UPDATED 2020: This post was originally about a deal on a PDF copy of the 16-page e-book: Stories in the Job Interview: A How-to Guide to Creating and Using Stories to Stand Out in the Job Interview.
At this writing, the book is 99 cents on Kindle. This post is now a mini-
review:
Since storytelling in the job search is the one area of applied storytelling in which I consider myself to possess subject-matter expertise, I viewed Stories in the Job Interview: A How-to Guide to Creating and Using Stories to Stand Out in the Job Interview with interest. Burnett offers many useful techniques and approaches — a suggested structure for stories in the interview, suggestions for where to find stories, a list of competencies that a job-seeker’s story could demonstrate, and a simple form for recording stories.
He begins by comparing one of the story formulas typically suggested for job interviews to what he calls “the story version.” (The story formula he uses for the comparison is Situation > Task > Action > Result or STAR.)
Burnett’s “story version” of an interview response is 887 words. I know that I personally speak at a rate of 132 words per minute, so it would take me well more than 6 minutes to tell that story — which would never fly in an interview. Even the outside limit most experts recommend — a 2-minute interview response — stretches the patience of short-attention-span listeners.
Aside from that one quibble, Stories in the Job Interview: A How-to Guide to Creating and Using Stories to Stand Out in the Job Interview makes a nice companion to my Tell Me About Yourself and Tell Me MORE About Yourself: A Workbook to Develop Better Job-Search Communication through Storytelling