, and larger dogs i.e. Mastiffs and Cane Corsos, have lower rates than cats. I also said that I am determined to learn all of the information I don’t know.

The interviewers were impressed by my answer. Even though I didn’t have the exact numbers, I was on the right path. My answer showed that I had some foundational knowledge and I was excited to learn new skills.

Say, I bluntly answered this question with sets of numbers that were way off. Say, I didn’t provide the context of me not being knowledgable, and instead I just went for it and pretended with confidence. As an interviewer, how would you feel about this? Would you be concerned that I am lying? Would you be concerned that I deeply believe incorrect information?

Pretending to know the answers to things is not statistically worth it.

Straight up

In general, what I have found is that realness is ironically the key ingredient to faking it until you make it. Being yourself and using your skills is the way you will come across as confident in an interview or during a conversation.

There are ways to accentuate what you know and who you are, to amplify your confidence and impressiveness. This doesn’t mean stretching the truth, but rather rewording the truth in your favour.

Lying and acting are scientifically proven to fail except in very specific situations, so despite what we have been told for many years, ‘faking it’ really means ‘realing it’.