3 Story Types for Job Interviews
How to increase the chances that your next interview leads to a job offer? Be relevant. Be memorable. Three types of stories can keep you on top of the interviewer’s mind.
Congratulations! You’ve landed that interview. Now, how to transform it to an offer? You’ve done your homework: you know who you will meet and understand what is the job-to-be-done. This will help you build key messages about your successes, skills, motivation and values and stay relevant all along. Relevance = safety, and safety is the first key to landing a job offer. But not the only one: what if there are several other, equally relevant, candidates competing for the same role? How to stand out from the crowd?
You have to be memorable, and there is no better way to connect to the interviewer and stay on top of her mind than telling a good story. This article is about three types of stories to use in job interviews:
“Superhero” stories
“SCAR” stories
“A-HA Moments” stories.
I’ll tell you why they work, how to build them and when to tell them and offer a few examples.
Why You Need Stories
Stories help explain who you are and connect you to the interviewer: stories trigger empathy and engage imagination, they provoke sensory experiences, develop emotional connection and elevate trust.
Story is emotion. Every time we get to the storytelling part - my favourite part! - in the MyCareerMap sessions I host, it gets emotional. It lights up a spark. It feels as if a black-and-white movie about a career suddenly gets a splash of colour. Those stories bring in a whole new meaning to one’s career path. And if you ask me what I remember the most after my coaching sessions, I’m telling you: STORIES.
No-one explains better why you need stories than Neil Bearden, the INSEAD professor and founder of Plot Wolf. Please just watch this. And then we’ll get to preparing your stories.
Now it’s time to prepare your stories. We’ll keep it simple. We will see what is each type about, how they help explain who you are and connect you to the listener, how and when to tell them. You will find examples for each type.
Story Type 1: “Superhero” Stories
What are these stories about?
Superhero stories are about the people who you admire, who have influenced you in a big way. It can be a person you know, a personality or even a book or a fictional character.
Put simply, without this Superhero, you would not be who you are today.
How do they explain who you are?
Superhero stories illustrate your values and clarify your life choices.
How do they connect you to the interviewer?
They show your gratitude, and the gratitude creates an aura of warmth and positivity. Seeing how grateful you are to your superheroes indirectly creates a perception with the interviewer that you may be equally grateful to her when you happen to work together.
How to tell them?
Simply name your “superhero” and explain how he/she/it has influenced you. Do mention the name. Tell what you learned from your superhero. Tell the story with warmth and enthusiasm, as if you were sharing a good memory with a dear friend.
When to tell them?
In the beginning of an interview, as part of your “Tell Me About Yourself” pitch, when you share your “origin story”. They can explain your original career choices and/or pivots later in your career.
When you speak about a particular stage in your career, talk about a particular role. They illustrate the values you developed, and express gratitude to the people from whom you learned and who gave you opportunities. These stories humanise your work experience.
Examples:
Examples from MyCareerMap sessions I host (names changed):
I always wanted to be a nurse. My aunt Pilar was. Every time we were together, I loved sitting close and listening to her countless stories about hospital life, stories full of patience and compassion. I still remember how proud and amazed I felt on my own first day at work: “I am now working at a hospital, just like my aunt!”
I was a successful Organisation Engineer and Logistics Project leader. My first successes gave me confidence that I can be equally good in analysis and in bringing people on board around innovative ideas. And at the same time, I felt that I could become more than an engineer. One book – the Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley – literally transformed me and sparked my interest in Design Thinking. So, when the opportunity presented itself to get a scholarship for a degree in Business & Design in Bocconi University in Milano, I seized it and this decision has shaped everything I have been doing ever since.
I was born and raised in a small town in France. No one in my working class family had ever gone to a University, or travelled abroad, or particularly encouraged me to be successful in my studies. And then, there was Mireille, a neighbour, who took a sincere and constant interest in my education and encouraged me to dare and think big. She was my window to the world and her confidence in me helped me embark on adventures I could never imagine as a child.
That was my first job in consulting, and I felt clueless. Yet I was extremely lucky to have a great first boss who taught me the way. Although Clemence was just slightly older than me, everything about her projected professionalism: the way she spoke, the way she dressed, the way she prepared for the Client meetings, the way she ran them… She was exceptionally well organised and super reliable. Under her influence, I quickly learned a lessons that has influenced me ever since: you get hired on perception, and fired on results.
Example from the book “Your Career Game”: interview with Merck’s CEO Ken Frazier - I find it excellent, and it contains a “log line”: a condensed statement of one’s life philosophy:
The way I was raised has had an enormous influence on my approach to work. I was born and raised in the inner city of Philadelphia. My mother died when I was very young, and I was raised by my father. That is a bit different than what most would picture as a single-parent family. More than anything else, it was my father’s approach to life that shaped me. His approach was simple - make no excuses for anything. My father was one of the most resilient people I ever knew, and one of the most resourceful, too. He was born in 1900 in South Carolina. As an African American child at that time and in that area, he only had an opportunity for the equivalent of a third-grade education. In spite of that, he taught himself basic literacy skills and became self-educated to a significant degree. He believed that if people worked hard and had the right instincts for how to treat other people, they would be successful. I have tried to approach my career that way.
Story Type 2. “SCAR” Stories
What are these stories about?
They are about your achievements and the challenges you’ve overcome. What they meant for the company and what they meant for you, how they changed and transformed you.
How do they explain who you are?
They give concrete examples of you in action, you at your best. They showcase your skills, the way you think, make decisions, communicate and collaborate with other people. They dial up both relevance and memorability to a significant degree. The lessons you distill for yourself from these experiences become part of your life and work philosophy. The work you’ve done appears more important and exciting. Nothing beats seeing someone genuinely proud and enthusiastic about her work.
How do they connect you to the interviewer?
They light up the imagination of you in action, solving a problem similar to those your interviewer needs to get solved. These stories trigger emotions when stakes are high. They get the interviewer engaged to follow you through all the turbulences, they trigger empathy. Empathy creates connection. They can also show vulnerability and make you appear more human. They give the interviewer a chance to feel how it is to work with you, to count on you.
How to tell them?
Like a Hollywood blockbuster movie. Seriously. I’ve seen countless times how a skilfully told SCAR story elevates a seemingly ordinary or boring experience or business achievement to a new height. We are not talking about embellishing things. We are talking about framing the reality in the most impactful way.
So, how to build a SCAR story?
First, think of the ONE key message you want to convey using this story. A good story is a sashimi, not a fried rice. How relevant is your story for the role for which you are interviewing?
Start with a headline: “Let me tell you a story about a time we turned around our business in Japan”.
Then architect it following the SCAR structure.
S - Situation / Stakes. Set the Scene. Tell what was important, what was at stake. Use meaningful numbers.
C - Complication, Conflict, Challenge. No complication, no story. Look at the challenge both from your company’s perspective and from your personal perspective.
A - Action. Main part of the story.
Make it about YOU. You may think that a trick not to sound arrogant is to replace “I” with “we”, but it’s actually true only to a point. Ability to step back from the team and articulate how YOU added value is paramount and a great sign of maturity. You have to say “I”. But how do we solve arrogance problem? By sticking to the facts of the story: what I did, thought, said and how I felt at that time. We tell the story itself, but do not see it from today's perspective.
Again, use numbers, yet meaningfully and sparingly.
R - Results / Resolution. A clear outcome for the business and the lessons you’ve taken for yourself.
When to tell them?
When you tell about your achievements. Shape your answer as a story.
Example:
This example from MyCareerMap sessions I run (names changed) - hearing this particular story, I was amazed how change management challenges are similar across industries, from healthcare to finance:
Let me tell you a story when I successfully implemented the fall prevention programme for the XXX hospital.
(S) Fall prevention is a big safety problem for hospitals. There are literally hundreds of places and ways the patients can fall, yet a lot of falls stay underreported and as a result, unaddressed. The hospital wanted to implement fall prevention strategies for two reasons: First, it improved patient safety and care. Second, a working fall prevention strategy was mandatory for the hospital to get one of the strictest accreditations worldwide.
(C) The biggest challenge for the hospital was that it lacked a strong IT system for patient records. During his or her stay in the hospital, the patient moves through many departments. How can we make sure they agree how to record and communicate the risk as the patient moves between services? Another challenge was that different services had different fall declaration forms. Some documents took more than 15 mins to fill, and nurses just refused to do it. A challenge for me was that this project had been failing for several years with huge resistance built around it. Now, when the stakes got high because of the accreditation, the failure was no longer an option.
(A) When I took over the responsibility over this failing project, my first step was to build a task force, bringing together one person from every department or service: medical, therapy, kinesitherapy, etc. Our mission was to make sure everyone in the hospital can easily record and analyze the falls. Secondly, we harmonized and simplified the fall declaration form. Thirdly, I became the person to receive all the declarations, research and analyze the reasons of the falls and work with the task force to implement preventative measures. Last but not least, we aggressively communicated about the program internally, with the help of posters and articles, as well as externally, at conferences.
(R) First tangible result of the program was that the number of fall declaration sharply increased – from 20 to 700. Having recorded the falls enabled their analysis and implementation of changes that addressed fall root causes – for example, replacement of a slippery flooring in certain areas. In total, over 1.5 years we have implemented 4 out of 5 fall prevention strategies. And for me, this program meant confidence in my ability to lead the change, confidence in my critical thinking, impactful communication and conflict resolution skills. One of the program members once told me: “Working with you, even the most challenging project seem easy. You managed the change without resistance from people”.
Story Type 3. “A-HA Moments” Stories
What are these stories about?
They are about important EVENTS that changed your life / career trajectory. It can be an overnight or gradual change, yet something should have happened to trigger it.
How do they explain who you are?
A CV does not provide space for A-HA Moments. And someone who gets familiar with you only through CV, may find that your career trajectory is inconsistent. Inconsistency = red flag. The A-HA Moments stories bridge the seeming gaps in your career trajectory, bringing out an inherent logic and consistency.
How do they connect you to the interviewer?
These stories can be very vivid, sensory. They often appeal to our feelings and emotions. Skilfully told, they engage the interviewer and wake up curiosity.
How to tell them?
Again, like a Hollywood blockbuster movie. If it’s an event that changed your life, if it has impacted you in a big way - then go and tell it impactfully.
Make explicit the Before/After change in your feelings and attitude. Describe how you felt.
Connect the dots backwards (at the moment of the event you might not be realising that it was going to change your entire life)
Add vivid sensory details to engage your listener’s imagination. Your listener needs to SEE it.
When to tell them?
Use them - in a condensed version - in your Tell Me About Yourself introduction, if it makes sense.
Use them to explain transitions and pivots between different stages of your career.
One great example of an A-Ha Moment story is the story of John Wood and the NGO he founded, Room to Read:
It all started with a case of job burnout. As an overworked Microsoft executive, John Wood escaped to Nepal for a much-needed backpacking getaway. While hiking in the Himalayas, John met a Nepalese “Education Resource Officer” who invited him to visit a school in a neighboring village. Little did John know that this short detour would change his life forever.
At the school, John saw the harsh reality confronting not only this village, but millions of Nepalese children–a dilapidated schoolroom and a severe shortage of books. John was stunned to discover that the few books this school had had–a Danielle Steele romance, the Lonely Planet Guide to Mongolia, and a few other backpacker castoffs–were so precious that they were kept under lock and key…to protect them from the children! As John left the village, the headmaster made a simple request: “Perhaps, Sir, you will someday come back with books.”
His request would not go unheard. John emailed friends asking for help collecting children’s books, and within two months had collected over 3,000 books. The following year, John and his father, accompanied by a train of eight book-bearing donkeys, returned to the village in Nepal. Seeing the faces of the children with the books convinced John to leave the corporate world and devote himself to becoming the Andrew Carnegie of the developing world. In late 1999, John quit his executive position with Microsoft and started Room to Read.
Room to Read had its humble origins in Nepal in 2000, where they began bringing donated books to rural communities. Today, they are a global organization dedicated to promoting and enabling education through programs focused on literacy and gender equality in education.
What’s Next? Build Your Stories Portfolio and Practice. Practice. Practice.
You need to prepare a portfolio of stories to be able to pick and choose from this portfolio the most relevant ones for the roles you will be interviewing for.
Think about 5-8 stories that will help convey your key messages. Most of your stories will come from a professional environment, but some might come from personal life too. Most will be fairly recent, others - especially your Superhero stories - can come from a distant past. The ultimate criterion to include a story in your portfolio is whether it is relevant and helps convey your key messages.
Start with “shitty first drafts” - this idea comes from a great book on Storytelling and life: “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott.
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something - anything - down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft - you just get it down. The second draft if the up draft - you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is a dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose, or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.
Set your timer. Be concise. Eliminate all background noise from the story. Aim for maximum 2.5 minutes. After that, your listener’s attention drops. If you think it’s too little, good news is that if your story is compelling, there are high chances the interviewer will ask more questions.
PRACTICE. PRACTICE. PRACTICE MORE. Tell your stories to a few people who could help you evaluate if your story is good: simple and easy to follow; coherent without explaining everything; vivid, dynamic, emotive; involves struggle; is about YOU. A good story is like sculpture - making it requires a few iterations. You can record these iterations. With each new iteration, you and your listeners will surely see how the story has improved with each round.
PRACTICE until you no longer need to recall your story. When our brain tries to recall a story and recite it at the same time, it all comes as awkward and unnatural. When you have practiced enough, your brain no longer requires to recall; you become more spontaneous in your language and expressions/body language.
Good luck in telling your STORIES!
Illustration: Unsplash.com