If you're confused about what to do with your career -- or what to do
next with your career -- and you haven't gained insight from
taking assessments, there is
another way. You can learn more about yourself, gain insight into the
best career for you, and plot out how to get there through creating stories.
A small but growing collection of research, for example, has looked
at using story and narrative in career counseling. "Psychotherapy is
based on the premise that we each create our own life story from the
time we are born," wrote Jack Maguire in The Power of Personal
Storytelling. Career counselors are increasingly using narrative
approaches to encourage clients to build their career stories.
Authors Christensen and Johnston suggested in the Journal of
Career Development that developing narratives can significantly
help individuals to know what to emphasize in their career planning.
They proposed that counselors perceive clients as both authors and
central characters in their career stories, which they are
"concurrently constructing and enacting." Constructing their career
story, the authors said, enables clients to discover connections and
meaning in their careers that they might not have otherwise. When
individuals imagine their desired future stories, they facilitate
their belief that their storied, envisioned future will play out in
reality. The authors' research indicated that, indeed, clients who
could tell these future stories tended to be "more effective in
bringing those plans to fruition," while Maguire characterized the
narrative-therapy process as revising or replacing negative stories
with positive ones.
Instead of answering the question traditionally explored in career
counseling, "Who am I?" by listing traits such as interests, skills,
aptitudes, and values, narrative approaches articulate the
job-seeker's preferred future. Larry Cochran, who has devoted an
entire book to the use of narrative in career counseling, notes that
the narrative approach emphasizes "emplotment," which refers to how a
person can cast himself or herself as the main character in a career
narrative that is meaningful, productive, and fulfilling. Plotting
out a career story can also help a person conceptualize the steps
needed to attain his or her desired career, remind the narrator of
career goals, and enable him or her to stay on track in achieving the
envisioned career.
Following are a number of approaches to exploring your career desires
and passions through storytelling. Considerable overlap exists among
these story exercises, so don't feel you need to use all of them. But
pick a couple that resonate with you and use them to examine
meanings, themes, and patterns in your career to date, as well as to
plot out how to attain your career dreams.
Write the story of what you wanted to be when you grew up. Talk
about what attracted you to you childhood dream career and how that
attraction may have changed over the years. Discuss how your
ambitions have evolved. Have you looked up to role models -- people
working in your dream career whom you wanted to emulate, people who
inspire you? Include them in your story.
Tell the story of how you chose your current career. What
attracted you to this career? Who were your influences? In what ways
has your career met or failed to meet your expectations?
Chronicle your career to date, particularly noting internal
factors -- behaviors, motivations, and attitudes, such as what you've
liked and disliked about each job. Discuss what you learned in each
job that you decided to apply to your next job. For example, I
discovered at about mid-career that I was a pretty good manager, but
only on a small scale. I did not excel when charged with managing a
large staff and knew that I should avoid large-scale management in
future jobs. Identify the common threads, patterns, and plot lines in
your career story. What have you valued the most in each of your
jobs? How can you interpret the meaning of your past career in a way
that provides a vision for the future?
Now, write the same story focusing on external factors that you
felt were important, such as people and organizations. Source: Kerr
Inkson.
Now, compose the story of the career you wish you'd had.
What did you do in this fantasy story that you wish you had done in
reality? What training or education did you pursue, and what
experience did you attain? What's stopping you from implementing this
fantasy career path? How can you reinvent your career based on this
fantasy?
Recall the story of your best job. What made it such a great
job? Why did you leave? What did you learn?
Compose a story about the proudest accomplishment of your
working life. What makes this achievement such a source of pride for
you? Did you attain the recognition you felt you deserved for this
accomplishment?
Identify one positive and one negative personal career incident
in detail. What did you learn from each of these incidents and how
have they influenced your subsequent career? Source: Kerr Inkson.
Construct a story about your most difficult decision in leaving
a job or changing your career. Why did you leave/change? What made
the departure/change so hard?
Develop a story about what you'd like to change about your
current employer. What would you need to change about your job and/or
organization to make it a better fit for you? What would the
organization and job be like in an ideal world?
Recall a story of coping with change that an organization you
worked for underwent. What was most significant for you personally in
undergoing your organization's change(s)? What did you learned from
undergoing change with your organization? Have you acquired or
sharpened any skills as a result of going through change? If an
employer were interviewing you for a new job or promotion right now,
what story would you tell if asked to give an example that
demonstrates your flexibility, adaptability, and ability to handle
change?
Imagine you are being interviewed for a job, and the interviewer
asks: "Tell me the story of why you have decided to move on from
where you are." What story would you tell? Source: Kerr Inkson.
Conduct an informational interview with someone whose career
path you admire write the story of that path.
Learn
how to conduct an informational interview. Write
about the aspects of this person's career that reinforce what you
already know, elements that surprise you, things you like, and things
you dislike about the interviewee's career. Ask yourself these
questions and include the answers in your story:
What did you learn about yourself?
What did you learn about what you value in a job and in a workplace?
What did you learn about how to break into your interviewee's career field?
What did you learn about how to succeed in this field?
How do your skills/grades/experiences measure up to what's required
for entry or success in this field?
Have your ideas about pursuing this field changed now that you know
more about it?
If you still want to pursue your original career direction, what is
your strategy for seeking a job in this field?
If you have decided against your original field, what fields are
you now considering, and how will you go about finding out if another
field suits you better?
Initiate a similar story exercise with a written career story,
such as one from Po Bronson's What Should I Do with My Life? The
True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question, or Nobodies
to Somebodies by Peter Han, stories of how "100 great
careers got their start," or Real People Real Jobs: 40 People Tell
Their Stories by David Montross, Zandy Leibowitz, and Christopher
Shinkman. Answer the same reflective questions as in the previous
item.
Try the same story exercise with one or both of your parents. You
may gain additional insights into your own career path. A parent's
career story can reveal surprises, as well as explanations of the
family dynamic or influences into your own career. Source: Kerr
Inkson.
Picture yourself in your ultimate career. Maybe you feel that
obstacles -- perhaps lack of credentials or experience -- stand in
your way of achieving this pie-in-the-sky career. But in your story,
no such obstacles exist. What would it be like to wake up every
morning excited about going to work? What kind of work would instill
that kind of enthusiasm in you? Write about what a typical day is
like, both during and after working hours. What are your job
functions? What are the rewards of your job? What is your workplace
like? What are you wearing? Who are your co-workers, clients,
customers, and other people you come in contact with every day? What
is your lifestyle like? Where do you live? Now, think about what it
would take to bring this story to life. How could you achieve your
dream? How could you overcome the obstacles?
Craft the story of "what you want to be." Consider a story that
tells what you want to stand for, how your work matters, and how you
can make a difference. Source: Tom Peters.
Final Thoughts
If career assessments that yield lists of possible careers have left
you cold, consider a story-based approach to career exploration. You
just might be amazed at how much you can learn about yourself and how
you can design your future through developing your story. As Kerr
Inkson writes in Understanding Careers, "By interpreting the
past, we use narrative to make sense of the present and thereby see a
way to the future." Remember also that crafting the story of your
career is an ongoing exercise in that you will need to reconfigure
the story to account for new occurrences in your career and life.
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search
terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.
Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., creative director and associate
publisher of Quintessential Careers, is an educator, author,
and blogger who provides content for Quintessential Careers,
edits QuintZine,
an electronic newsletter for jobseekers, and blogs about storytelling
in the job search at A Storied
Career. Katharine, who earned her PhD in organizational behavior
from Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, is author of Dynamic
Cover Letters for New Graduates and A Foot in the Door: Networking
Your Way into the Hidden Job Market (both published by Ten Speed Press),
as well as Top Notch Executive Resumes (Career Press); and with
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D., Dynamic Cover Letters, Write Your
Way to a Higher GPA (Ten Speed), and The Complete Idiot's Guide
to Study Skills (Alpha). Visit her
personal Website
or reach her by e-mail at
kathy(at)quintcareers.com.
