Showcase Your Success Stories
/One of the critical factors that most enables job seekers to be successful in securing their desired next career move is the ability to effectively tell their stories and showcase their successes.
Headhunters, recruitment agents and/or prospective employers are well aware that the only reliable way that they can make a judgement about how you might perform in a new job in a new organisation is by understanding what it is that you have achieved in your career to date. So your current and prior success stories are your golden nuggets in trying to position and sell yourself for an exciting new role. It follows that those individuals who can tell their success stories with the right distinction, impact and enthusiasm are the most likely to stand out and make the right impression at each stage of the recruitment process.
So when coaching the many diverse and talented people who seek our help to secure new roles, one of the elements that we focus heavily upon is coaching individuals in how to tell their compelling success stories. And it often surprises us in this process just how much many individuals have a tendency to under-sell themselves and understate their relevant successes.
In our experience, these are amongst the most important ingredients for showcasing your career successes:
Authentic - always be honest and straightforward about what you have achieved. Stories should be genuine and factual, but told in a way that illustrates all the important dimensions of the success.
The What & The How - your stories should be a combination of what you did and the outcome but also most importantly include how you went about approaching and resolving the issue/challenge so you illustrate the essential skills you used.
Enthusiastic - these are your important personal success stories so you should tell each of them with pride, passion and enthusiasm. They are essentially part of you and reflect your competencies in action so don’t hold back in being energetic and animated in describing them.
Relevant - your stories should be very carefully selected to best illustrate your capabilities and achievements that have the most relevance to the specific job and personal criteria of the role in question. As such you can and should prepare a good range of success stories ahead of time so you can be sure of choosing the right example for the specific question being asked
Succinct - in a relatively short dialogue or formal interview, you will not have much time to tell your relevant success stories. It is vital therefore that you can tell them very succinctly and powerfully with no redundant elements. So important is this, that when coaching individuals preparing for interviews we always teach and rigorously practice specific, simple techniques for ensuring brevity in your narrative.
“I” Focused - your stories should be first and foremost about the actions you took (the “I”) not about what others did to contribute to the success (the “We”). The recruiter is really only interested in what you did and how that led to a successful outcome. If others were involved in contributing then always describe what you did to initiate, involve or guide these others.
Outcome Focused - the results of your actions are all important in your story telling and in particular you should very briefly describe the quantitative outcomes and dimensions e.g. increased revenues and sales by x%, reduced costs by y% but also describe the "softer", more qualitative outcomes e.g. improved feedback, increased engagement, improved motivation and morale.
Currency - of course success stories from your distant past may be very relevant to the here and now in pursuing a new job opportunity. However do make sure that your stories have good currency. Typically this means that your story-telling should be weighted in favour of your more recent tangible successes in say the last 5 years or so.
Well-Rehearsed - always find ways of practicing the telling of your stories ahead of an important dialogue or interview. Use the opportunity to refine each story so as to increase the relevance, impact and brevity.
You never quite know when you might need to tell your success stories e.g. the phone could ring in a moment from a headhunter who wants to find out more about you and your achievements. Alert, career-minded individuals will always have in mind their most important recent successes and a readiness to use them to showcase their capabilities.
So as a simple immediate action, why not take thirty minutes to note down some of your most important recent achievements and use the opportunity to rehearse in your own mind how you would tell these success stories in a relevant but succinct way to anyone who might be curious to know more about you and your capabilities.
Happy story-telling!
Director
I can highly recommend Brosna's professional, rigorous and tailored approach - it was a massive factor in me securing this important role...