It's interesting that when people experience stereotype threat, a common reaction is to avoid acting in a way that would confirm that negative stereotype to others. I find this incredibly unfortunate and dishonest to your true self. If anything, I want to embrace the positive aspects of what drives that stereotype. For example, as a woman, I sell my adaptability, empathy, wise investments, and engaging pesonality- all characteristics inherent to women. Likewise, when it comes to how my education is perceived by a potential employer, I almost exclusively discuss my learnings through experience versus my major at the University of Houston or the alumni groups I stay involved with (namely none). An ivy-leaguer has school projects or a thesis in his back pocket, I have a history of starting and running two successful businesses in mine.
Similar to how your body has the remarkable ability to compensate for inadequacies, I believe people compensate professionally in the same manner. This sounds terrible, but stay with me. Without ivy-league alumni status and open doors, how do you acquire resources and success? Creativity, frugalness, and self-learning have been my best friends in this respect and competitive advantage in the workforce. But, when it comes time to sharing this with potential employers (or business partners) I'm careful not to fall into the counterstereotype of the ivy-leaguer. You know what I'm talking about. The guys and girls out there promoting themselves as "scrappy" and "visionary", romanticizing the couch-surfing lifestyle of a prodigy-to-be with maxed out credit cards. Though I am scrappy and visionary, I am also original and have a more unique story to tell. My goal is to show a hiring manager that the skills I have acquired to compensate for what I didn't get out of an ivy league education, will diversify her team as well as add a different perspective on challenges the company is trying to solve.
I came across this article on Medium which is a quick read about one woman's unique story competing against a group of 15 ivy-league men for a finance job opportunity.
If you're wondering if I landed the dream job, I didn't. But it felt like a close race and I was able to take the feedback I received from the hiring manager and do something great with it. I knew not having an ivy league background wasn't going to keep me from getting the offer, but my fears around not having the technical background were valid. This was a huge motivator to come to DBC!
