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Quiet People Rule The World
We do not need fixing
They told me I was qualified for the job, but I was too quiet.
“You’re not vocal enough,” the hiring manager told me. “People will walk all over you.”
The company I worked at posted a new job opening. It was a level above my job position at the time. I was qualified for this job; at least I thought I was. I had interviewed with several folks over two weeks. At the end of the interview cycle, I met with the hiring manager.
“Look,” he said. “You have the requisite skills. Everyone likes you, but this role requires a bit of brashness, and you’re just too quiet. You need to work on that to get to the next level.”
Quiet. You don’t want that label in a culture that prizes the extrovertive, talkative and charismatic.
The quiet guy gets revenge
The hiring manager hadn’t suggested I seek treatment for my quietude, but I could read between the lines. I didn’t get that job just then, but I did get it a year later. The guy they had ultimately hired was a bit too brash with his speech. He said some things early on in his tenure that pissed off a lot of people. Nobody wanted to work with him, and so he had trouble getting things done.
