A special form of storytelling
Career telling is a specific type of storytelling in self-marketing. In storytelling, you use personal stories to show how you have overcome professional or personal challenges. Ideally, you should use the narrative structure of the STAR method by first describing the situation and your task as the context of the story. You then explain what you did to solve the problem step by step (action) and what you ultimately achieved (result). In this way, your listeners see you acting in their mind’s eye and recognise your personal strengths. The challenge lies in choosing the size of the story. Your whole life is one big story and in storytelling you tell episodes from it. In self-marketing, you normally tell the story of time-limited tasks that you have completed. In career telling, on the other hand, you tell your entire career story. This can range from a few years to several decades.
Same requirements for storytelling
You will need your career story in the interview as an answer to the question asked at the beginning: «Please introduce yourself briefly» or «Please tell me about your career to date». As with telling shorter stories, you also need to find the optimum length for your career story; after all, you could go on for hours. The trick is to find the relevant facts and experiences for your story, emphasise the positive and leave out the negative. Descriptions in which a common thread runs through your career are particularly catchy. In my experience, such a thread is present in most careers, but it is challenging to find it. A good career story always sounds much more planned than it actually is. Telling your own story from time to time strengthens your self-confidence and gives you the feeling of purpose – meaning becomes apparent in context and thus in retrospect.