When working with clients about where they are and where they want to go, usually we end up stumbling on what I would call their ‘career story’. A career story is your overarching narrative of how you wound up where you are, doing what you do.
Your career story is the workhorse for how you talk about your experience – whether it is in your resume or elevator pitch – it’s the frame that holds up the story you’re trying to tell. Or a better visual may be a thread that continues through your career journey.
There are a million posts on how you can craft the perfect elevator pitch or how to write a resume – this isn’t one of those. We’re focused on the importance of soft skills – AKA the how you work part – in creating your career story.
The folks I see struggle the most with this have spent years chasing cool projects or seeking to learn new skills. Their disparate experience doesn’t quite fit at first glance and they balk when they go to write a resume, update their LinkedIn or respond to the question "tell me about yourself". I get some version of "how do I explain x?" all the time.
For example, if your career journey looks like this:
Exec assistant > marketing program management > product management > product marketing
And now you want to go back into product management.
How do you string that together?
If you’re like my clients, you focus on the hard skills to explain how you moved from one thing to another.
While, yes, the fact that when you used Excel and Outlook in your role as an EA meant that you can open a spreadsheet and schedule a meeting – but chances are it took more than those hard skills to make the jump into program management. I’d put money on it being how you did your work and engaged with stakeholders that made it possible.
And if you’re like my clients, you’ve forgotten all those soft skills when you think about how you tell your career story, pitch yourself or think of what you put on your resume. So, when you look back across your experience – what soft skills enabled your career moves?
For example: if you were our EA - what soft skills helped you able to make the case for becoming a marketing program manager?
Was it because you had executive presence? You can work across disparate stakeholders? You have great backbone? You ruthlessly prioritise your execs' time? You’re great at balancing disparate needs?
Make a list.
What themes emerge?
The thread of those themes is what we want to pull. These themes helped you move gracefully from one thing to another. These themes are also what make you unique. They're how you work and no matter what role you're in, these skills are always present.
*How* you do your work matters. Be sure you are telling that part of your story; treat them like hot sauce - put it on everything.
Want help defining your career story and positioning yourself well for your next career move? Set up a Chemistry Chat.
Comments