To ask if your confidence has been dented since you started WFH?

[ChuckGarabedian]

Hi all,

I’m 36 and have been working from home since March 2020; before that, I was entirely office based. I’ve also just returned from a year’s maternity leave.

I feel like my confidence level has taken a real dip in the past 3 years. Working from home all the time, mainly interacting with my husband and children, seems to have made me so awkward and nervous when dealing with other people IRL now. I doubt my abilities all the time and feel like I never have anything of value to say, I stumble over words in conversation and am incredibly inarticulate. I find it hard to focus.

Recently I went for a job interview as I’m trying to get work that’s not home-based (and that earns a little more, if I’m honest). The interview itself was after 3-4 hours of assessments and I found the process quite tough. The other two candidates were much younger than me (early 20s). Still, I thought it went ok and was proud that I’d put myself out there for it even though I was very nervous.

But when I got the call this week to say I hadn’t got the job, I felt really crushed. The assessor who rang me is going to come back to me with more detailed feedback as I requested, but she did mention that I’d done well in the individual assessments (a written test, quiz etc) but not in the interview. I think if it’d even been the other way round it wouldn’t feel as bad. It’s hard not to take it personally and feeds into how I’d already been feeling about my self esteem.

Late last year, I also started volunteering for a local group, thinking it’d be good to get out of the house and help out a bit in my community. I put myself forward for whatever duties I can, but at their meetings I’m again awkward and occasionally flummoxed by the group’s inner workings (finances etc). This makes me feel stupid and my confidence takes another dip.

I share my worries with my husband and he always tells me to just be myself, but I think myself must be off putting.

Does anyone else feel this way? It’s really only this past couple of years that I’ve felt like this and I wonder if it’s due to working from home, not interacting regularly with other adults who aren’t relatives etc.
Or has anyone found their self esteem has taken a dip for another reason and if so, what helped build it up again?

Thanks for reading.

I think WFH is actually pretty terrible for a lot of people. It's so isolating. Don't get me wrong it can be great for work/life balance, if you are cutting out hours of commuting time or something, but for the actual work part of your life I think it can have a very negative impact. My last job was mostly from home and I really struggled to make an impact in the role, because I wasn't in the office when most other people were, so I could be ignored. My DH hated WFH during COVID and that was in a role and with a company he was fully embedded into. It massively dented his motivation and confidence and he went back to the office as soon as possible.

If you went into a workplace and were told that you were going to work in an isolation booth and all communication with your colleagues would be by Teams and email, you'd think it was mad!

I love WFH but OP I suspect you feel this way because you’ve just come back off maternity leave. Both times I came back my confidence was rock bottom. I’d just had a baby, has exhausted all the time, hadn’t used my brain properly in a year and felt on the back foot work wise - so its understandable as it is for you! Take care of yourself, you will get there

I agree OP. There are lots of skills you develop and enhance by being in the workplace. I can see the gap has widened between people in my team who choose to work almost exclusively at home vs those who come into the office.

Thank you, I definitely think that’s a factor too. With my older two children, I was back in the office after maternity leave ended and I did feel a bit unsure at first, but I got back into the swing of things in a couple of weeks. This time with my third, I’ve been back working 2 months and still feel like I’m struggling.

Definitely, and I feel at a bit of a disadvantage because of that. If my employer hadn’t permanently closed our office during Covid and made us all home workers, I think I’d be looking to come back to the office. The novelty of WFH, handy as it is sometimes, wore off a good while ago.

Absolutely this! It was the same for me both times

No, but I've noticed the impact it's had on people in my team. I'm fairly senior and wfh really suits me as I'm happy in my own company and have a good social circle and do a lot outside of work. However, some of the more junior members of my team are struggling and we've seen a marked increase in people with mental health issues. We're trying to encourage people back into the office once or twice a week but many of them are reluctant to go in. It's a problem because they're not learning from others in the same way as you would do naturally if you were all in the office together.

WFH full-time isn't great for a lot of (most?) people. Women often lose their confidence during maternity leave and not having RL interactions with others, overhearing stuff that's going on and not having a clear split between work and home make self-confidence harder to build up.

On interviews, they are a skill. I'm a lot older than you and found it incredibly difficult to move from freelance into a job a couple of years ago, meaning that I had shitloads of unsuccessful interviews. What I learnt was:

• some interviews aren't actually - they've already decided that they're going to appoint someone they know (I wish there was a code for this, like come to an interview and wear purple, so that you can go if you want interview practice but are realistic that there's not actually a post available).
• interviews can be approached like any other work project. Go through the person spec and job desc and write down any relevant experience or examples that you can give in an interview. Look up 'popular interview questions' and have an answer prepared eg 'what do you think you can bring to this role?', 'what would you say your strengths and weaknesses are?'
• Have a couple of questions to ask about the role or organisation - you will be asked if you have any questions, and it's easier to have something up your sleeve than think on the hoof when you really just want to go home.
• Some job adverts are crap. During the interview, it become apparent that the role is something different, but they haven't updated the JD.
• some interviews are crap. They ask long, multi-part questions that clearly haven't been properly thought through.
• take your notes/prepared answers with you (or have them with you if online) and ask to refer to them if your mind goes blank. No interviewer objected to this as it shows you're interested in the role and have prepared.
• be prepared that some organisations are utterly disorganised and have no consideration for interviewees. They may not even bother sending you an email if you've been unsuccessful. This is a reflection on them, not you, but it's hard to take.
• take feedback with a pinch of salt. The only feedback I ever got was that someone else had more relevant skills and experience. It more than likely means that someone else seemed a better 'fit'. Again, difficult to to take personally, but when you're successful in interview, you'll be the one on the other side of it.

Best of luck and HTH.

Thank you, that’s really good advice. The thing about taking a few notes to refer to if permitted, I hadn’t even thought of that.