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Marketing Your Résumé Clients With Stories 2

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Initial Date of Publication: May 25, 2014

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Marketing Your Résumé Clients With Stories

Bridget (Weide) Brooks, CPRW 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America


Marketing Your Résumé Clients With Stories

“To hell with facts! We need stories!” — Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Ken Kesey was being overly dramatic. Résumé writers actually need both. A résumé that is a recitation of facts with no thread tying the various jobs and experiences into a “career journey” is not compelling. However, a résumé that is all style with no substance isn’t effective either. So facts AND a story are important in the résumés you write. In this special report, you’re going to learn about the importance of marketing your jobseeking clients through storytelling in the right way that gets results. You’ll learn how to create truthful, credible stories that are interesting, informative, and compelling enough to get hiring managers to take action. Stories will make your résumés, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles more engaging — even if they’re not in traditional “story” form. Creating a “story” with your client’s résumé may just mean crafting a document that explains how your client got to where he or she is today.

“A story has its purpose and its path. It must be told correctly for it to be understood.”

― Marcus Sedgwick Storytelling has been practiced for generations for all types of marketing and selling, even before we invented the term “marketing.” People who had something to sell others sometimes invented stories. Some were realistic, some weren’t — but time and again — the concept of storytelling to market a business or a person is a strategy that works. If you can tap into the stories that resonate with your target reader (a hiring manager or recruiter), you’ll create a situation where that individual can’t wait to meet the jobseeker. When you think about it, stories are part of our lives, from birth through death. We literally live stories every single day of our lives. It’s how we communicate; it’s how we relax after a long day. Storytelling is in our DNA. Crafting a compelling story out of a client’s career path can help them understand how the jobseeker can solve their problems, because they’ve done it before. The story can be in the résumé itself — for example, tying together a widely-‐varied work history into a cohesive framework that supports the client’s current career goal. Or it could be shared in the cover letter, where you outline why a career change is being made at this time. Or, it could be coaching the client to develop CAR (Challenge-‐Action-‐Result) stories to prepare for specific questions in the job interview.

“Humans are pattern-‐seeking story-‐telling animals, and we are quite adept at telling stories about patterns, whether they exist or not.”

― Michael Shermer What Storytelling Is — And Is Not Storytelling consultant Annette Simmons has said, “If you wish to influence an individual or a group to embrace a particular value in their daily lives, tell them a compelling story.”


Storytelling is a powerful tool for marketing your jobseeking clients in their career communication documents. However, marketing your clients with stories is not license to lie, fabricate, or trick your audience. When you think of stories, instead of imagining a fiction story, try to imagine instead the stories your Mom, Dad, or favorite uncle told you about their young life. Sure, most of the time the story was designed to keep you from making their mistakes, but they were true, honest, and actually did the job. Marketing your résumé client with stories isn’t that different. It’s about telling your audience the story of your client — creating relatable content, and surprising and delighting your audience with a compelling tale, all while being realistic and truthful. It’s about letting your audience get to know your client on a whole new level, breaking down boundaries, and creating a brand presence that goes beyond simple facts about the client’s career. Sometimes, that means telling a tale of redemption in the client’s cover letter: How a particular challenge was overcome, or why a career change is being made at this time. At its core, marketing with stories is about making a connection between your client and the person with the authority to hire them. But the reader (the hiring manager or recruiter) is who the story is created for. It will address their concerns, their needs, their pain points, and how your client can fix those issues. As résumé writers, we know that the hiring authority primarily cares about their needs — so the story must address the challenges they have. Think about the message behind the story before you tell it. Not only will it help you decide whether or not to include a particular anecdote, but it will also shape the information you include. When Uncle Bob tells the story about toilet-‐papering (“TP-‐ing”) his arch-‐enemy’s house and getting arrested for vandalism — remember, it’s wasn’t really about that. It was about telling you what not to do, and teaching you about the consequences that actions carry. He shared his story in hopes you could learn from his mistakes. But the only way to get you to listen was to try to make the story humorous and exciting so you could listen to the end and get the moral of the story. Did you still get the message? Yes. “When telling the story of your life, it is of great value to recognize and focus on the details that reveal or inspire an empowered unfolding of your being. Much like rewriting your own DNA, every aspect of your life and growth will emanate from the building blocks of your history — however you choose to tell it. This is not to suggest that you should deny or bury your mistakes, traumas, or misfortunes, but

rather, recognize and reveal them within an empowered context of a bigger picture.” ― Scott Edmund Miller

What to Include in Your Stories Almost every story includes some common elements, or structure, to make it work. 1. A Subject. First, stories start with an understanding of who your target audience is. What kind of

companies is your client targeting? Big ones? Little ones? Start-‐ups? Established brands? Where are they located? Who do they serve, or what do they make?

2. A Goal. You must understand what the company wants in their next employee. Is there a specific

goal they are trying to reach? What is the outcome they want?


3. A Problem. If you know the goal, then you need to identify the reason the company is having problems reaching their goal. If they want to reach $5 million in sales, and your client is a super-‐star salesman, this is going to be an awesome story. What reason are they having issues reaching their goal? What roadblocks are in their way?

To identify the problem, target “Employer Buying Motivators.” In her book, Résumé Magic, Susan Whitcomb identifies 12 specific needs a company has. These include the company’s desire to:

- Make money. - Save money. - Save time. - Make work easier. - Solve a specific problem. - Be more competitive. - Build relationship / an image. - Expand business. - Attract new customers. - Retain existing customers.

4. A Solution. Of course, you need to be able to show that your client is the solution to help the

company reach its goal and overcome its problems. Your client is the solution, and you must show that in the story.

5. A Moral. No story is ever complete without a moral. However, the moral is not often directly spelled

out in your client’s story — although, in a big picture sense, it is probably, “The moral of the story is that you should hire this jobseeker!”

Steps to Writing a Credible Story That Will Get Your Client Hired All marketing starts with knowing your audience, as does all storytelling. Every author knows their target audience prior to writing the first line of any story. What does your audience want to do, be, know? If you don’t know this about what the company wants in their next hire, it’s time to get to work researching your audience (the hiring manager or recruiter for the company). Collect & Share Data One of the best ways to make your story stand out is to collect and share data. Capturing data and sharing it in an interesting way as part of your story can help add to the meaning of your story. Showing real numbers within the stories you craft on the résumé and cover letter can resonate with your audience in a way that truly gets results. If you share success stories of how your jobseeking client helped clients, for instance, including real numbers within those stories will really attract the attention of the hiring manager or recruiter. Select a Frame This is where truly knowing and understanding your audience can come into play. Understanding that the words you use can evoke feelings in the reader of the résumé is powerful. Author and marketer Seth Godin has often discussed the idea that people already have a set worldview, and you’re not going to change that worldview. Therefore, for your marketing story to be successful, it needs to build on what people already believe and think. Therefore, if you claim that your accountant client is truly creative, you need to provide examples of this, because most people’s worldviews don’t understand a “creative accountant.” (Well, not in the way you’d want them to think!)


“Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.”

― Jean-‐Luc Godard Choose Your Premise Your premise is the angle of the story and the way you hook your reader in order to get your message across. It’s the entire point of your story. Your premise is to solve your audience’s problems with your jobseeking client. The entire story rests on the premise. Try writing down your premise in just one or two sentences before writing the résumé. (This may even become the headline or branding statement for the résumé.) You should be able to explain it easily. Also, consider your audience when developing the premise. Remember Coca-‐Cola’s Super Bowl Commercial where people were singing the national anthem in different languages? The premise of the story was that “we’re all one, and this is a melting pot — and, of course, Coke brings us together.” But it’s unclear as to whether the Super Bowl audience was the right audience for this particular commercial. It spurred a lot of controversy. So always double-‐check your premise and be sure it matches your intended audience. If your “creative accountant” is applying at a staid, Big Six accounting firm, that premise might not match the intended audience. Create Visual Representations Consider including visuals in your résumé — illustrating a list of sales figures with a chart for a sales rep, for example. Creating powerful visuals for the résumé can help ensure your client’s story is told well. (Remember to give your client an Applicant Tracking System-‐friendly version without graphics too.) It’s important to ensure that any imagery you use doesn’t take away from your words and lead your audience in the wrong direction. Use great care when choosing the graphics that go with your story to make sure that nothing is confusing or contradictory. Use words that go with the images and vice versa. Use colors, formatting, and fonts that are easy for your audience to read and understand. Images can go far in helping back up the words that you use in your marketing story. They can also convey many more feelings and emotions more quickly than words alone. But, only if you are very careful and selective when choosing the images. The saying, “a picture is worth a 1,000 words,” is very accurate, but you don’t want them to compete with the actual words that you use to tell your client’s story. Shape Your Story The worst thing you can do with your client’s story is to be boring. If you understand your audience, you’ll have a lot more success shaping stories that resonate with them. All of your client’s career communication documents help shape your client’s story. From the résumé to the cover letter to the LinkedIn profile to a bio…they all shape your client’s story in some way. It’s up to you as the résumé writer to ensure that you keep the same theme throughout all your client’s career communication materials. Building a solid story starts from day one, so that you can express your client’s entire story from the ground up to their success stories today. But be selective about what you include.

“It is the nature of stories to leave out far more than they include.” ― Marion Dane Bauer, The Very Little Princess


If you follow these steps, you’ll be successful in creating effective marketing stories so that your jobseeking clients get great results. Common Mistakes Made in Crafting Your Client’s Career Story Storytelling is important because human beings are wired to listen to — and act on — stories. It’s in our DNA. This is how children have been taught morals for centuries, and how we have learned and entertained ourselves since the beginning of time. Stories started first as oral traditions, often using pictures drawn in the sand, on tablets, or on cave walls, and finally as written words. As powerful as storytelling can be, there are some things that should be avoided when incorporating stories into your client’s career communication documents. • Industry Jargon/Buzzwords. Don’t do it. Industry jargon sounds like someone just opened up a

thesaurus and went crazy making a word salad. Sounding like a real person will help your client be seen as a real person, not just credentials on a page.

• Misleading or Inaccurate Words and Phrases. Nothing frustrates a hiring manager or recruiter like

thinking they’re getting one kind of candidate, but they’re really getting another. Make sure the headline and Qualifications Profile match the rest of the story you’re telling. Don’t trick your audience. Not only will they not appreciate it, but it won’t work. Your readers are intelligent — treat them that way. Also, make sure you really understand the terms your client has given you to use on his or her résumé. You’d hate to use a technical term in the wrong context.

• Incomplete Arguments. When including facts, be sure to cover the basics: who, what, when, why,

and how. Always frame your thoughts in terms of how your audience will read them and answer the questions with facts to back up the story.

• Poor Writing Style. The best sentence structure is short. If you can avoid long paragraphs, complex

sentence structure, and remember to add white space, you’ll make your points easier to read. • Unnecessary Information. This is more common in do-‐it-‐yourself résumés than in ones written by

professional résumé writers, but it’s still something to double-‐check when you’re finished writing a résumé. All the information in the résumé should be assessed as to whether it supports the client’s career story. If it doesn’t, cut it.

“The more you leave out, the more you highlight what you leave in.”

― Henry Green When Visuals Aren’t Necessary Earlier, I mentioned using graphics and images to convey information. But if the résumé is going to be scanned using Applicant Tracking System software, not only would the graphic not be read, it might prevent the rest of the document from being read correctly. Consequently, the most powerful images you can use are the ones that you create in the reader’s head. The words that you use, any images that you include, and the format of your marketing story makes a difference in how your audience perceives the story. A LinkedIn Summary might have a narrative story thread, while the résumé might tell a “mini-‐story” in the Accomplishments statement under a job listing.


Words form pictures in your reader’s mind. Our imaginations are amazing and limitless. If you use the right descriptive words to appeal to your audience’s senses, you can actually make them think about exactly what you want them to think about at exactly the time you want them to think it. That’s very powerful stuff. Consider the technology you may be using to tell your client’s stories — you can use the format in which you present the information to share images. For example, on LinkedIn, you can link the client’s profile to slideshows, websites, and presentations that convey additional information about his or her qualifications. Ways to Repurpose Content & Get More Out of Each Story You need to make sure your client’s story is consistent across all the career communication content you create on his or her behalf. You can convey the story in the résumé, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, bio, online portfolio, and more. Obviously, how you tell the story will be different in each format, but you want the overall story to be the same, regardless of the format. • Case Studies. In short, these are the CAR (Challenge-‐Action-‐Result) stories, and they can be included

as accomplishments on the résumé or a paragraph on the cover letter. • Testimonials. Sometimes called “Endorsements,” you can include a third party’s “story of your

client” on the résumé. Or, your client can solicit Recommendations on LinkedIn for testimonials. The Most Important Factors in Communicating Your Client’s Story Here are a few things that I believe are the most important factors in creating marketing stories that work. If you do these things, you can — and will — create stories that can get your clients the interview … and the job offer. • It’s Always About Your Audience. Remember, you should construct your client’s career story so that

it’s appealing to the target industry, company, and job they want. So even though you are telling the story about your client, you want to make sure it’s relevant to the reader.

• Speak With Honesty. This one is a given. Even though you are telling a story, you must tell the truth.

It takes a long time to build trust, but only a few seconds of doubt to ruin it. A lie told to make a story better can live on longer than you think and can ruin a client’s career years later. That doesn’t mean you have to include negative stories about your client, or emphasize his or her weaknesses.

“But I'm going to try to tell the truth. Except for the parts I'm leaving out, because there's still stuff I'm just not going to tell you. Get used to it.”

― Robin McKinley, Dragonhaven • Stay True To Your Client. Each client is unique and has something to offer that no other candidate

does. It’s your job to help discover that uniqueness. If you try to position your client as something they are not, it will eventually come out in the interview, so make sure you’re not making your client out to be something they are not.

• Talk With Your Audience, Not At Them. This is a common mistake, especially for new résumé

writers. You may think that you need to write the résumé with lots of buzzwords and clever


phrasing. Don’t. Use a conversational tone, using real words. Picture your ideal reader (recruiter or hiring manager) and simply tell the client’s story.

Marketing Your Résumé Clients With Stories: Wrapping It Up You’ve learned that the type of stories you use to market your clients in their job search aren’t that different from the stories that you read in childhood or that your parents told you. All client career stories have some components in common that make them exciting: • The story is about someone — in this case, the hiring manager or recruiter with the power to hire

your client. • The story is about your client achieving a specific goal, solving a problem, or overcoming an obstacle

— and how that is relevant to the job search. • The story has a moral to it. You’ve learned the importance of selecting words and imagery that allow you to tell the story in many different forms for consumption across different mediums — such as in the client’s résumé or cover letter, or on LinkedIn. You understand how important it is to accurately tell your client’s story, but to do so in a compelling way that will enable the reader to understand who the jobseeker is and how he or she can be an asset to that company or organization. There is hardly anything more personal and important than a client’s story, and it can make the difference between a boring résumé and one that compels the hiring manager or recruiter to pick up the phone because they want to meet your client in person. As you write, remember what author and social media expert Chris Brogan said: “Stories are how we learn best. We absorb numbers and facts and details, but we keep them all glued into our heads with stories.”

“True stories can't be told forward, only backward. We invent them from the vantage point of an ever-‐changing present

and tell ourselves how they unfolded.” ― Siri Hustvedt, The Shaking Woman, or A History of My Nerves

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