Time to talk about the imposter syndrome in PR says Muskan Tandon, PRmoment 3030 winner

Going to work with the thoughts of what others perceive of you is common but feeling like a complete outsider at times is what has troubled me the most lately. 

As a pureplay marketing person, every day I had a new brief to solve, a new challenge and while that was the most exciting part of my job, but it also meant, in a way, that I haven’t arrived yet. There are still things out there which I am clueless about. With the ever-evolving digital marketing, a feeling of ‘arrived’ is rare but that is what all of us chase, don’t we?

Reading several books, subscribing to all key channels, tweeting out to industry leaders, among other efforts which I have made – as they popularly say – to stay ahead of the curve! And still on days, when I drive to work, I get hit by the thoughts like am I an outsider? When I first came upon this feeling, I talked to a dear friend from technology. That's when I realized that I am not alone.

It is a popularly known as an imposter syndrome within techies and is becoming widely prevalent n the digital marketing field. 

Employees working in fast-changing and high growth sectors in India are more prone to be hit by the imposter syndrome. When tech giants like Google and Facebook update their dashboards overnight, it triggers a feeling that now one has to understand it from the beginning, then it is imperative for the marketers to find themselves at level zero. 

In my opinion, the definition of ‘I have arrived’ needs to change now.  Re-define the definition of professional growth majorly because I don’t know the future and who knows the future, actually? 

What if in the future Google is moderated by the central government? It will change everything – to the way we strategies things to how we plan communication today. We never know! And hence, accepting the ‘not knowing’ phase has become even more vital in today’s time.

In everyday life, I was lucky to get mentors who taught me everything, from how to execute a campaign to life lessons, but I have not found many people who talk about the imposter syndrome largely because of perception issue or, probably they haven’t identified the reason behind the troubling feeling of not knowing things.

And it’s 10.00 am again when I can hear the flipping of the newspapers, background noise of a coffee machine, and the notification sound of 1000s of email’s popping in. Let’s start another day of not knowing things and still be successful.