Your "weakness" is the very reason someone will want to hire you

What you perceive as your weakness is often the very reason someone will hire you.

I can prove it to you.

My client, Marilyn, was 56 when we started our work together. She was afraid of age bias. And she had taken time away from working for 17 years. 

We got her a job at Amazon by doing the exact opposite of the common advice.

Her first week on the job, the hiring manager let her know that she hired her because of her maturity and professionalism. (It’s illegal to hire someone because of their age at any age, but we know what she meant.)

The hiring manager told Marilyn that the recruiter had been bringing her candidates that seemed to lack common sense and professionalism.

So the instruction to the recruiter was to find someone with more life experience. The recruiter selected Marilyn’s resume out of the applications.

And this hiring manager was immediately impressed by Marilyn from their first interview.

She got the job, and it went really well. When the contract ended, Marilyn got a new job at Microsoft for 2.5x the salary of the Amazon job. 

The common advice for people who are afraid of age bias is essentially to try to hide their age on their resumes. Don’t put anything more than 15 years old on there they say. But the person that hired Marilyn did so because of her years of experience, not despite it.

It’s not just age either. 

On my first day at my dream job, I got the worst imposter syndrome. It was for a product trainer role (training customers) at a Project management software company. 

I looked around my team and saw a former manager at Apple, someone who worked in Customer success and training at Tableau, and a seasoned project manager who had worked at the company’s previous start up. 

And even though I had worked at Microsoft, I had written sales documents and only done 10 hours a week of assisting the lead trainer. I was thinking whoa, I am out of my league.

But I wasn’t seeing it clearly.

It turned out that I was the missing piece. No one else on my team had experience with adult learning or writing curriculum. I was hired because they needed that missing skill. I was hired because I was different, not despite it.

I had a client who was insecure about not being a native English speaker and most of her professional experience being outside of the U.S. She was hired at Tiktok for a role that required her native language.

I could go on and on.

I don’t think we think we are the underdog because we are insecure. I think we do this because for decades we have been taught very out of date career advice.

I see this thinking from my clients of all experience levels from my early career masters’ students to the VPs of international organizations. 

We were taught: be what they want you to be. They are looking for someone to fit in a box that matches the job description.

This is not actually the best way to land a new role in 2026. 

I am not telling you to be authentic just because. I am telling you to be authentic because it is the best way for you to find the hiring manager who wants to hire you. And for them to find you. 

And because this is not about getting any job. This is about getting the role that is going to lead you to a career where you are valued, feel safe and have growth potential. And the role where you will get paid well.

This sounds a bit idealistic, and yet, I have clients from years ago that have built careers that they love. Within 4 years they were making 3 to 6 times what they made before our work together. 

I hope that this helps you market yourself more clearly so that the hiring professional looking for you can find you.

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