Imposter Feelings Early in Your Career: What the Research Says and What Helps

Many people starting a new job, a training course or a promotion have a quiet worry that someone is about to notice they do not belong. The work might be going well. Colleagues might be friendly. The worry stays anyway: they were lucky in the interview, and sooner or later it will show.

This experience has a name, and a research history that is more interesting, and more careful, than the internet version suggests.

Where the idea came from

In 1978 two psychologists in Atlanta, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, published a paper called “The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: dynamics and therapeutic intervention”. It was based on their clinical work over roughly five years with more than 150 women who were successful by any outside measure: students with strong records, professionals, academics. Despite that, many of these women believed they were not really intelligent and that they had fooled the people around them. They tended to explain their successes as luck, good timing or someone else’s misjudgement.

Clance and Imes called this the impostor phenomenon. They did not call it a syndrome, and that choice matters. It is not a mental health diagnosis. It does not appear in the DSM-5 or in the World Health Organization’s ICD-11. It describes a pattern of thinking and feeling, which can range from mild and passing to persistent and distressing.

The original sample also had clear limits. Everyone in it was a woman, and everyone was already in therapy. Later research has found impostor feelings in men as well as women, and across many professions.

What later research found

In 2020, Dena Bravata and colleagues published a systematic review in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. They found 62 studies involving more than 14,000 participants. Reported prevalence ranged from 9% to 82%, a spread that says more about the different questionnaires and cut-offs used than about any true figure. The review found that impostor feelings were often associated with depression and anxiety, and with burnout and lower job satisfaction.

It also found something that tends to get left out of articles on the subject: there were no published studies testing treatments for impostor feelings. So anyone who sells a guaranteed cure is going beyond the evidence.

That same year, Sanne Feenstra, Michelle Ryan and colleagues argued in Frontiers in Psychology that impostor feelings are not only about the individual. They are shaped by context. People who are under-represented in a profession, or in senior roles, may have good reason to question whether they are seen as belonging there. Stereotypes and workplace cultures can feed the feeling. From this point of view, the fix is not just for the individual to think differently; organisations have a part to play in making people feel they fit.

I find this a helpful correction. It means that if you feel like an outsider in a new role, it may not be a flaw in your thinking. It may be a reasonable reading of an environment that has not yet made room for you.

Why it is common early in a career

The early years of any career are full of conditions that invite impostor feelings. You are surrounded by people who know more than you. The standards are unfamiliar, and nobody has told you what “good enough” looks like. Feedback can be rare. You may be the first in your family to work in this field, or the only person with your background in the team.

Being new is not the same as being bad at something. Competence takes time, and the gap between where you are and where your experienced colleagues are is a normal stage of learning, not proof that you were hired by mistake.

What helps

None of the following is a treatment, and there is no single method with strong evidence behind it. These are practical responses that make sense given what the research describes.

Name it, and separate the feeling from the facts

When the thought “I’m a fraud” arrives, notice it as a thought rather than a verdict. Then look for facts. What have you been asked to do? What has gone well? What specific feedback have you had? Feelings deserve attention, but they are not evidence about your ability.

Keep a record of evidence

People prone to impostor feelings often forget positive feedback within days and remember criticism for years. Keep a short running file of things that went well: a thank-you email, a lesson that worked, a problem you solved. Read it before appraisals, and on days when the doubt is loud.

Ask for specific feedback

Vague praise (“you’re doing great”) rarely helps, because it is easy to dismiss. Ask a manager or mentor what you are doing well and what one thing would make the biggest difference. Specific answers give you something real to hold onto, and something to work on.

Watch for over-preparation

Clance and Imes noticed that many of their clients coped by working extremely hard, then credited the hard work rather than their ability when things went well. This keeps the cycle going. Preparing properly is good. Preparing three times more than the task needs, out of fear, is exhausting and teaches you nothing about what you are capable of. Try, now and then, preparing a sensible amount and seeing what happens.

Talk to peers

Impostor feelings thrive on the belief that everyone else is coping easily. Conversations with others at the same stage, in a training cohort, a staff network or a professional group, often reveal how widely the doubts are shared. A good mentor can do the same from a few years ahead.

Reflect, do not ruminate

Reflection asks “What happened, what did I learn, what will I try next?” Rumination goes round the same worry without moving. The guide to reflective practice for teachers has a simple structure that works in other careers too.

Look at the environment as well as yourself

If you are often the only person like you in the room, it is worth saying so to someone you trust, and looking for networks or mentors who share your experience. If your workplace never gives feedback, ask for it formally. Some of what feels like a personal confidence problem is a structural one, and it is fair to raise it.

Confidence grows from experience

Confidence tends to follow competence, not lead it. Each time you do something that frightened you, such as running a meeting, teaching a lesson or giving a presentation, you collect a piece of evidence. The piece on public speaking nerves describes building that kind of confidence in small steps, and the same approach applies here.

It also helps to protect your energy. Early-career professionals often say yes to everything to prove their worth, which leaves little time to learn well. Saying no without guilt looks at how to set limits without damaging your reputation.

When to get help

Impostor feelings on their own are common and often ease with time and experience. Speak to your GP if the feelings come with persistent low mood, anxiety that affects your sleep or daily life, or a sense of hopelessness. In England you can also refer yourself to NHS Talking Therapies for problems like anxiety and depression. Many employers offer a confidential employee assistance programme. If you are in crisis or worried about your safety, call 999 or go to A&E, or contact Samaritans on 116 123 at any time.

Further reading

• Bravata, D. M. et al. (2020). Prevalence, predictors, and treatment of impostor syndrome: a systematic review. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 35, 1252-1275.
• Clance, P. R. and Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 15(3), 241-247.
• Feenstra, S., Begeny, C. T., Ryan, M. K., Rink, F. A., Stoker, J. I. and Jordan, J. (2020). Contextualizing the impostor “syndrome”. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 575024.
• NHS. NHS Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression. nhs.uk.

Cover image: Photo by Valeriia Kryshchuk on Unsplash.