Monthly Archives: October 2010

Learning stories… These are stories about what you might have learned … either from successes or from failures … they could be about your successes or your failures as well as other people successes and other peoples failures…

People love to hear stories about how you turned failure into success and what you learned from it..we all have those stories…make sure you have one ready, too…

Value stories…These are close to learning stories … but they’re more like examples of values such as honesty, integrity, character, “do the right thing,” … etc.

“I learned the value of hard work by having four jobs while in college… I always had plenty of spending money and even saved money”… Again, not hard to come up with or find … just have a couple of them…

“I know which are thinking” stories… These are stories that center around issues the hiring authority might have about your background or your experience that you address before they are brought up by the hiring authority…

These are a great way to deal with concerns in your experience or your background that an employer might have … for instance, if you’ve had three jobs in three years, you know a hiring authority is gonna be concerned about that … so you say, “it’s obvious I’ve had three jobs in three years and that is a big concern, I’m sure for you and it is for me to … here is what happened…”

“I never completed my degree because my father died and since I was the oldest of my family, I had to go to work to support the family…”

These are stories that bring up issues obvious to a perspective employer and you need to answer the concerns with a story before the issue is even mentioned … these kind of stories take a little practice and for every risk you might have in your experience or background you need to have a story to explain it…

Please remember that to interview effectively you do not have to have all six types of stories … in fact two or three personal stories about you and two or three business stories about how and what you learned in the process will suffice … they need to be short… no more than 45 seconds ..and need to highlight a particular point of your career…

STORIES SELL!

there are six types of stories… This doesn’t mean that you have to demonstrate all six types in the interviewing process … however it’s good to know the types of stories there are so that as you envision them  and tell them you can “categorized” them

The first type of story is “who I am” stories … these are stories that identify who you are, where you’ve been, where you come from, etc. … stories about you growing up, working your way through college, personal challenges as you’ve grown up, personal stories about yourself that show you to be a loyal and quality employee … are all “who I am” stories…

“why I am here” stories… These are stories about what you’re gonna do for a new employer… Positive stories as to why you’re looking for a job… “I love what I do and I love the people that I’m working for … unfortunately…(short story) “… and you better make it an engaging in positive story as to why you need to change jobs or why you are changing jobs…

” vision “stories… Stories about the future… what the company would look like when you were there based on the changes and impact you had on the companies that you have worked for in the past… In other words,” this is how like transformed the companies that I worked for before… “