If you drew your career as a line, what would it look like?
Mine would be a steady upwards trajectory until I had my son, and frankly after that it’s all over the place!
A few years ago, I would have considered this ‘squiggle’ in my career a weakness, but now I own that story, and see it as nothing but a strength.
Once we learn how to take ownership of our narratives, we can craft them into something powerful, unique and compelling, that highlights our experiences, achievements and strengths that resonate with others whether that’s potential employers, colleagues or people you meet.
In this blogpost I am going to take you through a set of steps to craft your own narrative and tell your career story with impact.
Identify patterns, themes and natural strengths
One of the key components of your career story is to succinctly communicate what you’ve done, how you’ve done it and what you excel at.
One of the best ways to unlock this is to reflect on your career to date. List all of the roles you have had and note down the highlights of each role. Pick out the best bits, what you enjoyed, when you performed at your best and most crucially WHY they were highlights.
Try to focus on the characteristics of the role, rather than specific tasks (i.e, autonomy in decision-making, amazing team, culture of learning)
Look for the key milestones and events
What key moments in your career have influenced who you are today? Think of projects, initiatives, teams, experiences and career shifts that have had an impact. There may be events in your personal life that have had an impact too.
Where have you learnt the most?
Are there specific events or experiences in your career that have shaped your professional growth? Perhaps there have been barriers or challenges that you have overcome.
Spend time reflecting on how these experiences have contributed to your career journey.
Join the dots
Go back through your notes so far, interconnecting all of your experiences and relating your strengths and achievements to your story so far.
Focus on crafting a narrative that is coherent, positive, unique and authentic to you, by integrating your values and what matters to you most into your story.
Align your story with your future goals
The final piece of your story is to link your achievements, strengths and values to your future career aspirations.
Focus on drawing on how everything you have done to this point has prepared you for what you would like to do next.
By following these steps you’ll be able to build out a powerful and compelling narrative that you can adapt to multiple audiences. Make sure you keep the notes somewhere safe, so you can keep tweaking and refining your story as you career evolves.
I am Jane McKenna a Career Coach specialising in helping you find career happiness. If you have enjoyed this content and would LOVE to do more work on crafting your story, click the link to find out more about my group coaching programme Relaunching Brilliantly (running every September and February) to get clear on your story and laser focused on your career relaunch.
July 26, 2024
