Your career is not yours until you can tell it. Before that, it is a collection of different situations and countless experiences, possibly without any visible connection. Read how «Career-Telling» helps you to better understand your career.
At the beginning of a job interview, many recruiters ask applicants to talk about themselves by asking the following questions: «Please introduce yourself briefly»; or: «Tell us something about your CV».
Applicants often present their career as a succession of jobs that seem to follow each other at random. Their career seems aimless and without an inner context. In my interview trainings, however, I often see in their unstructured descriptions a meaningful career development in which the individual professional steps build on each other. Sometimes I even recognise a golden thread through their professional development that leads directly to the job for which my clients are applying.
When I then describe their career in my own words, they are amazed at how good and logical their own story sounds. Why is it that I, as an outsider, can see context and meaning where they have a big blind spot?
Meaning is only revealed in retrospect
With structured biography work, the American physician and gerontologist Robert Neil Butler has developed a concept in which old people better understand their past and present by telling themselves their own life story. In the subsequent reflection and exchange with counsellors, they discover meaning in their lives and realise that they made a difference. You can use the same method to tell your career story.
Step out of your film
We humans move through our lives like through a film. When other people watch us do this, they realise things that are only visible from the outside. You can only gain the same insights if you step out of your film and look at your life from the perspective of a neutral observer.
There is only one way to make our implicit knowledge about ourselves explicit: We have to tell ourselves our own story(s). You can tell yourself smaller episodes and experiences to make strengths and competences visible (storytelling), or you can tell yourself your whole career story («career-telling») to discover a red thread and meaning in it.
The beauty of storytelling is its efficiency: The same stories with which you convince yourself of your qualities and your meaningful career will also convince your interviewers in the job interview.