Gabriella Evelina Britth, who offers expertise in concepts, design, and storytelling, has declared in her Twitter profile that she plans to produce “50 tweets in 5 days. A Storytelling Experiment where I will share myself n [sic] my resume. Manifesto: Honest. Ironic. Sarcastic.” (I’m not sure if that’s meant to be “in my resume,” “and my resume,” or something else.) She started tweeting two days ago.

Britth had posted nearly two dozen tweets at the time of this writing. Most are creative ways of showing glimpses of her story, her lifestream, if you will. The first tweet, for example, is on PinintheMap and shows where in Stockholm, Sweden, Britth was born. In other tweets, she links to her LinkedIn profile, samples of her work, pictures of schools she’s attended and companies at which she’s worked, a video of a song she likes to sing while in the car, snapshots, a flowchart of how she likes to work (pictured), the Facebook profile of fictional Hollywood agent Ari Gold, a Lady Gaga video with art direction Britth admires, a blog she admires, a Survey Monkey quiz about herself, a Google street-view map of where she lives now, and a clip from Pineapple Express, the movie she considers the funniest ever.

The tweeted story/resume is clever and whimsical, and it does provide a good glimpse of Britth’s story. I’m not sure it work for employment (at least not in the U.S.) because it contains a few mildly risque elements.

I’d love to see job-seekers adopt some of Britth’s ideas for artifacts to link to as they seek to tell their stories. But tweeting the story doesn’t do much for me. I’d like to see some of these elements integrated into some other form of online resume.

[Thanks to Gregg Morris for alerting me to this tweeted resume.]

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

A few weeks ago, Gregg Morris shared with me a Twitter recruiting video. The blogger who initially posted it, Michael Batistich, had called it a “great piece of storytelling… [that] makes me want to work there.”

Maybe I’m getting more discriminating about my definition of storytelling, but this video didn’t quite reach the level of storytelling for me. It’s more about symbols and metaphors. In the video, various functional teams use costumes and props to depict what they do. We can see that the Twitter employees all look young, diverse, and casual. They look like they’re having a good time. But I’d call this video “proto-storytelling,” rather than storytelling.

As Marguerite Granat said (I quoted here recently here), “It’s not the best employer that attracts the most candidates; it’s the one who knows how to tell a story through its employment brand.”

Twitter gets that. Even if the story is more of a proto-story.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Every time I come across someone’s suggested story formula, I ask myself whether the structure could be applied in job-search stories. Most of the time, they can, and I’ve written about many of them.

Here’s another one posed by Marc Stoiber on MediaPost, along with my italicized comments on how each step could apply to a story told in, say, a job interview:

Foreboding — a vague sense that something isn’t right: You begin to sense a problem in your workplace that needs attention.

Triggering event — a moment that causes us to act: The problem comes to a head, and you decide to take action.

Epiphany — the curtains draw back and we see clearly: You figure out the best action to take.

Reconciliation — we act to bring reality in line with our vision: You take action to solve the problem.

Transformation — we grow based on the experience: You improve your workplace and develop yourself as a a valuable contributor.

Return and responsibility — we bring our new wisdom to daily life: You apply what you learned as a result of solving this problem to your everyday work life.

Meanwhile, on Glassdoor.com in an article called The Myth Of Transferable Skills, Liz Ryan complains about job-seekers who submit meaningless lists of their “transferable skills” in job-search communications (resumes, cover letters, applications, and more). “People are not actually ambulatory sets of disembodied, abstract skills,” Ryan writes. “Describing ourselves as packages of skills is about the worst way imaginable to get a hiring manager excited about us.”

Ryan protests that hiring managers have no reason to trust job-seekers when they say they have certain transferable skills. A hiring manager’s concept of a given skill could be very different from that of the candidate claiming to possess that skill. The hiring manager has no way of know how a claimed skill will manifest itself in diverse situations. Lists of skills a cliched. “Everyone claims the same ten, done-to-death skills (Communication, Negotiation, Teamwork, Organizational, Writing, Leadership, Technical, Administrative, Customer Service and Process Improvement),” she writes. “We won’t make our mark sounding like every other skill-toting job seeker in the pack.” Perhaps worst of all, lists of transferable skills lack context.

The solution to all these issues, of course, is to tell stories that put transferable skills in context and describe how the job-seeker deployed them. “We need powerful stories to convey our power, battle-tested and concrete, to the person who’s reading our resume,” Ryan says. Further:

Stories, in contrast to skills listings, are loaded with context. We’ll tell the reader about that business dragon we slew (a cost overrun in Production, or a drop-off in attendance at our teleseminars) with plenty of detail about the situation we faced as we brought that dragon down. That’s when our job-search pitch has power! … Trumpeting our fabulousness sans context, proof or relevance is a waste of time. Use your stories, instead, to make it clear how you’ve made a difference for your employers in the past.

I talk about transferable-skills stories and give examples in my book, Tell Me About Yourself, starting here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

OK, I will admit I’m posting this entry in part because the article it references features my wonderful daughter (pictured).

My colleague Barbara Safani compiled this article about the trials and tribulations of being part of an airline flight crew after the incident in which JetBlue flight attendant Stephen Slater decided he’d had enough abuse from passengers and quit his job by sliding down the emergency-exit slide (around the same time as the hoax-but-still-a-good-story video in which the young woman supposedly quit her job via whiteboard).

The stories in Barb’s article illustrate how the frustrations of airline work could provoke a crew member into drastic actions like Slater’s.

My daughter’s situation is a little different because she doesn’t work for an airline but for a private plane owner. I still crack up over her story of “babysitting” expensive caviar for her former boss.

A related posting is this one from Gawker with readers’ most spectacular “I quit” stories.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve written more than once about Bernadette Martin’s book, Storytelling about Your Brand Online & Offline: A Compelling Guide to Discovering Your Story. The book was “forthcoming” in those posts (and also had a slightly different title), but now it’s here, published in both hard-copy and ebook formats, and I’m mentioning it in conjunction with the Social Story Conference coming up later this month.

Much has been written about personal branding in recent years, but Bernadette’s book adds some nuances I haven’t seen before. For one, it’s the first branding book I know of to overtly connect personal branding with storytelling. (Well, my own book, Tell Me About Yourself, does that, but just in one chapter whereas the theme is pervasive in Bernadette’s book). The book is also the first I know of to explicitly break down offline and online personal-brand storytelling. Product brand storytelling; corporate, NGO, and non-profit storytelling; and corporate leadership storytelling also get a meaty mention along with personal brand storytelling.

I have mixed feelings about Bernadette’s use of Reach Personal Brand Process. Founded by William Arruda, who wrote the forward to this book, the Reach process was one of the first to guide folks in discovering their personal brand. Well-respected and widely used, the process is even attached to a certification that enables practitioners to become Reach Personal Brand Strategists. Given that many professionals have advanced their own ideas for processes to develop one’s personal brand, Bernadette was wise, I think, not to reinvent the wheel; however, the Reach process doesn’t work well for me personally.

I’m always on the lookout for story prompts, especially those that help an individual get at his or her personal story, so I love Bernadette’s 35 Storytelling Inspiring Questions and wish there were even more. Emotional intelligence (EQ) stories, personal social responsibility (PSR) stories, and story-building around assessment results are novel and fascinating inclusions.

Bernadette offers a highly useful VISIBILITY BRANDING STORYTELLING TOOL (VBST) that helps users select 5-7 key stories, develop these in more detail and structure them, choosing the ones that will resonate most with the user’s target (often an employer). She recommends the well-known Situation—>Action—>Result (SAR), Problem—>Action—>Result (PAR), Challenge—>Action—>Result (CAR) formulas — but adds Key Attributes and Testimonials to them.

The book’s online chapter offers elements I haven’t seen in personal-banding or storytelling works: Storytelling on Google, Video Storytelling, and Storytelling in 3D Virtual Worlds and provides samples of storied online portfolios.

The offline chapter echoes the job-interview and networking themes of Tell Me About Yourself, while adding a helpful section on icebreaker stories. That chapter also introduced me to a new term, “verbal graffiti,” “the term used for fillers, non-words, modifiers, condescenders, verbal tics … basically anything that can dilute the message of your storytelling” — and Bernadette tells readers how to eliminate them. (She recommends Toastmasters, an organization I plan to get involved in soon.)

The book’s chapter on branded bios is important because it provides the foundation for effective online profiles. Lots of meaty info in this chapter, which may just be the most powerful one in the book.

The book is also nicely peppered with interviews with experts.

Here’s the book’s table of contents:

Part I The Power of Storytelling
Introduction
Mind Map
Neuro Research and Storytelling
Storytelling about the “Brand Called You”
Product Brand Storytelling
Corporate, NGO and Non-Profit Storytelling
Corporate Leadership Storytelling
Personal Brand Storytelling
The Reach Personal Brand Process
A Personal Story

Part II The “Art” of Storytelling and Extracting the Stories
The “Art” of Storytelling
Storytelling Inspiring Questions
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) Stories
Leadership Storytelling
Personal Social Responsibility (PSR) Stories
Story Building around Assessment Results
The 360°Reach Assessment
References
The Visibility Branding Storytelling Tool (VBST)

Part III 2.0 Storytelling — Communicating Your Story Online
Storytelling 2.0 or Digital Storytelling
Storytelling on Google
Video Storytelling
Storytelling in 3D Virtual Worlds
Case Stories: Online Portfolio Examples

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

Gregg Morris yesterday turned me on to what he thinks might be the first job posting ever to use “story” in the way this posting does. It is certainly the first one I’ve seen that does so. The posting is for the position of Social Media Specialist.

Here are some snippets showing how Cancer Treatment Centers of America seeks someone who can tell its story, as well as someone to begin his or her story with the organization:

Stories of Life. Stories of Hope.

Imagine a place where your talent can make a meaningful difference in peoples’ lives. Where a sense of mission and a promise to patients marks a culture of people who look forward to the challenge of each day … where you can help create stories of life, stories of hope, and amazing stories of triumph — big and small — that unite everyone around a worthy goal. That place is real. It’s why we are here.

Cancer Treatment Centers of America® (CTCA) is one of the fastest-growing networks of cancer hospitals in the country. We offer the most sophisticated forms of oncology treatment, combined with complimentary therapies that support the entire person. It’s a place where your contributions can create new stories that embody our exceptional standard of care known as the Mother Standard® model of care — meaning that all staff provides the same level of care to each patient that we would want for our own loved ones. And for those of you who can see how rich and fulfilling this mission-driven, patient-centric, cutting-edge work experience can be, we hope your story starts here.

Start your story at our corporate offices in Schaumburg, IL as a: Social Media Specialist … If you’re interested in starting your own story with us see our website at http://www.cancercenter.jobs/ for a full job description and to apply.

The job posting is interesting for several reasons. It recognizes the growing recognition of the connection between social media and storytelling — that social media at its best is essentially a storytelling media. The employer clearly recognizes stories as the primary way to convey its message (of life and hope). And the employer envisions a career as a story, as I discussed here.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

In an exuberant blog entry called The Chemistry of Storytelling, Marguerite Grant has created an inspiring list that answers the question, “Why story?”

We don’t just buy a product, we buy the story behind it.

We don’t just join a company, we join because of its story.

We don’t just join a cause, we join the story behind it.

We don’t just vote for a presidential candidate, we buy into his story of what the future holds.

We don’t just follow the leader, we buy in to the story behind her vision.

We don’t learn best by hearing a theory or concept, we learn best by hearing stories that demonstrate the concept.

We don’t just see a movie or read a novel, we lose ourselves in a good story.

Based on the fact that we buy stories, it’s not the best product that will sell; it’s the product with the best story behind it. It’s not the best employer that attracts the most candidates; it’s the one who knows how to tell a story through its employment brand.

How have you’ve applied good storytelling in your life?

I especially like the fact that Grant is blogging on the blog of Talent Culture, a careers-related community that offers “the latest perspectives of what it means to find meaningful careers and use them to grow.”

Her statement, “It’s not the best employer that attracts the most candidates; it’s the one who knows how to tell a story through its employment brand,” can be turned around for job-seekers: It’s not the best candidate that gets the job; it’s the one who knows how to tell a story through his or her personal/career brand brand.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

The concept of career-as-narrative is not new. Scholars like Larry Cochran and Kerr Inkson, both of whom I mention in this article, have written extensively about the notion.

Now life strategist Walter Akana has taken the concept to a new level in a terrific blog post entitled The Job Interview As Shared Narrative written as part of the Career Collective in which we both participate.

Akana begins with the career-as-narrative and relates it to the commonly accepted concept of deploying storytelling in job interviews:

Taken as a whole … individual instances of success and failure weave the story of our career, and perhaps even our life message [Akana explains via a link here that life message is a Tom Peters term that relates to Gandhi’s philosophy that his life was his message.] While seemingly disparate elements, they are episodes, or chapters, or plot lines that form a larger narrative. In fact, this relationship to story is not novel. It is clearly captured in the most fundamental approach to interview prep: create accomplishment stories to describe your experience. It’s what the STAR Technique [Here, Akana nicely links to an explanation of the STAR technique on A Storied Career’s parent site, Quint Careers.] is all about; namely, creating stories that tie together discrete situations and/or tasks faced, action steps taken, and results achieved

Our careers represent our narrative, with stories that get told in formal performance meetings, in “water cooler” chatter, after hours with colleagues and friends, during mentoring conversations, and while networking generally. Indeed, our stories are what give us visibility and credibility inside of the communities of practice made up of the people who do what we do, and more broadly in brand communities that include the people we serve.

But here’s where Akana gets really innovative, suggesting that the job-seeker need not be the only storyteller in the interview:

I believe that thinking of our careers as narrative has a powerful implication for how we conceive of professional interactions, in general, and job interviews, in particular. And it’s this: discussions of our professional experience are truly opportunities for shared narrative. Trading stories with an interviewer about our shared experience allows for a sharing of meaning, and supports the kind of bonding that takes place in discovering the things we share in common. It is a fundamental human need that drives folklore, which is often a device for transmitting a culture’s morals and values.

Akana clearly understand the kind of storied emotional bond I wrote about in Tell Me About Yourself:

Stories establish an emotional connection between storyteller and listener and inspire the listener’s investment in the storyteller’s success. When stories convey moving content and are told with feeling, the listener feels an emotional bond with the storyteller. Often the listener can empathize or relate the story to an aspect of his or her own life. That bond instantly enables the listener to invest emotionally in your success.

This job-interview story-sharing can help establish cultural fit, Akana notes — does the candidate fit in with the employer’s organization, and does the organization fit the candidate: “If the final outcome of a job interview is to select the candidate who has not only the required skills but also represents the best cultural fit, then your ability to engage in shared narrative over the course of the process can have an impact on your success.”

And bonus! In one of the above passages, Akana linked to a narrative site that was new to me and very interesting, The Shared Narratives project , “a group of websites developed around the idea of collective documentary storytelling about common yet evocative themes. The Shared Narratives sites utilize several emerging web techniques such as the use of blogging systems, photo, audio and video sharing, folksonomies (also known as collective tagging), geocoding (location-based tagging), and user generated content.”

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

It’s been a little while since I wrote about one of my favorite storytelling topics, storytelling in the job search.

Storytelling especially lends itself to responding to questions in behavioral interviews, the style of interviewing that has grown in dominance over the last couple of decades and is based on the premise that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior and performance on the job.

Now, a new twist on behavioral interviewing is emerging. As reported by John Zappe on ERE.net, Carol Quinn, CEO of Hire Authority, calls this new style “motivation-based” interviewing.

It’s very similar to behavioral interviewing, but there’s a subtle twist. Here’s the example she gives, as reported by Zappe:

Interviewer question: Tell me about a time when you satisfied an irate customer.

“Every person can tell you about a time like that,” Quinn says. Instead, her motivation-based method would finesse the question along these lines:

It’s the coda to the question that makes the difference: How you did it and what you got out of it.

Zappe:

That may not sound like a big difference, but it does kick things up a notch. The “how you did it and what you got out of it” part isn’t as amenable to a formula. It also has the benefit of surprise, and that is something every job seeker wants to avoid in an interview.

What Zappe means about “a formula” is that thousands of career gurus (including me) have proffered content on the Internet and in books that advises job-seekers to follow a formula when telling stories in response to questions like this. The formulas are along the lines of Situation —> Action —> Result (SAR), Problem —> Action —> Result (PAR), and Challenge —> Action —> Result (CAR), but many other variations exist.

Quinn advises interviewers to “go after details and pursue how they responded to challenges, especially impossible obstacles.”

Zappe:

“High performers achieve better results despite the obstacles,” she says. “Low performers think the obstacles are responsible for not achieving the high performance.”

So, when telling stories in response to interview questions, be sure to tell how you overcame obstacles. And don’t whine about how obstacles impeded your performance. Perhaps a new acronym/formula could be: Situation —> Action —> Positive Overcoming of Obstacles —> Result, or SAPOOOR!

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.

I’ve heard of corporate people whose job functions deal extensively with storytelling and who even have titles like Chief Storytelling Officer. But until recently, I had not seen an opportunity for someone with a burgeoning interest in storytelling to get in on the ground floor.

Michael Margolis is offering an internship with his publishing, educational, and consulting company, Get Storied. The internship starts out unpaid but could become paid in three months. As of earlier this week, Michael said, he had had about a half dozen inquiries and planned to review them carefully. The application deadline is April 25. Here’s a description:

Forget photo-coping and filing papers, you’ll be creating and contributing in a meaningful way. This is a demanding position - which in return will provide you a wealth of real-world learning experience and a portfolio of creative work to show. As part of this unique internship, you will have the opportunity to be mentored by Michael Margolis, a social entrepreneur, author, teacher, speaker, and consultant.

Learn how to build a fast-growing internet-based media, education and publishing platform. The ideal candidate will be entrepreneurial and creative, with strong communication skills and fluency in social media.

This is a telecommuting internship. The successful candidate will require real motivation and self-discipline. You will be supported in turn with regular coaching sessions and feedback on your efforts. Your internship can start any time, ideally by early June and must last a minimum of three months.

The internship is a terrific opportunity. I hope to closely follow how the position develops as it could be an excellent model for other story practitioners seeking to open doors to applied storytelling.

Entry by Kathy Hansen. Learn more.