Sam is not his real first name. I changed it to protect his identity. But nonetheless we coined him “Super”. He is super because with every conversion you have with him, you’d think you were interviewing him for a job. He is almost a talking resume.
“When I was Sales Director at... When I was working at… When I ran this…. When I owned my company I…” are constantly being said by him. This constant boasting of himself I feel is doing the opposite of his intention. Instead of driving home he has a lot of experience, he has given the impression to us co-workers that 1) he really likes to brag himself up and 2) either he doesn’t last too long as a place or he’s 150 years old.
There is no denying the fact that one has to “sell themselves” in today’s business world. But I strongly feel its best be done in a more subtle manner. There has to be a balance between letting people know you’re experienced and qualified, and being a 24/7 infomercial about yourself.
Super Sam recently showed up at a project kick off meeting with the Design Engineering Team. During is constant talking over the Team Leader who called the meeting with his “When I was” statements; he kept bringing up the time he owned a company. “When I owned my company, I always made sure the Engineers….” He mentioned the fact that he owned a company at least five times during the meeting and it had a noticeable effect on the Design Engineering Team.
When Super Sam left the conference room one Design Engineer turned to the rest of us in the meeting and said something pretty profound. He said “why should we listen to him when he says ‘this is how I did things when I ran my company? If he was successful at it, why is he now working for us, and not still running his own company?”
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