First, have confidence in yourself

Young workers can show their competence in something they are good at.

On the very first day of my first job, as a junior legal secretary in the 1980s, I was asked to phone the local council to request rates details for a property settlement. As a shy 17 year old, with no experience of the business world and barely able to speak to adult strangers, this was traumatic.

Worse, the office was open plan with several experienced secretaries in earshot. I sat by the phone for long minutes, steeling myself and silently practising what I would say before finally making the call. It took months, lots of inner resolve, and a few tears in the toilets before I felt I had gained enough confidence to do my job well.

How then, in 2014, can young people develop the confidence needed to make a good impression in their first interviews and carry them more easily into their first jobs?

Dr Heather Carpenter, career and education consultant at www.thecareermaze.com, says the keys to career confidence for young people are self-awareness and self-belief. She says these attributes often stem from childhood. "If parents give accurate feedback to their children about what they are good at, and allow them to develop their own sense of competence about what they can do - and what they can't - then they will acquire authentic self-belief. "Not a false sense of confidence that comes with being told whatever you do is 'awesome', but the real confidence that occurs when you know there is something you are genuinely good at, and can show your competence in."

Carpenter says graduates can project confidence in an interview by practising clear and genuine answers to questions so they can answer with authenticity. And to avoid coming across as arrogant, she says graduates should be sure that when they talk about what they are good at, they mean it. "One of the goals of students throughout their learning programmes should be to become very, very good at something - not just to get through."

Once career confidence has been gained, it can be lost again through rejection and redundancy. Carpenter says those who work in the careers field are used to a phenomenon in the unemployment process. "After about six weeks, even the most competent people begin questioning their abilities and skills, and steadily lose their career confidence. They associate their skills with their workplace - which is where they demonstrate them - but not with themselves. When we are not demonstrating skills, we feel like we don't have them - but they haven't gone anywhere."

Carpenter says the same loss of confidence can affect those who take time out to raise small children. "Six weeks at home with a new baby, and many feel they have lost forever the career identity of a competent, capable worker. The truly confident person is the one who can maintain this clear, accurate sense of identity.

"You can maintain this by:

Taking the time to really know and remind yourself what you can do.

Having self-belief that you will still be able to do it when you need to.

Being able to describe your career assets fully, and at the appropriate level.

"When you can clearly state your skills, you strengthen your identity as a competent person."

Carpenter says it is important to note that perception is guided by the accuracy of the self-knowledge we have, and so the time we take to think about this pays dividends.

"It's your self-belief that maintains your confidence," she says. "Part of this is the understanding that you carry your security within yourself, not in external positions. The beliefs you have about your capabilities are critical to the efforts and perseverance you give to a problem.

"When you believe you can achieve a task, you approach it with optimism, and persevere even though you meet difficulties."

Carpenter says employees can lose career confidence as they age, in areas such as implementing and using new technology. With the new generation of tech-savvy graduates entering the workforce, older workers can feel a lack of confidence.

"But," she says, "there are many areas in which their experience gives them an edge, especially in customer service. Many older workers gain confidence as they see their people skills are advanced."

Carpenter says that in 21st-century careers, overcoming a lack of confidence to achieve "success" is personal - people can define success as they please.

"So first know what you are aiming for, and then work out how to get there. Career counsellors work continually with people who come in the door full of self-doubt, and leave with a much greater confidence in their abilities. They have been helped to see what they really have."