Job Interview Tips for Career Changers: Storytelling Techniques
Changing careers can be a life-changing and stressful experience. And if that wasn’t enough, attending your first job interview for your new career can feel like you’ve never been to a job interview before.
As a passionate storyteller, I’ve always approached any kind of interaction slightly different from my peers. I only learned why this worked for me years later, and that there’s even a science behind what I love most: Storytelling!
The Science of Storytelling
Once upon a time, you were a small child who probably loved bedtime stories from whatever media you received them from. It was a soothing, happy, and trustful experience that you might have loved to repeat all over again.
But why is that?
Scientists believe that storytelling goes back to when people had developed language but mostly haven’t developed writing yet. Stories have been a vital medium to share experiences with other humans since the beginning of humanity, and while we all know that stories can stick with us for a while, there’s even evidence that some of those traveled 10.000 years. That’s definitely longer than some of my hard disks lived.
So, whenever humans came across something that mattered, like a big black cat that appeared in the shadows at the huge fruitful tree near the big stone where we used to hunt and ate our cousin, telling a story proved to be more effective for survival than just telling the family to “not go there. “
Trust me.
Ask your friends with toddlers. Or tell your toddler to not go “there”.
Our brain rewards stories
You might feel guilty for watching Netflix or surfing YouTube for the entire sunday night, but the truth is, our brain is wired for stories and, due to our natural curiosity, constantly keeps searching for new ones.
And as storytelling proved to be effective for survival, our brain now rewards experiencing stories with feel-good chemicals, like Cortisol, Dopamine, and Oxytocin. Now you know why post-cinema (those were the days!) you felt a little happier, more content, and energized —
You were high on stories. 🤓
While Cortisol assists in formulating memories, Dopamine helps to regulate our emotional responses and keeps us engaged. On the other hand, Oxytocin is associated with empathy and creating deeper and trustful connections with others.
So, in short, this means that by telling a story, the listener’s brain will start to produce feel-good hormones that help them memorize the story, keep engaged, and bond.
Additionally, our brains love patterns, and a storytelling framework can help the listener create a mental map where new information or, therefore, your story can be laid.
But, How does this help you to get Hired?
At some point, a person with responsibilities finds out they need more people to get the job done. A job posting will be created, but the person with responsibilities still has their daily responsibilities.
Additionally, they now need to make time for informational interviews, review candidates, subsequent interviews, make decisions, and all of that on top of their regular working schedule. They might schedule several interviews per day or week to find candidates that they think might be a great fit, all while ensuring their projects are not neglected. And then there’s a pandemic, too.
Of course, some companies have dedicated resources for this process, yet still, imagine the number of interviews they have and the number of people they see every day. It’s a stressful experience for all involved, so imagine what great difference storytelling can make for them!
If your motivation, your “why, “ your skill, and your history of how you got there are laid out in a framework, in a story told well, it could make the difference between being forgotten quickly or stand out in a sea of applications.
But while this might apply to all people on the job hunt, there are some additional things for you to consider, and I want to get to that now.
What’s different for Career Changers
Changing Careers can have a hard time explain their motivations for changing their career path or career field and what they bring to the table. Additionally, you face the reality of competing against experienced candidates with a proven work history and biases, like the fear of underperforming compared to established candidates and the fear of:
“What if they change their mind again? “.
This is because, at the end of the day, hiring managers or HR people are PEOPLE.
They are living human beings like you and I, with emotions, experiences, gut feelings, and a goal.
They want to hire the best fit and avoid risk.
By building a story, you can do your part to influence all of those emotions and lead a conversation that establishes trust, likeability, and authority.
The 6 Stories you need to prepare
So there are hundreds of common interview questions that could be asked during a behavioral interview, but the most common questions are built around the following 5 areas:
- Dealing with Failures
- Team Work
- Problem Solving Abilities
- Leadership
- Dealing with stress
Dealing with Failures
For example, when you’re asked.
“Tell me about a big mistake you did and how you handled it “or “Tell me about a time when you didn’t meet your goals, or
“When a project went wrong “or
“When you tried something new or risky and failed “ —
These are basically all questions that aim to determine how you react to something that didn’t go as you expected or made a mistake.
But, how can you create stories that are emotionally involving and show your skills?
The answer is actually easy — it’s Challenge, Conflict, and Resolution.
In every story told by humankind, you will find your hero facing a challenge. This could be an obstacle, the end of the world, or the love of his life not loving him back. Yet. Though he might not know it yet. But this is another story.
Now, back to things that help you.
Stories are one thing, but translating them into business and your respective industry is another.
If we want to translate this into a short story for an interview, another proven method has been well established and is basically using storytelling.
It’s called the CAR-Method!
CAR — means: Challenge — Action — Result
and it’s basically the same thing, but the abbreviation is nicer ;-)
To answer the question of your biggest mistake by applying storytelling, you need to map your experiences to this framework:
Challenge: What was the big mistake you made? What went wrong?
Action: What did you do to correct your mistake? Which action did you take?
Result: What was your takeaway? What did you learn to avoid these kinds of mistakes in the future?
It’s crucial here that you OWN your mistake. A mistake story is not worth anything if you tell your interviewer about a mistake someone else made.
I’ll give you a real-life example of what a mistaken story could look like:
“When I was the only designer in charge of bestselling t-shirt designs, one of my tasks was to create original designs that our target groups could identify with and basically want to buy. One day I received a call from our store that the entire delivery of a design I made from my new collection had a typo. I opened my files to check what this was about and found out they were right — more than 1000 t-shirts were printed with a typo and were now sitting in the store unpacked. I immediately went to the management and confessed my mistake. Together we decided to put the T-shirts on sale anyway, and refund customers who complained. Instead of angry customers, we had not a single complaint, but even compliments for the originality. The typo was perceived by customers as a design decision that was kind of funny and basically due to the font I sued. But, my learning from this was that from that day, I always made sure that if I am the only person in charge of final designs containing words, I make sure to get someone who hasn’t seen any of them before and establish them as the last reviewer. “
Ok — so in case you might have noticed that the challenge was that our character was the only designer, and she made a terrible mistake. A typo ended up in the final product and is now sitting in the store.
Her action was to confess immediately once she found out and work on a solution together with management.
The result was that happily, her mistake went unrecognized, and was even perceived as a design decision, so our character was lucky. Still, she learned from that, that she needs to establish a review and approval process to prevent this from happening again.
Our character owned her mistake, did the right thing by confessing to management and working on a solution to preventing this from happening again.
Be relatable, they know that everyone makes mistakes, and the most important thing is how YOU dealt with it and what you learned.
Team Work
Ok, so now think about teamwork.
Depending on your future role, it makes a lot of sense to tailor this story to your audience. Which means, if your future position has to deal with interdisciplinary teams or relies on teamwork regularly, you will need to make sure to emphasize the importance of collaboration for you and give your interviewer a real-life example of when you enjoyed teamwork or felt the power of achievement when you were working with your team, and what you took away from that.
Think of a time when your ideas were enhanced by your team, or when you could achieve something together you would have never been able to do alone.
Remember the CAR-Framework here — so start with the challenge, for example, a challenge you and your team had to overcome like a massive project with a short deadline, the action you took, for example, you broke it down into small steps, made sure everyone is on track, and the result, could be a project you finished successfully. A happy customer, a great product.
Ensure your learning and development are emphasized and don’t forget to credit your team in your story, too!
Problem Solving abilities
Let’s talk about problem-solving — for any role, this is an important story that needs to focus on your actions and your takeaway. Whenever you’re asked how you approach problems, how you can develop ideas to solve a problem, or when you were asked to help with a problem, these are all signs to tell your “Problem Solver “ — Story. The problem shouldn’t be too minor and should also align with the transferrable skills you acquired in your past roles. So, for example, if you’re in an interview for a UX Design role, it might not be a relatable story to talk about how you negotiated a 20% reduction in price as a buyer in your last company. Find something that aligns with the daily tasks in your future job, and make sure it is not too far-fetched.
Leadership
When talking about Leadership Skills, it’s essential to focus on decision making, leading and training team members to succeed, goal setting, or delegation.
Think about a time that you showed any of those qualities, and remember to also make sure that the story will align with your future role!
Remember to make sure that you start with the challenge you faced as a leader, the action you took for your team, and the learning and growth you took away from that. The best leaders always have the best stories about personal development and team members’ growth!
Dealing with Stress
Any question that revolves around working under pressure, dealing with unexpected changes, friction in the workplace, or conflict are questions about how you deal with stress. Your interviewer wants to understand how you react to stress and what you do when something unexpected happens.
Make sure to focus on personal or mutual growth, learning new skills or strategies you apply when things go sideways.
Remember to start with a challenge you faced about what put you under pressure and why it was stressful. Ensure there is something at stake ideally, and then move to the action you took, whether it was learning a new skill to overcome the challenge and then finish with your learning. Maybe you enjoyed learning new skills, or you are proud of how you mastered the situation in your current career.
Make sure your growth is visible and relatable to your future employer and your interviewer.
So these are the 5 stories, but here’s the bonus story everyone should have:
Fun facts about me
At some point, you might be asked what you do when you’re not working or what kind of hobbies you have. Make sure you don’t answer cooking unless you’re in the food business ;-)
Pick one of your hobbies that aligns with your future job! If you’re in design, chose something that has to do with creativity, whether it’s art, music, or calligraphies. If you’re in finance, you might enjoy math-based games, even it’s something like Hearthstone and so on.
From my experience, most career changers have been doing what they now aim to do as a professional for years in their free time!
Open your eyes to all the things you do when you’re not working and make it relatable. When talking about this skill, you can align it in the CAR — Framework as well!
If you made it to the end, then WOW, thanks you spent some time with me and my written words! I hope this guide supports you on your way to find your dream job! :)
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