'Confidence' in the Context of HE Careers Provision: Handle with Care!
These are my personal views and not necessarily those of my employer.
‘Confidence’ is often spoken in the same breath as ‘success’ or ‘failure’; you either have it or you don’t! Anywhere you find competition or risk, confidence isn’t too far behind.
So, when it comes to engagement in career activities or graduate transition into employment, confidence seems to be a key ingredient for success. Confidence finds itself front and centre in the employability agenda: frequenting prescribed skills and attributes lists, strategies, team meetings and advice to students.
In this article I explore the concept of ‘confidence’, how it is advanced as a must have trait for doing and succeeding graduate employment. I share my concerns about the culture of confidence, how it hinders Graduate Outcomes, and frustrates fairness and equity. As a solution, I introduce competence as an alternative to confidence and propose ways services could operationalise competence.
What is 'confidence'?
Confidence is defined as a feeling or belief that one can have faith in or rely on someone or something (per Oxford Dictionary). These words are crucial in acknowledging confidence as a real thing that everyone experiences or feels. From this, we can infer the abstract nature of confidence as a feeling or belief, essentially determining if and how action takes place rather than one’s capability.
'Confidence' can be problematic
The inclusion of confidence in career development strategy can readily be seen as an attractive proposition because of its nexus between abstract and practical.
As a feeling, confidence draws from a range of inner-self and environmental sources that are inevitably tied as much to psychological aspects, such as mental health, anxiety, perceptions of efficacy as they are to outcomes of coaching and performance. From an operational perspective, this creates validity issues for confidence being a concept that can be readily developed and measured in a structured way. Some research takes this point further by arguing that confidence distorts a person’s perception of their competency, finding a correlation between inflated confidence and lower ability.
Confidence can also be problematic when it comes to compatibility between feeling, belief and faith and the rigours of academic study. The cornerstones of learning require aspects of absorbing knowledge, evaluation, analysis, and generating ideas, with corresponding assessment primarily concerned with evidence. Confidence, then, naturally creates tension for engagement and mastery when the measurement is what you have rather than what you feel.
This leads onto considering whether an academic environment is conducive to developing confidence. During the academic process, students are subjected to a battery of assessments requiring them to perpetually explore and process unfamiliar information and testing that will create feelings of self-doubt and uncertainty. Even beyond graduation, more academic knowledge and capability does not guarantee confidence. Some research has even found that the more information provided actually make a person’s confidence in their decision-making ability lower.
Is confidence equitable?
If confidence were to be understood as a currency that can be distributed, rewarded, and used to generate power ,then students who experience less challenge, uncertainty and stress are the most likely beneficiaries, which in turn fall along class and cultural lines. Some researchers refer to this process (and confidence per se) as “accumulation of graduate capital”.
Researchers of equality and social justice take issue with the limited distribution of confidence and the oppressive nature it has on those outside of ideal environments to benefit from it. Orgad and Gill (2022) take a critical stance on confidence and structural inequality by pointing out that there is a confidence culture within society where disadvantaged and marginalized groups are responsible for their own conditions; that is, that their lack of confidence is their own fault.
I imagine Carl Rogers (1957), a key influencer on contemporary careers practice, observing the shortcomings of distributing and conditioning confidence by placing unconditional positive regard as one of his three pre-requisites for a conversation.
Do employers expect confidence or just lack alternatives?
There is considerable evidence to suggest those groups more likely to have confidence are more likely to engage in career leverage opportunities (such as internships and placements).
If then, confidence is considered somewhere between a desirable and essential trait (see, for example, 'employers want confidence not arrogance' and 'why confidence is key in any interview no matter your experience'), why would students lacking confidence engage with development and vocational opportunities if it is presumed confidence is required? Even where engagement does happen how can we expect students to know what type of support to ask for? The risk, then, is those without confidence simply disengage (or filtered out) in larger numbers than their confident counterparts - meaning that graduate roles could be dominated by homogenously confident applicants, not necessarily the best equipped applicants.
Introducing 'competence'
If confidence is about how I’m feeling, then ‘competence’ is focused on what I know and the things I have done. In the fields of talent acquisition, both Gladwell (2008) and Ericsson (1991) each point out that talent is exclusively acquired through opportunities to develop and the frequency of practice.
Research has found no correlation between confidence and performance of athletes or pilots when they described either being in the zone or going through a difficult patch, highlighting that performance always regresses to the mean. Chamorro-Premuzic (2013) argues confidence per se does not guarantee successful performance and rather sees competence as a predictor of future performance efficacy.
In summary competence is the determining factor in the ability to do something well, whether that be tying shoes laces or performing skilfully in a job interview.
By its very nature competence is proactive, requiring agency to make things happen, networks to gain critical insight and validation, and lastly, a mind-set that prioritises evidence over emotion. It’s worth mentioning that competence aligns closely with academic endeavours through measures of attainment and capability, by being easily repeatable or in novel situations, develops alongside learning, reflection, and practice. Chamorro-Premuzic (2013) found those who were regarded as having low confidence had a growth mind-set towards development and improvement in times of adversity and less likely to be complacent compared to their highly confident counterparts. Incrementally, those considered to have low confidence would be more open to criticism and proactive in seeking the views of others.
Can I have competence and confidence?
Absolutely! The existence of confidence and its influences are to some extent inevitable. This begs the question, are there different types of confidence? Chamorro-Premuzic (2013) suggests that confidence gained as a direct consequence of competence is a more reliable form. I would refer to this as organic confidence in that it has been formed through competence and can be supported by evidence rather than what I call synthetic confidence that lacks any genuine gain in capability.
Beyond confidence and next steps
Confidence exists internally and externally and has influence on the choices we make and how we view ourselves. However, the bottom line is that an over focus on confidence means that students are less likely to maximise their capabilities at university or in securing graduate employment because we are not addressing the effects of how high or low confidence distorting one’s self-efficacy. From the content above, confidence might not be the most useful instrument for engagement or growth for all students. It potentially compounds inequality and reinforces existing recruitment presumptions of practice.
HEI’s and particularly career services have a number of possibilities at their disposal when considering what they can do to benefit all students and making changes to their strategies:
Enhancing assessments: diagnostics tools should extend focus beyond self-assessment by testing actual competency too. Doing so will address the distortion that confidence creates.
Targeting provision: encouraging over-estimators to adopt a growth mind-set earlier in their career journey and under-estimators to reflect and secure evidence of their capabilities.
Changing the confidence culture in learning and career development: embedding reflective practice and habits in conversations students have regarding perceptions of confidence and the value of their skills.
An enhanced vocabulary: having a more refined range of words to articulate applied aspects of confidence, for example: decision-making, risk, competition, courage, resilience, mind-set, self-belief, pride, assurance, inter alia.
Leveraging recruitment practice: educating employers about confidence and how to identify personal bias whilst developing evaluative conversations exploring competency. Secondly, promoting the capabilities of those perceived to lack confidence and how to cultivate conversations more effectively.
About the author
Mark Saunders is a Careers Practitioner working with a variety of students across levels and academic disciplines. Mark has research interests in social justice, student engagement and career development theory.
