The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles
Where has the integrity gone?
The world has changed so quickly and dramatically, it has been hard for people to keep up. To get ahead in this game it seems people need to over-exaggerate, manipulate and even lie. Whether that be from the work that you do or even declaring the wage from your last job.
When I was young and growing up in the 90’s, we were taught that integrity is important. Be honest, humble and work hard. Your work will be noticed, people will thank you and you will be offered a promotion. Quite often, in the early 00’s, us millennials were seen as lazy and not willing to work. Yet, quite the opposite was true. After the recession in 2008, jobs dried up and it was very hard to get anywhere. I was taught and pushed to find any job, to get out there and prove my worth to society. Old men would congratulate me when they see me working hard as a cleaner. Talking about how they did the same and was able to save up for a house. I remember working two jobs and constantly pushing myself to try and get my driving lessons. Only problem was, I was falling asleep at the wheel.
I was always honest, downplaying my abilities, expecting people to see through bullshit and even be offended by it. I worked hard to be noticed, I was taking on multiple tasks displaying signs of adaptability and able to accomplish any task that was thrown at me. But I never considered the actual state of the world. I was using old logic in a modern society.
The most humble of us never get noticed in this fast changing world where the employer doesn’t actually fully know what the people they are hiring do. Where it is a competition between the humble and the ones full of ego. But the one full of ego wins because there is just not enough time to investigate their claims of grandeur.
You’re only as good as your last job!
It was a quote from my teacher during media studies. The idea was, there was no need to talk, there was only reputation and the projects that you have worked on. But they didn’t know what was to come.
The world has changed. I branched out and requested private meetings with managers thinking I was being individual and no one would do that. When I was young I was taught we should never do that. As an adult, I did a course that was telling me I should and take those people out for coffee in a relaxed setting. No longer does it seem to be about how well you can do the job, but now seems to be how social you are, how close your relationship is with the leader.
That is okay, I understand that to the point where I want to be working in an environment surrounded by people I enjoy working with. Where I bounce out of bed in the morning excited to get to work and work as a team. I like this change. However it feels alien to me to have to be adding “superb”, “excellent”, “fantastic” and all those other words before declaring my skills in my CV. It seems weird to me that I found out from professionals in recruitment that you need to lie about the wage in your last job and make out that it was more than it was. It’s strange to me that my actions and work doesn’t speak for itself. That a person who over-exaggerates, lies and continually bad talks everyone around them is considered a very good employee. To the point where my reputation has been slowly eroded away and the hard work I had done been blown away like dust in a wind.
Seems like it is easy to forget the shape of the foundations on which everything else lies and who actually made it. Out of place, out of mind.
I write this with the risk of a future employer reading this and being put off from employing me. However, I wouldn’t want to be employed by an employer that doesn’t put integrity as being one of the highest values they look for in a candidate. I wouldn’t want to work for someone else who doesn’t consider integrity to be important for themselves. I understand if it is a large corporation or company, then it is impossible to avoid those groups that allow narcissism to lead the way. However, I want to be in a team that I trust, where we can lean on each other, where as a unit we look and are strong. Where we defeat impossible tasks because we rely on each other so much. Where we are all honest with each other, own our mistakes and have the highest integrity.
I want to live in a world and work in a company that upholds its values instead of manipulates them. I understand that it could be an impossible task to find this in large companies. But I want to at least try to find that group within.