Translating Selling Anecdotes to the Job Search

Comments (0)

In a blog posting called Using Stories To Sell: What Makes A Good Anecdote? (free registration required), Ford Harding lists 10 guidelines for stories used to make sales. It's not too big a leap to see how these apply to the stories you can tell when you are selling yourself. My suggestions for using these in job-search situations follow each point:


    1. Make It Relevant: Choose stories that relate to the specific job you're applying or interviewing for, and more specific to the interview, pick stories that help illustrate skills and experience the interviewer asks about.
    2. Select An Anecdote With Which The Listener Can Relate: When stories convey moving content and are told with feeling, the listener feels an emotional bond with the storyteller. Often the listener can empathize or relate the story to an aspect of his or her own life. That bond instantly enables the listener to invest emotionally in your success.
    3. Emphasize the Similarities: Be sure to draw clear parallels between your accomplishments in other jobs (or other aspects of your life) and what you would be doing in thisjob.
    4. Every Good Story Has A Plot, Character, Action, and Outcome: In job-hunting, these stories are known by various acronyms, such as: P-A-R: Problem, Action, Result; S-A-R: Situation-Action-Result; and C-A-R: Challenge-Action-Result.
    5. Use Only One Plot Per Anecdote: Keep it simple.
    6. Use A Character With Whom Your Prospect Identifies: You, of course
    7. Tailor Your Character To Your Listener: Pick up clues that enable you to tell your stories so that your actions sound like something the interviewer would do.
    8. Describe Actions: Tell exactly what you did yo achieve results.
    9. A Good Story Must Have A Clear Outcome: The outcome is your result, which will often sound even better if quantified.
    10. Practice Your Stories: Along with other responses to interview questions, rehearse your stories.





Leave a comment

About
A Storied Career

A Storied Career explores intersections/synthesis among various forms of
Applied Storytelling:
  • journaling
  • blogging
  • organizational storytelling
  • storytelling for identity construction
  • storytelling in social media
  • storytelling for job search and career advancement.
  • ... and more.
A Storied Career's scope is intended to appeal to folks fascinated by all sorts of traditional and postmodern uses of storytelling. Read more ...
Subscribe to A Storied Career in a Reader
Email Icon Subscribe to A Storied Career by Email

About
Dr. Kathy Hansen

Kathy Hansen, PhD, is a leading proponent of deploying storytelling for career advancement. She is an author and instructor, in addition to being a career guru. More...

emailicon.jpeg

Email me


EBooks
Free: Storied Careers: 40+ Story Practitioners Talk about Applied Storytelling.
$2.99: Tell Me MORE About Yourself: A Workbook to Develop Better Job-Search Communication through Storytelling. Also $2.99 for Kindle edition




newaboutme


The New About Me: The Ultimate Course on Reinventing Your Bio Into A Story: A program for people in the business of relationships, who need a better bio for today's hyper-connected world.



Storytelling
Tweets in the
Twitterverse

 


 

Pages

The following are sections of A Storied Career where I maintain regularly updated running lists of various items of interest to followers of storytelling:

TwitterStoryFollowList.jpg
story_events_small.jpg
story_wisdom_small.jpg
story_writings_smaller.jpg
storytellers_small.jpg
story_practitioners_small.jpg

Links below are to Q&A interviews with story practitioners.


The pages below relate to learning from my PhD program focusing on a specific storytelling seminar in 2005. These are not updated but still may be of interest:

May 2012

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
    1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31    

Shameless Plugs and Self-Promotion

Katharine Hansen
My Teaching Portfolio

KatharineHansenPhD.com

My PhD Page

 

twit8.png
Personal Twitter Account My personal Twitter account: @kat_hansen
Tweets below are from my personal account.
« »

AStoriedCareer Twitter account My storytelling Twitter account: @AStoriedCareer

KatCareerGal Twitter account My careers Twitter account: @KatCareerGal

 

Follow Me on Pinterest

 

View my page on
Worldwide Story Work

 

Kathy Hansen's Facebook profile

 

 

BlogNotionBadge

 

resume-writing service

 

Quintessential Careers

 

QuintZine

 

My Books

 

Cool Folks
to Work With

Find Your Way Coaching

 

 

career advice blogs member

 

Blogcritics: news and reviews

 

Geeky Speaky: Submit Your Site!

 


Storytelling Books