Your Potential

During an interview for a position, the hiring manager informed me that he had done some research and had asked a former colleague of mine about me. He stated this person had said, “She has potential.” However, by the time the interview was over, I knew he hadn’t been convinced. A rejection email soon followed.

What determines your potential? When you’re a child and still discovering the world, your innate talents, and interests, the world feels like it’s your oyster. Loving parents will do everything within their power to invest in your development in hopes of seeing you succeed. However, once you enter the workforce, “potential” is no longer a given.

In the professional setting, the judgment regarding potential is largely external. In a job interview, you need to convince the interviewers that you can fulfill the posted role. For a promotion, you need to convince senior leadership that you can handle higher-level responsibilities. For someone to invest in your startup, you need to convince investors that you are dedicated to seeing the vision through. Consequently, your potential is determined by other people’s biases and what you have shown them.

Say you are interviewing for a position at a new company. The interviewers will be looking for specific experiences and traits based on the role's needs and the organization's culture. To demonstrate this outside the constraints of the job application process, you can develop your brand or leverage relationships. Your brand may showcase work and qualities that cannot be conveyed through standard resume bullet points. Your network has seen your work and can vouch for your positive traits to the hiring manager. This additional context about who you are as a candidate hopefully helps show the hiring manager your potential to meet their needs.

In the context of a promotion, you already have an advantage over external candidates because of your proximity to upper management. The time spent working within the organization is an opportunity to demonstrate desirable characteristics and the value of your efforts. In your current role, you must show consistent positive results, interest in the new role, and willingness to grow. Additionally, senior leadership must recognize and value your contributions and feel that you are worth continued investment. Their values and experiences within the organization, and with you, will influence which employees they see fit for promotion.

Lastly, to create a startup, you need to pitch it to investors. The pitch should include qualifications that demonstrate your competence, research that shows your diligence, and a well-practiced speech that proves your ability to communicate. On the receiving end, investors will analyze both you and your proposal. Your idea needs to be viable, but you also need to prove you have the resilience to see it through. More importantly, investors need to recognize that you have both. The slightest misphrasing of a sentence may turn them off, or they may not have the perspective to appreciate your value. While there’s the controllable aspect of doing your best, some factors leading to rejection have nothing to do with you.

In all these scenarios, if your skills are not what they are looking for, they have someone else they feel more comfortable with, or you have not adequately demonstrated your potential, you will be rejected. Some of the onus is on you to refine your skills and show them off tastefully. The other half is completely out of your control. Perhaps the hiring manager doesn’t understand how your experiences can translate to the position. Maybe upper management has a bias toward certain personalities, whether subconscious or not. Potentially, an investor lacks experience in your field, so they will never be interested in investing.

The point is that you can only control yourself. Refine your skills. Show your value. Keep putting yourself out there until someone recognizes your potential. Not everyone will realize it, but it’s there.

You determine your potential. You just need the right person to see it.