The Key to Landing Your Next Job? Storytelling.

We normally dole out a lengthy list of accomplishments, experience, projects and activities in our job application, hoping to be caught by the keyword searching tools used by recruiters.

While this seems logical in this competitive world, we need a different approach to stand out from the crowd: To not be a cookie clutter applicant, but a real human.

Knowing your audience, who are recruiters, in this case, matters while we are trying to get a job in a sea of candidates competing for the same profile. Recruiters look for technical skills as well as soft skills:

1. Being a people person.
2. Having emotional intelligence.
3. Being authentic.
4. Strong communication skills with equally good listening skills.
5. Mindfulness and inclusivity.

We can conduct research on Linkedin and find out what the recruiter wants, and the needs of the industry. We need to find out the problems, issues and challenges that the hiring managers have and provide them with a solution.

The recruiter should look at our resume/cover letter and find the answer to their current problems.

Listing your accomplishments as narration is only half the work done. We need to expand our profile and let our personality shine by giving context to our story, the three elements that flesh out the narrative: Setting, characters and conflict.

The Three Basic Elements Of Your Story:

• The setting is the place where the events of your story happened.
• The characters are the people in your story, like your family, your team, your client, or your boss.
• The conflict is the crucial problem of your story that spurred you into action.

Do not sprinkle your resume with jargon and buzzwords, as it does not convey any story, but only feels like hollow boasting to the person screening your profile.

Go for the simple approach and craft a story that hooks the recruiter, and sets you apart from others.

The prospective candidate needs to end the story as a hero, giving the listener a reason to care about the conflict, the handling of the problem and the main characters, and eventually the final resolution (an impressive metric) to provide a sense of closure and accomplishment that says: Hire me now!

The narrative should have a big idea in the beginning, followed by the conflict and the characters who are impacted. One can then describe the setting and add more characters. After fleshing out the conflict and creating suspense, one can end the story with a resolution.

Just by narrating the same facts which are already listed in your resume in a storytelling format, one can influence the recruiter.