– The job market sucks right now.
Lots of people are being made redundant,
many more are being furloughed
and just because you’re furloughed now,
there’s no guaranteed that your|job will still exist or thata
you’ll still be needed in two,|three or five month’s time.
Competition just got much tougher.
Let’s face facts: the|pyramid has always existed,
in good times and bad.
Now it’s just got a lot steeper.
Sympathy won’t pay the rent|or put food on your table,
you need to earn.
You need to do what you have|to do to improve your chances.
So what can you do?
In good times and bad, good|people have always got hired.
But not all the good people|have always got hired.
So what makes the difference?
How can you be different|so that you get hired
or promoted or not made redundant?
Or that you can’t at|least improve your chances
of getting hired, promoted|or not being made redundant.
How can you stand out?
I’ve worked with startups, PLCs
and global businesses in|the US, Germany and the UK.
And I’ve run a small manufacturing|group with 140 people.
But before that, and long|before I worked at a table,
I worked a lot with then an|up and coming former startup.
In fact, it was one of the|first PLCs I worked for.
It’s called SAP.
One of the people I worked with
during the four years|I was coaching at SAP
was a wonderful man called|Peter, funnily enough,
who was International HR Manager.
He received mail every day,
not email, physical mail, bundles of mail.
He received unsolicited,|without an advert being placed,
over 200 speculative applications
from outstanding candidates|with first-class degrees
every day.
The applications kept coming,|bundles of mail every day,
1,000 applications a week.
He didn’t have the problem of advertising
or a shortage of applicants,|his biggest problem:
to choose and hire the five|people a week we needed.
What if I could help you improve
your chances of standing|out and getting a job?
When coronavirus is screwing|up the demand for jobs,
standing out is hard.
The pyramid has always been a thing,
now it’s just got a lot steeper.
The solution?
Storytelling is the key to improving
your chances of getting a|job, winning a promotion
or avoiding redundancy.
Of course it’s not a guarantee,|there is no such thing
as a silver bullet, least|of all at the moment.
There are very few companies|hiring at the moment,
so you need to make every|chance that you get count.
Every interview must be a success.
But if storytelling could help you
get through one more hoop|in the interview process,
you’ll be closer to the people|who are authorized to say,
You’re hired.
That’s right.
The first people you speak to|during the interview process
are almost certainly not|authorized to hired you.
They’re part of the filtering system,
which brings me to my first point.
A story is memorable.
Most of the interview process|is there to exclude people,
to sift people out, to|get rid of the applicants
who can’t add value quickly.
Companies are not there|to develop your skills,
they’re in the business, or|at least the good ones are,
of developing their own talent.
But why hire somebody who’s good
but who needs training in|a skill, when you can hire
somebody who has already got that skill?
Companies are aiming for perfect
and imperfect will soon be screened out.
One of my retainer|clients sometimes get me
to sit it on interviews in the|PR and marketing department
as part of their initial sifting panel.
Though we often disagree,
the Communications Director|said to me once, he said,
“Peter, you’re a great coach
86 00:04:09:17 00:04:11:14 but you’re a shockingly bad interviewer.”
“Your skill is seeing|and coaching potential,
88 00:04:13:29 00:04:16:10 but we’re not hiring for potential.”
We’re hiring for next|week and next month.
Back to this word process,
or more precisely, the hiring process.
It’s like a series of hoops,|a bit like the Grand National,
with people being excluded at|every stage in the process.
Some get excluded in the pre-paper sift,
some get excluded in the paper sift,
some get excluded at|the telephone interview.
Some get excluded because they fail
social media background checks.
Some get excluded at first interviews,
some get excluded after they|have delivered a presentation.
Or met a director.
Or because their references or|Google brought up a surprise.
These stages often take weeks.
And in professional services firms
like law, accountancy and|consulting, there will
almost always be at least|five stages, sometimes more.
During these multiple stages|of the interview process,
you will speak to a variety|of different people.
Usually the first people you speak to
cannot make a decision to hire you.
Their job is narrowing the field.
Excluding the question marks:|your job in the early stages
is not to get them to|hire you, but to get them
to put you through to the next round.
How do you do that?
What are their criteria?
There are many ways of doing this,
but they all boil down to|two or three basic questions.
Can a candidate do the job,
or do it very soon with minimal training?
Would they fit in with|us on a human level?
Plus the third question:|am I gonna look dumb?
Will I screw my credibility|and reputation internally
by putting this person forward?
So next time you are in an interview
and you think the interviewer|likes you, agrees with you,
nods and smiles, that means nothing.
It’s not their decision.
They are asking themselves|those three questions.
So they need to believe you and like you,
and believe in you and put|you forward to the next stage.
And then they need to justify|why they have done that.
You need to persuade them
and give them the ability to|briefly be able to sell you on.
Retellability is everything.
They need to remember you.
Nobody remembers lists|of claims and titles.
A story’s also dynamic.
Data is done, you need|to join up the data dots.
I’m afraid that your skills|and degree won’t get you a job
unless there is a massive|demand for a specific skill
which outstrips supply, and|you have that particular skill.
All the things you’ve studied|will not get you the job.
All they do is get you in the room.
So they are not drivers, they are givens.
I was running a small manufacturing group
in Germany about twenty years ago,
and I had to hire a particular position.
I was under extreme pressure|to hire someone quickly.
By law, the position needed to be filled
by someone with a specific|qualification, a meister.
It was a recession so|people were desperately
looking for jobs, so on paper,|it should have been easy.
But people with that|specific qualification
were still in demand.
And most people with that|qualification either had a job
or were running their own|business and didn’t want a job.
So demand and supply|were working against me
despite there being a recession.
So if you had that specific qualification,
you got in front of me really fast.
But that’s not enough, is it?
I wanted more, obviously.
I needed somebody with that qualification
who could also lead a team of 35,
negotiate with suppliers|and be great with customers.
I interviewed a lot of people
with the technical|qualifications of meister
but I only hired number eight.
Having that specific|qualification got people
in front of a decision-maker fast,
but it doesn’t necessarily|get them all hired.
So a list of job titles
and fancy qualifications|alone are useless.
They answer the “What have|you done before” question,
but companies are far more interested
in the second question|and the third question.
“What did you do with that|title and that position?
179 00:08:28:12 00:08:29:27 And how did you do it?”””
Let’s take four words,|four arbitrary words.
Man, horse, cottage, city.
Meaningless alone.
What turns this from a|simple collection of words
into a story?
Verbs.
How ’bout this, a man left his cottage
and rode his horse into town.
Now it’s a mini-sequence,| a movie clip, memorable.
So let’s then apply that to your jobs:
what did you do, what were the verbs?
By the way, that’s how memory champions
learn and remember numbers.
It’s not because they remember numbers,
they create stories in their heads
based on connecting groups of numbers
which they connect via stories|to other groups of numbers.
The interviewers need to see|a video in their heads of you
like that little movie clip.
A man rode his horse from|his cottage to the city.
That’s the basis for a video|but it’s still not enough.
Verbs are just not enough on their own.
Stories are visual,
they’re not just dynamic, they’re visual.
And that makes them memorable,|they have color and texture.
So how do you take facts|and give them color?
You give them adjectives.
What about a tall man, a dark|horse, a thatched cottage,
or is it a farmhouse or a|run-down worker’s cottage?
See how different pictures|pop up in your head?
A big city, a dirty city, a shiny city.
So what happens if we add a verb
and some color to these four words?
A desperate and hungry poor|man put all that he owned
into a dirty canvas rucksack|and saddled up his tired horse
and rode his horse away from|his run-down worker’s cottage,
in the wood, towards the smoke and noise
and danger of the dirty city,|hoping to make his fortune.
And as in all good films,|something then happens,
and we see what happens to the person
and how they reacted and dealt with it.
That’s where the dramatic arc comes in.
More about that on my website.
Let me give you an|example: I had a client,
this wasn’t a graduate interview client,
this was a man who had|had some important roles
and he wanted to go for|a director role at a PLC.
But he didn’t have a degree|and to get to the next stage,
to get to the next level,|he wasn’t qualified.
On paper, it was a big step|up, two ranks at least.
We talked through his|career, what jobs he’d had
and what he had done with them.
And in one of his jobs, one|that he’d almost forgotten,
he’d been in charge of a|major London train station
when a massive disaster happened.
He was relatively junior,|there was nobody else there
and he took control and|he ran that disaster
without title or salary or position,
purely because of the|caliber of the person he was
and because he knew his job|and he knew that station
and he stepped up.
Nobody else was there, he took control.
His attitude and his abilities
came together perfectly on a terrible day.
When it came to his interview,
he told that story that we’d worked on.
He was hired at director|level and has since gone on
to a number of other senior roles in PLCs.
Nobody asks about his degree anymore.
His story is powerful|and dynamic and visual,
it’s retellable.
So many people hide|behind job lists or claims
without telling any retellable,|memorable, vivid stories
like he did.
But you might say, “I|haven’t got enough time
to tell all the stories that I have.”
Actually, you only need to|tell one or two, maybe three.
But they must be stories|that prove that you possess
the key hiring criteria that they listed
in the job description and the job advert.
Or you might say, “I don’t|have any stories to tell,
I’m just fresh out of university.”
Well, we need to find stories to prove
while you don’t have years of|work experience, you do have
the right attitude and the|ability to learn quickly.
The panel needs to not just remember you
and see you in a movie, they|need to feel and hear and see
the texture and the color and|the emotion and the attitude,
your attitude, in your stories.
Storytelling helps you|stand out in interviews
by bringing your CV to life,
making you and your story memorable
and getting further along|the interview process,
and closer to someone who|can say, “You’re hired.”
So what to do next?
To help you stand out in interviews,
there are over 50 articles on|storytelling for interviews
on my website, peterbotting.co.uk,
including what to do in|a telephone interview,
or questions to ask the interviewer.
How to prepare for an interview
and what not to do in an interview.
Why don’t you go and have a look?
In the meantime, good|luck, thanks very much.
(upbeat electronic music)
