New book and doctoral research reveal value of storytelling in the job search

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MEDIA RELEASE

Contact: Dr. Randall S. Hansen

Quintessential Careers

Phone: 386-740-8872

Fax: 386-740-9764

Email: randall@quintcareers.com

November 13, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TELL ME ABOUT YOURSELF: STORYTELLING THAT PROPELS CAREERS

New book and doctoral research reveal value of storytelling in the job search

(QUINTESSENTIAL CAREERS: DeLand, FL) -– Job-seekers become memorable and trustworthy to prospective employers when they tell stories, according to a forthcoming book and doctoral research conducted in conjunction with Quintessential Careers, one of the Web’s oldest and most comprehensive career-development sites, celebrating its 10th anniversary this month.

The forthcoming book, Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, extends the ideas of current authors who tout the value of storytelling in organizations. It focuses on a narrow yet powerful use of storytelling – telling stories to advance one’s career, whether by moving up in a current organization or landing a job in a new organization. The title comes from the most commonly asked “question” in job interviews, “Tell me about yourself.” Composing stories to reveal personal and professional identities in response is just one way job-seekers can use storytelling to propel their careers.

Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, which was developed to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the founding of Quintessential Careers, establishes that stories paint vivid pictures and help a job-seeker to stand out, as well as explain key life/career decisions, choices, and changes. Stories told in resumes, cover letters, career portfolios, job interviews, and personal-branding campaigns help portray job-seekers as strong communicators and illustrate skills, accomplishments, values, characteristics, qualifications, expertise, and strengths.

“Through telling stories, job-seekers can establish identity, reveal personality, enhance self-knowledge, and build confidence,” explains Katharine Hansen, creative director of Quintessential Careers and lecturer of management at Stetson University. Hansen’s doctoral dissertation research, which included qualitative interviews with workers and focus groups with recruiters, formed the scholarly underpinnings for the book. “Job-seekers who tell stories also establish an emotional connection between storyteller and listener that inspires the listener’s investment in the storyteller’s success,” Hansen notes.

“The evidence is clear — both from our current research as well as other sources — that storytelling can provide a competitive edge in the job search,” states Dr. Randall Hansen, founder of Quintessential Careers and professor of marketing at Stetson University, DeLand, FL.

In addition to an excerpt from Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, added to mark the site’s first decade, visitors will find more than 350 articles and tutorials on all aspects of job-hunting, from career exploration to job-offer negotiation included in the now more than 3,100 pages that comprise the site. The site also reviews and links to more than 1,500 external job boards and company career centers, including job sites in all industries in the U.S. and around the world. Visitors will also find career information on writing cover letters and resumes, mastering job interviews, and negotiating salaries.

New Quintessential Careers features in 2006 are sections devoted to storytelling and personal/career branding, with new articles, a new quiz, and a new tutorial. Bringing to 15 the number of free tutorials on the site are new tutorials on finding one’s career passion, career branding, career success, rebounding from a layoff, and internship tutorials. New interactive job-related tests and quizzes are part of a roster of 26 such free tools. Quintessential Careers also marks its 10th anniversary with a tour of Florida colleges in which the Quint team is offering free workshops to students. [The site’s fact sheet can be found here.]

Among additional findings of the storytelling study:

  • Storytelling can provide parallel communicative paths through which an individual can make sense of both organizational change and his or her own career. Some of the same stories that organization members tell to make sense of organizational change can help them build their careers.
  • Storytelling provides a way to communicate skills acquired as a result of organizational change and thus can be an effective medium for organizational entry and advancement. Change is a pivotal constant in organizations, and individuals passing through organizations and experiencing change possess the capacity to then exit organizations better equipped — with change skills — to begin the cycle of organizational entrance and exit anew. The effectiveness with which they communicate newly gained change skills can be a key factor in their success in entering new organizations.
  • Storytelling in career-marketing communications merits earnest consideration from those who wish to advance their careers. The research represents a first step in exploring the effectiveness of using stories in resumes, cover letters, job-interview responses, career portfolios, networking, and personal branding.
  • Aligning with previous research, storytelling provides a way to understand the individual lived experience of organizational change.

    • [A sample chapter from the book can be found here.]

    Throughout its 10 years on the Web, Quintessential Careers has strived to be a job-seeker’s one convenient source for virtually all career information – from college to retirement, offering expert advice on all aspects of job-hunting, including tips, resources, and examples to help job-seekers write a stellar resume and cover letter; information to prepare for job interviews; techniques for negotiating higher salaries; strategies for successfully changing careers; as well as advice and resources for returning to college and/or attending graduate school.

    In addition to the gradual enhancement of the site in the past decade, from a professor’s Website to one of the dominate career sites on the Web, the site has also seen a record increase in visitors, from a few thousand back in 1996 to more than a million unique visitors beginning in October 2005.

    In addition to teaching marketing at Stetson University and serving as Webmaster of Quintessential Careers and publisher of QuintZine, Randall Hansen also writes a weekly career advice column under the name The Career Doctor, and is co-author of the cover letter bible, Dynamic Cover Letters, now in its third edition. Katharine Hansen, creative director of Quintessential Careers, is the co-author of Dynamic Cover Letters and author of Dynamic Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking Your Way into the Hidden Job Market.

    Quintessential Careers is the main site in a network of career-related sites, including: MyCareerBlast.com, CareerDoctor.org, 10CareerStories.com, and Quintessential Resumes & Cover Letters, among others.

    Quintessential Careers has earned more than 100 awards and honors, been recognized in numerous career books and magazines, and welcomed the praises of career counselors, job-seekers, and employers from throughout the U.S. and around the world. Its articles have been reprinted in all forms of media around the world.

    Anecdote Circles

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    I yelped “Yes!” when I read this quote from the Anecdote.com site:

    I have found that even some of the best organizational storytelling books often fail to make storytelling come alive and really show how to use it.

    Thus, it’s great news that Shawn Callahan and his crew at Anecdote.com have brought out The Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles and provided it as a free download.

    The Web site notes:

    Anecdote circles are a narrative technique like focus groups except they’re facilitated to elicit stories rather than judgement and opinion. The collected stories reveal what is really happening in your organisation and what people value. Anecdote circles are a powerful tool to gain insight and new perspectives.

    Halloween and Story

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    Frankly, I detest Halloween. Other than associating a few mildly bad memories with the holiday, I have no good reason to hate it.

    And when you come right down to it, Halloween is a storyteller’s paradise — all those scary ghost stories and horror flicks.

    And think of the stories we tell when we dress in costume, not only about the characters we choose but about ourselves in choosing them.

    Beyond Storytelling Stealth in the Classroom

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    Thanks to Stephanie West Allen’s posting on the Working Stories list, I learned of what may just be the ultimate example of storytelling stealth in the classroom. In fact, the narrative is so blatant that it’s not really stealthy at all. The students are immersed in the narrative from Day 1.

    This teaching method enlightens my quest for buy-in from my students about storytelling, which Rachel Hedman later commented on.

    From NPR’s story on this ultimate example:

    “This is a game in which the students are literally immersed in a story. And they take on the role of a character,” he explains. “So all of the reading material, all of the content, all of the examinations and homework, if you will, are built inside the engine of the game.”
    . . .

    “I believe we are the first ones to fully emerge students in a narrative story and treat the whole course as a game,” Sarbaum says.

    NPR story here

    Defining Ourselves for Better or Worse

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    Continuing some thoughts about this entry about John Kotter’s article on Forbes.com, I realize that definition through story is certainly not limited to companies.

    My interest is in how we define ourselves through story. Doing so, I’m convinced, can help us propel our careers forward.

    I am always looking for stories that will shed
    light on how companies define themselves–for better or for worse.

    [Thanks to Mary K. Clark from the Working Stories discussion group for the inspiration for this entry.]

    Our Storied Minds

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    I am struck by how we as humans will tend to make up stories about anything we see that’s the slightest bit unusual (at least I do).

    While riding my bike one afternoon, for example, I saw a woman walking by the side of the road. Several hundred feet behind her was what looked like a moving truck. My mind instantly made a connection between the two sights: Something had fallen off the truck, and the woman was walking along the side of the road to find it. Or perhaps she was planning to stop at one of the houses along the road to ask directions. The two things probably weren’t connected at all, but my brain wanted to create a story.

    That’s a pretty boring, mundane example. The classic has to be one about the dog, Muffie, I had as a pre-teen. The wirehaired fox terrier often ran away from home, and trying to chase her only made her run faster; she was nearly impossible to catch unless you opened a car door. (She loved going for rides in the car and would readily jump into a car when invited.)

    Once she ran away to the vicinity of my Uncle John’s house, which was halfway across town. Someone knew whose dog Muffie was and alerted us. My sister Robin happened to need to borrow a saw from Uncle John anyway, so she made the trek to fetch both Muffie and the saw. As Robin returned home with Muffie under one arm and the saw in her other hand, a small child put together a gruesome story:

    “Please don’t saw the little doggie in half,” the child pleaded.

    “The Trouble with Stories Is You Have to Live Them”

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    My 19-year-old son was stranded in downtown Orlando, FL, and ended up getting mugged (including his cell phone), sleeping in a parking garage, and walking a portion of the 40-mile trip home. His story actually began on Oct. 12, but it was appropriately probably Friday the 13th when things turned sour. He finally reached me with a collect call late on the afternoon on the 13th, and I picked him up.

    He said that one of the thoughts he had as he walked those many miles was how he would have great stories to tell about his misadventure.

    Later, though, as his ordeal worsened, he realized that the bad thing about having stories to tell is that you have to live the rotten experience that yields the stories.

    Storytelling and Interactivity

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    Steve Denning shared this comment with the Working Stories group:

    I would argue that the essence of (organizational) storytelling is interactivity. The only point of the story is to generate new stories in the minds of the listeners. If the storytelling remains a solo activity, with the storytelling simply telling his/her story, and the listeners “downloading” that “data” intact, then nothing much of interest is going on. It’s when the listeners start to imagine their own stories that you can [get] action. The storyteller’s story is just scaffolding for the real action – the listener’s story.

    I am speculating that this interactivity may be a major key to getting buy-in from business students and business leaders alike. I still have not achieved the perfect blend of interactivity and whatever is needed for students to understand the power of storytelling, but I do know that interactivity has resulted in some beautiful stories from my students.

    Links from the World’s Premier Organizational Storytelling Event

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    A number of entries ago, I said I would, in the spirit of sharing in the storytelling community, share links from April’s Smithsonian Storytelling Weekend. Here they finally are:

  • A welcome to participants from around the world
  • Steve Denning explains “the OS moment”
  • Steve Denning’s slides”
  • Madelyn Blair discusses “the UN story”
  • Ashraf Ramzy tells the story of “the perfect storm”

    • — Courtesy of Steve Denning

    Storytelling’s Impact in the Corporate World?

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    John Kotter, author of Heart of Change, says he is “always looking for stories that will shed light on how companies define themselves — for better or for worse,” though in a recent article on Forbes.com, he laments that “too few business leaders grasp the idea that stories can have a profound effect on people.” His concerns tie in with my own quest to get buy-in on storytelling from my business students. It’s a never-ending crusade — one that I’m convinced is extremely important.