Storytelling continues to emerge as a mainstream technique in job-search communication, a technique we celebrate and explore during this year’s Job Action Day.
To get noticed in your job hunt, you don’t have to create and mail out 400 action figures of yourself as Jens Lennartsson did, create imitation medicine boxes as pharmaceutical copywriter Jon Ryder did, or lose a fake passport at ad agencies like design student Miruna Macri did – although admittedly, those creative resume tactics are ingenious.
You do have to stop, reassess what you’ve achieved in your career and what you’d now most like to achieve, and then weave your value into a compelling story that is custom-made for your dream role/company.
Thus, you need to invest time in articulating your value, instead of rush typing your resume in your lunch break. It also means that you need to invest time in researching your dream role/company and then presenting yourself (usually via your cover letter and resume) in an impactful and memorable way that matches that specific role/company.
To create impact, more and more marketing-savvy candidates are turning to creative resumes that help grab a recruiter’s attention faster. Creative resumes can be problematic if they cannot be read by the Applicant Tracking Software that most employers use to harness the constant inundation of resumes. Creative resumes, however, can be worth considering to complement (not replace) your traditional resume.
One new company that can help you with a creative resume is Story Resumes. The company creates customized, eye-catching resumes via infographics, illustrations, and animated videos (which cannot be read by employer software). Founder Andrea Martins reached out to me when her service launched earlier this year.
Andrea created Story Resumes after her frustrating experience as a job-seeker. When she was not being noticed in her job hunt, she used her initiative and turned her resume into a story, then commissioned illustrations to match. Soon after, Andrea was receiving phone calls from recruiters, interviews and job offers.
This success in itself demonstrates both the power of story, and what candidates can achieve if they are proactive in their job search. But perhaps what I love most about the service is that it practices exactly what I have advocated for so many years:
Marketing Savvy + Story = Get Noticed Faster in Your Job Search.
Whether you demonstrate marketing savvy via an infographic resume, an action figure or just a brilliantly articulated cover letter and resume, this formula is one of the best-hidden weapons in your job search arsenal. Use it.