Storytelling in the job search is my crusade, one that I am joined in by a small band of folks on the job-seeker-advocacy side of the desk: Terrence Gargiulo, Rob Sullivan, and Judy Rosemarin among the most prominent of them.
I am also quick to pick up hints and glimpses of employers and recruiters who seem to be yearning to learn more about candidates’ stories. Before today, I had not heard of any who were explicit in using the word “story” with respect to the way they evaluate candidates.
In Kennedy Information’s Recruiting Trends newsletter, Barbara Poole reports on an executive VP of human resources from a Fortune 50 company who, in the current economy, “now looks and listens intently for the candidate’s ‘story.’ And it is that story that very often makes the hiring decision for her.” Previously, this executive would have judged by the job-seeker’s resume that if he or she had held many positions of short duration, the candidate was a “job hopper.”
Poole writes about how the conversation with the HR exec sparked her thinking:
I got to thinking about the interview as drama. We all have watched a play, read a book, or have been hooked on a TV series (anyone for Mad Men?) where there was more to the story than what was happening on the stage at the moment. For every role that the character plays so brilliantly (or not) there is a back story that fills in the blanks in a most compelling way. Little by little that story evolves as does the character. So much so, that it makes each subsequent action predictable, because we know the character so well. … The back story, we are learning now, is as valid a quantifier of success as is what’s on the resume.
In his book, Making Stories, Terrence Gargiulo wrote about hiring decision-makers using their “story minds” in evaluating candidates, as I wrote in my dissertation and have repeated in this space more than once:
Gargiulo (2002, p. 43-44) … proposed that human resource managers prepare to interview candidates by reading resumes with their “story mind.” He advocated using the information in the resume to “construct a story and image of the person.” Commenting on a sample resume he has provided in his book, Gargiulo wrote, “On the surface, this resume appears to be dry and straightforward. Hidden in the details, however, are dozens of interesting stories.”
Poole offers some ways those on the employer side can engage their story minds (see fuller elaborations on these suggestions in her article):
- Acknowledge interest in the story
- Train interviewers to include questions that bring out the story, beyond what’s just on the resume.
- Quantify the results.
As Terrence and I work on research into the concept of the “story resume,” he has helped me to realize that job-seekers will likely not succeed in deploying explicitly story-based job-search communications unless employers are convinced of the value of storied communications. Poole’s article is a terrific step toward selling the concept.