Spotlight your TRUE self

Are you playing small in your job applications or at your workplace? Do you catch yourself thinking “I’m not qualified” or “I should not call myself an expert”?

That voice in your head could be the so called ‘Imposter Syndrome’ and it might be the very thing sabotaging your chances of landing your next career opportunity!

In this episode, we tackle the hidden barriers that the imposter syndrome creates for you, especially when you are a job seeker. If you are ready to work on your mindset (rather than just blaming external factors why you are not successful), this episode is for you.

You will learn:

• What exactly is imposter syndrome?
• How does it impacts your job search: From hesitating to apply to underselling yourself in interviews.
• Recognizing the signs: Do you have the imposter syndrome yourself?
• Practical steps to overcome it and rebuild your confidence!

Don’t let imposter syndrome keep you stuck! And if you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, imposter syndrome, self-doubts, arrogant, expert, not good enough, playing small, job application, salary negotiation, promotion

Is that you? You are writing hundreds of job applications, but you always get rejected. You never make it to the job interview. And you have no clue what should be wrong with your CV or cover letter.

In this episode you will learn about the most common five reasons why a hiring manager or recruiter rejects a job application. And only making one of these five mistakes can lead to a rejection.

So please check the CV and cover letter you are creating for a job against the following:

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, writing a job application, rejection, failure, failing in job search, no success in job search, understanding what recruiters want

You see a job ad, you want to be smart and quick, you feed ChatGPT with it to create a cover letter and think you have a good text to apply for this position.

I tell you as a hiring manager: It is very obvious when a job application was created with AI. And you immediately disqualify yourself with something like this.

Your job application is a representation for the work that the company can expect from you if they hire you. So, if you are

sorry, then you should not wonder why you are not considered for the position!

Instead, in this episode you will learn:

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skillful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skillful self-presentation, successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, AI assistant, ChatGPT, Artificial intelligence, writing cover letter, generating job application, writing skills, communication skills, human interaction, leadership, self-leadership, ethics, ethical use of AI

It doesn’t matter what you know. It doesn’t matter what you say or do. It only matters how you make other people feel.

And having the ability to imagine what other people think or feel (to make them feel good) is called:

Empathy.

Empathetic people have a “service-mindset” towards their co-workers. They think about others. They share information. They communicate pro-actively.

This will lead to things getting done. This will lead to efficient processes and better results. This will lead to a good atmosphere and team spirit.

Because of this, empathetic people are very often the most liked co-workers. They are appreciated, recognized, rewarded and are very often the ones offered a promotion.

In this episode you will learn:

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, empathy, being empathetic, service-minded, service-oriented, people-oriented, good communicator, job application, reaching out to the hiring manager, phone call

If you look back on 2024 – how do you feel about it? What experiences have you made? Which decisions have you made? What people have you met? And did you achieve the targets you have set for yourself?

I looked back on my own year 2024 and realized that I have fulfilled all the following targets that I had set for myself at the beginning of the year:

I was able to do all that! And now I am benefiting from these results.

That made me realize: We have the power! We are the creators of our lives! If we have an idea, a wish or a vision, we need to get clarity about the necessary steps how to get there, writing them down and then DOING them!

What kind of life do you want to create for yourself in 2025?

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skillful self-presentation, successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, fulfill targets, reach goals, look-back, end of year reflection, to-do list, action list, create your life, realize your dreams

“What are your weaknesses?” or “Tell us about your biggest weakness!” – are you afraid to be asked this question in your job interview? Because you are so insecure what do respond to that?

Recruiters or hiring managers actually like it a lot to ask this question and there is a good reason for it, that I will explain you in this episode. And in addition, you will learn what are the four steps to give a really good answer when you are asked “What are your weaknesses?”. In short, these steps are:

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skillful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skillful self-presentation, successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, job search, job application, finding work, looking for a job, job interview, what is your weakness, admitting own weakness, weaknesses, strength, imperfection, mistakes, honest, authentic, team, diversity

Do you have a job interview upcoming – but you are afraid that you will miss this unique chance to land the job, because you are so nervous that this might jeopardize that you present yourself well there?

A hiring manager is inviting you for the interview also to test how it is to talk with you. So yes, if you are mumbling and stuttering, because you are so nervous, that will not give a very good impression.

But here are three tips to decrease your nervousness and make your job interview a success:

1) Get awareness for your fears: What are you afraid of when you think about the job interview? What are your worst-case scenarios? – Then derive little strategies for these situations how you could resolve them if they would really happen in the job interview.

2) Prepare by researching about the job, the tasks, the company and the persons who will interview you. Also think about the right dress code or how you will set up the video interview.

3) 99% of the job interviews start with the question “Can you introduce yourself? – And your response for this you can already prepare and practice at home as a fluent and concise pitch about yourself!

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, job search, job application, finding work, looking for a job, job interview, meeting the hiring manager, talking to the recruiter, HR, job interview questions, nervousness

Yes, the job market is tough and when >100 of candidates apply for one position only about 10-15% of them get shortlisted to the first round of job interviews.

How do you get among this small share of people with your job application? How should your CV and cover letter look like to attract enough attention to the recruiter or hiring manager so that he/she really feels a desire to get to know you better?

In this episode I am explaining the following steps to you to create a high-quality non-average application:

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, job search, job application, finding work, looking for a job, writing a CV, writing a cover letter, creating an application video, getting short-listed, getting hired, get invited to job interview

Have you ever dated someone that ended up in a relationship? I hope we all have! – And hey, this means that you know also how to land a job. Because searching for a job is like dating!

Many people who are desperately searching work have the feeling that the whole recruitment process is a big mysterious black box full of tricky technical challenges to overcome so that the own job application gets considered.

What is often forgotten: the hiring manager who has a position open in his team and wants to hire a new talent is also just a human being – who is looking for the perfect match for his/her team!

I am a hiring manager myself and have hired two additional colleagues to my team during 2024. Seeing the recruitment process from this side brought me valuable insights what is attractive for a hiring manager or recruiter – and what are the common mistakes that people make that are distractive.

I am sharing in this episode practical tips how you can make your job search more successful by thinking about the funny analogy from the dating world!

If you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, job search, looking for a job, getting hired, applying for a job, writing a job application, need to find work, select the right job ads and vacancies, finding open positions

“All my life I had been chasing success, but here I was – with 38 – and had no idea when I will ever work again.”

This episode is the second part of the interview with Tomi Kaukinen, a Finnish start-up entrepreneur who shares in a very open and personal way how he experienced a burn-out in 2017, after his company successfully expanded from Finland over Spain to Asia.

In 2018 he started talking about this dark period of his life in public – when burn-out and depression in the working world were still a taboo topic.

Nowadays he shares both – his experience in creating a successful start-up and his insights from overcoming the burn-out – with young founders and entrepreneurs under his mission “Licence to fail”. (https://licenceto.fail/)

In plus of that, he is creating educational and entertaining content – and very recently produced and published a documentary about the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, that you can watch for free on youtube (“Nietzsche in Sils Maria”).

If you have ever needed an inspirational impulse to think about the meaning of your life – this documentary is my absolute personal recommendation for you!

If you want to connect directly with Tomi, you can find him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomikaukinen/

And if you are looking for a job in the Corporate world or want to take the next step in your career, I would be happy to support you in your skilful self-presentation and showing your true, authentic self to a company! Therefore, this podcast is based on three pillars:

• Self-confidence & self-esteem

• Managing your emotions

• Concrete communication techniques based on NLP

And in each episode, you will hear about one of them. – Subscribe to not miss any important points!

If you don’t want to miss the coming episodes – then following me on LinkedIn (Michaela Kettner) or Instagram (@michaela.kettner.fi).

Keywords: Skilful self-presentation, Successful career, fulfilling career, important for career, successful in my job, self-confidence, entrepreneur, founding a start-up, burn-out, depression, high-functioning depression, personal crisis, existential crisis, meaning of life, Friedrich Nietzsche, philosophy