A story is not a waste of time. If it is a good story. Gone are the days when you would listen patiently to your granny’s story and wait for the twists and turns to finally imbibe the moral of the lesson. Now, it is your turn to thrill others with your talent at storytelling. You are in a nervous state sitting before your recruiters who are in the process of measuring your smartness out of you. The interview is a hard nut to crack. Is that so? Not really. Interviews become hard when you are least expecting simple questions.
You will go prepared to face challenging questions and the most generic questions. You research all those that are likely to be asked relating to your qualifications. In the very process, you ignore the simple questions that could come your way. This is why most people stumble at the beginning itself because they fail to introduce themselves in the best possible way.
Storytelling and Interview
Interviews and storytelling don't seem to make a good combination right? But it is. All these while we have been getting trained for attending interviews. But we are barely taught about the basics of storytelling at interviews.
The recruiters expect you to describe your story. This is the most clever way to determine your potential. But what happens? The tension you had been holding back comes to you in all vigor. Your blood pressure shoots up. You develop cold feet. You are shaking from head to toe. Your heart beats are accelerating and you are coming close to a cardiac arrest! In other words, you are in a perplexed state and your tension level is beyond comprehension. You run out of courage. Mostly, this happens due to the lack of preparation as one would normally think. But there is yet another reason.
You know who you are. There would be nobody else in the world who knows your story as much as you do. Then why this debacle?
You fear you may mess up with your story. Out of tensity, you may put the tail of the story in your prelude and the head of the story goes missing. Or you may neglect the moral of your story and the experience you gained from it which is the most important fragment of the story. In a way, you fail to pull the strings together and establish the connection between the two. This is because of your lack of awareness about where and how to start. Of course, you know the starting point of your story. But when you put it into words, you should maybe start with a teaser.
How to Get Prepared for Story Telling in an Interview?
Every candidate preparing for interviews should consider the possibility of this question being directed at you. Get prepared with your story. It is your story and you don't need to research it anyway. Think about the memorable situations in your life, the incidents that had a lasting impression on you, experiences that brought you up, and obstacles and challenges that came your way. Pull all the strings of these memories and frame the story. Expecting a question about your story is the first step of preparation followed by the creation of an outline of it. Now, you are halfway done.
How Do You Start Your Story?
Obviously, the recruiters don't expect you to begin with the conventional ‘once upon a time’ style. You need to pick up a different one here. Because you are in the middle of an interview. Your story would open up doors for infinite opportunities.
As mentioned before, begin with a teaser. The teaser that I am referring to here is not the one packed with music and graphics. Make a teaser with your words. The ones seated before you would not like to spend hours and hours listening to the story. There is a time constraint. Make it precise. Speak to the point.
Begin with telling who you are and how you reached this point. In simple words, you are starting with the tail of the story. The outcome is what should be mentioned first. And then go on to say how you seized the opportunities.
How to Deal With the Mistakes?
Mistakes are sure to happen from our side. Be free to admit that. Don't try to cover up your flaws by cooking up stories that deviate from your abilities and that doesn’t fit into your profile. Once you state a lie, you would have to go on professing lies to assert what you are not. Don’t harbor hopes about your future if your story is unauthentic.
Creating a fake image does not help you remain in the job role for long. If you need to remain in your job then, you have got your work cut out for you. It would definitely require you to toil day and night to prove what you’re actually not.
Admitting your flaws and mistakes doesn't mean that you concentrate on your flaws alone while pretending to be extra humble. Then you are on the wrong track. The recruiters need to know the best about you more than your negatives. Although while accepting the mistakes, bring to the light your strengths and accomplishments. It should surpass your flaws and there you will bag a green card.
What Language Should You Employ for Story Telling?
Remind yourself that you are in an interview. Being highly emotional and using words of sentiment frequently brings nothing fruitful at the end. Stop being melodramatic. We need a straightforward and uncomplicated language that can effortlessly convey the story.
Shakespearean phrases and bizarre idioms to reveal your emotions could have your recruiters' eyes popped out. Please refrain from being too sophisticated. Anything that crosses its limits turns poisonous. Your chances of cracking the interview would be zero.
Summing Up
There have been a lot of memes figuring out the massive difference between how your brain speaks and how you express it through words. Because not everybody is a good storyteller. It doesn't mean that you can't be one.
Written by - Maryam Salim
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