Struggling with your career story?

Here is a method to help you tell better stories.

Have you ever struggled with telling your career story? Does it feel like people?don’t?get what you did and what value you bring?

You are not alone. This stuff is hard. And we were never taught how to do it properly.

From a young age, we are told that our careers should be a straight line, logical, sequenced, and progressing. More than that, it needs to be pointing upwards,?always?growing, never staling, and at any cost?never?going down.

This is a heavy burden to carry because life is not like that. Neither are our careers.?It’s?only natural to struggle to tell a compelling story that hopefully shows that our careers are like that, even when they are not, and that we struggle to feel confident while delivering it.

We tend to cope with this in two main ways. better stories.

1. Fitting a whole library into a single book

When we try to create a single career story that encompasses all that we have done in a way that makes?sense?we fall short.?There’s?only so much one can tell in a story. Choosing?what’s?relevant and?what’s?not, how much of ourselves we inject, is hard. Especially if you try to have a unified story that you tell to multiple different?audiences (recruiters, hiring managers, colleagues, the random dude you ended up having a beer with after the meet-up).?

Creating a unified story will leave many important things out, it?will feel that the episodes?don’t?piece together nicely.?That story?has the responsibility of?representing you in multiple?different?ways to a multitude of?different?people.?So it tends to not land well when we tell it, people?don’t?get us?and?we?don’t?feel really confident when we?tell?it. People feel that.

You?can’t?fit a library into a single book. Here we are trying to fit a sci-fi novel, a manual to fix your car, a business card, and a pizza menu into a single book that we hope anybody who reads it will make sense of. It just?doesn’t?work.

2.?Only?focus on facts and figures

Another way we try to address the career storytelling issue is to only focus on facts and figures. This is what I did, how?I did it, and the skills I used. Look,?that's?a start, but?that’s?basically saying that Star Wars is just a story of two lost siblings and an abusive?father,?fighting good and evil in space.?

When we focus only on facts and?figures?we?don’t?tell the context we were in, how we fit, and?what was?the value of our work. Therefore?the?audience only listens to an extensive list of facts and has to?put together?why what you did was relevant and what value it brings.

In the current job market, one needs to spoon-feed our value to whoever?is listening?to us. People have no time or patience to read between the lines and derivate the value you can bring by adding?up facts and taking?conclusions from them.

What can you do?

Start by creating a library of all of your experiences, even that odd summer job serving beers at the camping club of your small town. Even?then?you were learning about customers, finances, and?keeping a workplace tidy.

Map out all your experiences - the official roles and their impact?but also all?the other roles you fulfilled. You had a title but ended up doing multiple roles while you were at the company? Good! Mention them, call them what they are, and map out the impact you had.?Don’t?shy away from putting down everything you did.

Create an extensive library of experiences.?It will work like a Lego system to position yourself?better,?to?create more accurate and?impact?stories. Every time you need to apply or reposition yourself?self?you?know?exactly?what you will talk about, how, and why.

You can create multiple career stories that allow you to quickly position yourself in exciting ways that feel authentic when you tell them, and people will actually get what you mean.

For that purpose,?I created the Career Storytelling Kit and its Career Timeline Exercise.?You can download it for free and start mapping out your career. That will get you much further in telling better career stories.

This reflective process is also a way to emotionally make sense of your professional self and build self-esteem.

You can download the Career Storytelling Kit here. Let me know how it helped you!