What’s so important about your story? If you have been to an interview you may recognise the question when the interviewer asks you “Tell me about yourself”. Some people fail to answer this question well because they haven’t thought the answer through or they spend too much time talking about their past in too much or too little detail.
Think of your Story as having three main key parts. The beginning, middle and end. Each one can be broken down further with more detail. Some questions to help you create your own “What’s your Story” are highlighted below:
Beginning
Who are you? Where does your story start?
- If you have just finished college/University/job, you may choose to talk about your choice of subjects or choice of college/university
- Why did you choose the subjects/school/university?
- What’s been your favourite topic?
- What have you learnt?
Middle
Time to Expand
- Elaborate on what have you done up until now?
- What have you been good at?
- Highlight any successes you may have achieved? You might choose to highlight awards, roles of responsibilities
- Talk through any changes you might have made to your courses/role/work
- Did you experience any setbacks and if yes, briefly state what you learnt from it.
- How did you use the learning lessons to make further changes to your goal/strategy?
- Where has this got you?
End
- Where are you going?
- What are your hopes, ambitions and goals?
- What would you like to achieve moving forward? This can be broken down into time points (6 months, 1 or 2 years)
- How have you tried to make it happen?
To make the story more interesting, you might want to add some humour to it to make you story come alive! Once you know how to answer “What’ your Story”, you’ll start focussing on the important areas you want to get across.
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