Job Search Experiment Episode 5: Your Story

By John Heaney on March 9, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Interviewing, Job Search Experiment, Networking, The Search

When we last left Tim Krenn, our Cleveland-based sales executive, we instructed him to create his personal branding statement – the single sentence that defined the value that he brings to an organization.

Tim examined his professional strengths and crafted the statement:

I’m the guy who can build the relationships with the people you most want to do business with.

It’s an intriguing statement meant to arouse interest and curiosity from the potential employers that he meets, but he needs to be ready to expand on that statement with concrete examples that demonstrate his talents. What’s Tim’s next step: he needs good stories.

Stories That Resonate
The most recognized and popular brands in the world don’t just tell you about their products, they tell stories that involve their products. Facts are forgettable while stories are memorable. I have no idea how many laptops Apple sold last year but I know the story of their early days in Steve Jobs’ garage. I have no idea how many passengers Southwest Airlines flies each year, but I know the story of Herb Kelleher drawing a triangle connecting the dots between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio on the back of a napkin and creating the idea for their new airline.

Stories connect emotionally and enable the listener to easily absorb the information you want to convey. Authentic stories, when told well, are powerful and memorable and are an essential component of a thoughtful and thorough job search.

Stories Set You Apart
As a job seeker, you need to be ready to answer questions that reveal insight about your background, passions and skills. Reciting your degrees and your sales numbers doesn’t convey anything about you other than the end result of your efforts. However, recounting a story detailing how college was so important to you that you worked two jobs every semester to earn enough to pay tuition and how you always made sure that one of the jobs was in a restaurant so you would be able to get at least one good meal a day tells so much more about you than your degree and your GPA.

Ultimately, the employer isn’t hiring a degree, they’re hiring a person. And if you’re the person they remember as committed, hard-working, creative and industrious, then you’ve got the advantage. Your story gives you that edge.

Just make sure that every story has a distinct purpose and communicates one of your three marketing messages. For Tim, his stories will focus on his ability to build lasting relationships, his strategic business development skills and his consistent record of achievement.

Ready for Anything
Every job seeker should know the three strengths they want to communicate and have at least a couple of stories ready that demonstrate these skills in action. If you prepare these stories now, you’ll never be caught off guard or stumble to answer the tough interview questions and your stories will  separate you from every other candidate pursuing the same job.