If I mentioned to you a book titled Memory Mining, what would you think it was about? Improving your memory? Digging through your memory to construct your life story?
What if I told you the book’s subtitle: Digging for Gems from Your Past Good Work? For what purpose? Why should the reader dig for these gems?
Although, in my opinion, author Alan Hays has given his book an unfortunate title, he has developed a useful system for developing the kind of material that makes for effective stories in the job search. I suspect he titled the book Memory Mining because memory mining is what he calls his system. Unfortunately, I don’t think that title does anything toward explaining what this book is about and why its topic is important.
As Hays notes, hiring decision-makers “want to hear stories that point to a specific and relative outcome or accomplishment, experience, or even a failure they can measure against their perceived needs.”
I well know from my years in the career field, especially my stint as a resume writer, that most people don’t track their accomplishments well and have difficulty dredging them up from memory when they need to update their resumes.
Hayes advises a detailed process of analyzing the job description for any position the job-seeker is considering apply to, and then, through the Memory Mining Question Set, the job-seeker cultivates fodder for accomplishment stories that are specifically targeted to the opening. I have all the confidence in the world that this process is quite effective. My experience, however, tells me that many job-seekers are unwilling to put in the solid work it takes to go through this process.
Hays also prescribes a skills-based process for jogging the job-seeker’s memory. The job-seeker lists and prioritizes skills and then writes accomplishments stories for the top eight skills.
I hope job-seekers don’t miss out — because of a nondescript title — on a small gem that could boost their job searches significantly.