Strategy #20: Use Story To Persuade And Influence

Lots of job hunters, maybe even the majority, ask me what the single most important part of my work-search strategy is. Is there just one thing they should do to give them a definitive edge over everyone else who’s looking for a similar position? Well, there are three essential components of my system which are finding work opportunities, engineering personal introductions and controlling the job interview. Is one more important than the others? That depends on you and your aims but I’d say that nailing the interview usually comes at the top of the list.

The reason is simple. The interview is almost always a one-off opportunity, the moment you get your big chance to prove yourself in front of a hiring decision maker, so you can’t afford to mess up. But let’s get even more specific. Within the job interview, is there one single skill you should master to help you smash through any resistance to your pitch? Yes, I think there is and that thing is story. I’m going to talk about this in today’s strategy article and explain why I think you’ll be doing yourself an enormous favour if you can use story to persuade and influence other people.     

If you want to give yourself the best chance of success in a job interview, one of the most vital things that you need to get your head around is story. Straight away, let me be clear about what I’m talking about here. The word story is used by many people when they talk about internal narratives and how we present our characters and personalities to the people around us. This concerns the way we construct a personal story which reflects our thinking and behaviours and, done well, guides the way we approach the worlds we inhabit. It’s a core part of positive psychology.   

Useful though this unquestionably is, it’s not what I’ll be addressing here. Instead, I’m going to talk about the verbal aspects of story and not the attitudinal ones. This is about the very literal sorts of stories we tell other people so as to engage, entertain and persuade them. Well-told stories have the power to carry an audience in an extremely powerful way. That’s what I mean by story in this context.

I want you to understand the benefits of building a compelling personal story into your pitch, how this forms a critical part of your overall job-search strategy and, of course, how to do it properly. I go into this in a lot of detail in my complete Job Search Masterclass, as you might imagine. I don’t have the space to give you any more than an introduction to story in this piece but, when I’ve finished, I hope you’re intrigued enough to investigate further.

Most people associate a story with fiction, the sort of made-up tales that are products of the author’s imagination. Your first exposure to this usually happens in childhood when you have a bedtime story read to you to send you off to sleep. When we’re adults, our preferred stories often come in the form of novels, movies, television dramas and so forth.

Those aren’t the sorts of stories I’m thinking of here. The stories that I’ll be talking about are business-based, grounded in fact and not fiction. Rather than being about spies who defeat the bad guys, or princesses who are carried away by heroes on white chargers, these stories are rooted in the business environment that they talk about. That’s not to say that a job-search story will be dull or boring as there’s still plenty of opportunity for heroes, villains and happy endings to make an appearance, I’m glad to say.

So, what’s the big deal about stories? How does a story fit into the job-hunting process? Simply that every kind of story is about conveying a strong message, creating a desire to know what happens next and prompting a reaction in the mind of the audience. That audience might be a small child who’s listening to their parent’s words, or it could be the person sitting across the desk from you, ready to offer you a work contract. If you get it right, you’ll manipulate them into reacting in the way you want. This will transform your job search and your working life like never before.   

A business story is designed to engage, persuade and convince someone to take a particular decision. It’s a call to action, par excellence. A story, as it operates in every workplace, and at the heart of any relevant business activity that rewards effective communication, concentrates the listener’s mind on an outcome that you’re intent on fulfilling.

Story is the ultimate means to achieving an end. Told the right way, stories are incredibly compelling devices. They often make the difference between business success and failure, and never more so than during a proactive job hunt. Stories tap into the emotional parts of our minds and balance the logical side of our thought processes and it’s this mix of emotion and reason that drives our decision making. Or, in this case, the decision making process of the person who’ll be hiring you.

Combine demonstrable facts, that’s the reason part of the equation, with a compelling narrative, the bit that engages the emotions, and you have an extremely forceful apparatus at your disposal. And because it’s so powerful, telling a story should become central to your entire job-search strategy as you seek to convince someone to hire you. That’s why I suggest that story is the single most important part of the interview.

Stories have been a staple of many of the world’s great companies for decades. They’re the key to shifting services and products and it’s not hard to see the appeal of a story from a producer’s, an intermediary’s and a consumer’s point of view. The best advertisements tell fabulously concise stories, particularly in standard 30-second or 1-minute TV-commercial slots. The same goes for online promotions today.

It’s story that’s driving the success of Facebook, Google and almost every other website that depends on advertising revenue for its existence. Great ads tell stories that engage emotions. They’re different, compelling, memorable and tell a tale that’s hard-hitting without being too overt. It makes you, the audience, want to act upon the message. The best stories act subliminally and make you want to buy rather than feeling that you’ve been ruthlessly sold to.  

But storytelling doesn’t stop at ads. Conveying a corporate message between staff was once the domain of people who were armed to the teeth with PowerPoint and Keynote presentations. To an extent that’s still the case but story is where the money’s at now, whether you’re using slides and handouts to support your message or not.

All sorts of organisations are training their people to be storytellers. Every senior manager at Nike, the sports-wear company, is expected to achieve corporate-storyteller status. 3M has junked standard PowerPoint presentations in favour of strategic narratives. In other words, stories. Richard Branson is an evangelist of storytelling and credits this strategy for much of Virgin’s success. Procter & Gamble has hired Hollywood film makers to train them in the art of storytelling. Story really is that important to success in today’s business world.

Using story for ads and for internal communications are fine but what about story as a job-search technique? Well, why not? It’s the single best way to connect with another person and for that reason alone you can’t afford to miss the boat. For sure, storytelling is at the cutting edge of job-search techniques and that gives you an incomparable advantage because so few people are up to speed with it.

The main reason that you should embrace the idea of storytelling as you look for better work is that it works so beautifully. It gets your message across in a unique manner, focuses your audience’s attention on what’s most important and then convinces them to act upon that message in the way you want. In other words, you grab the interviewer’s immediate interest and manipulate their responses in the way you intend.

A great personal story addresses the hidden agenda that every company recruiter operates by, whether they know it or not. It guides you, and them, down a path which inexorably leads to a demonstration of your qualities and strengths, all in a show-don’t-tell format. It proves your core value to a business. And this is what job search is all about, is it not? 

If you prefer to watch training materials rather than read or listen to them, follow this link to my YouTube channel where you can access the video version of this article;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-zf3D3Ld7g&t=622s

And finally, if you have any questions about the issues I raise here, or if you'd like to contact me personally, please get in touch via LinkedIn;

https://www.linkedin.com/in/vocationmaster/