Professional Storytelling & Branding

Learning Goals

  • Understand the value and purpose of storytelling in both professional and personal relationship-building contexts
  • Create your personal brand as a software developer
  • Tell your story effectively across multiple platforms
  • Video one: Covers an overview of Professional Storytelling
  • Video two: Explains how to develop your professional story: Audience and theme
  • Video three: Crafting a Narrative using the 3 Act Arc
  • Video Four: Focuses on telling your story through Branding and Deliverables for the lesson

Overview: Story vs. Brand

We’ve been focusing on your strengths and how you work, both at Turing and in previous experiences. In this lesson, we’ll build off of those conversations to craft a compelling story that describes who you are, how you came to this industry, and where you see yourself going. This is a story that you’ll tell employers, colleagues at networking events, and even your Turing community in order to find the right match for your future career.

From your professional story, we’ll craft your resume, your Turing portfolio, update your LinkedIn, inspire others through blog posts, personal websites, projects, and more.

Professional Storytelling

We are all inherent storytellers. Stories are how we connect with each other. From fairy tales to novels to movies to podcasts, stories provide a way for people to share their experiences with others, building empathy and awareness of our universal experiences.

Storytelling is our first step in the job search at Turing. You are a member of the software industry now, and as you start connecting with others in the industry, you need to be able to tell the story of your transition – how did you get here? How do you uniquely make up a part of this industry?

Let’s start by thinking about stories. What do you love about stories? Emma Coats, a former story artist for Pixar, shared her 22 rules for storytelling here, and we’ll use some of them to apply them to our storytelling. We’re going to start with rule #10:

Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you;
you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

Consider:

  • What is a story that has inspired you in the past?
  • Why has that story stuck with you?

Know your Audience:

As you prepare for a successfull new career its important to think about your new audience. Beginning with your audience in mind consider the following questions:

  1. What industry are you targeting? What would a enginnering company want to know about you?
  2. Whats going on within that industry or company business related?
  3. What current challenges are important to them?

A goal of your story is to share how you can help them solve problems with examples of your prior work and real world experiences and accomplishments.

Develop a Theme:

Now that you know your audience. Your theme should encapsulate precisely what you will bring to an organization and be woven inot all of your written and verbal communications.

What is one thing you want your prospecitve team to know about you? What do you want any reader of your career materials and interviews to take away?

To help you get clear on your theme will take self reflection of who are you:

  1. What are your top strengths?
  2. What are your top achievements and what are the results they provided?
  3. What are your top values?

How will you stand out and show not only tell your unique brand and what it has to offer the tech industry? Once you have a clear and concise them that can be explained in one or two sentences- promote it throughout the job hunt!

Craft a narrative using the 3 Act Arc:

Again, with your audience in mind, put on your “employers and recruiters hat” as you craft your narrative.

Taking more lessons from Pixar as well as storytelling theory from Joseph Campbell, most stories (in the western tradition at least) follow the 3-Act Arc:

  • Act I (Set-Up)
    • Call to adventure and accepts
    • Rules of the world are established
    • Inciting Incident
  • Act II (Struggle)
    • Looking for ways to solve the problem
    • Learning what it will take to actually solve problem
  • Act III (Finale)
    • Show what’s been learned
    • Protagonist is changed

These elements are present in your story as well. You are the main character, the hero, undergoing challenges, experiencing a journey, and revealing the narrative thread through your own theme.

There are 3 main questions to help us understand our own stories and our character arcs:

  • Act 1: Who are you? (as a developer, a teammate, a worker, a career changer)
    • Whats your backstory, identity and values?
  • Act 2: Why are you here?
  • Why software development?

  • Why now? Consider both your background but also what drives you to be in this field

  • Act 3: What’s next?
  • Where do you see yourself going in this career?

Remember, telling the story of your professional transition into software development helps others understand your motives, character, and capacity to reach the goals that you’ve set for yourself. In short, your story makes others believe in you.

Your story is one of transition. These stories are inherently interesting as they have all the elements of a classic story, and most importantly, they have the important elements of change, conflict, and tension around the transition. Where are you going? What will happen next? It’s so exciting for the listener! But it also depends on how you tell that story.

Disclaimer: When we say story, this is not something that has been made up or embellished in any way. People can tell when you’re not being truthful. Rather, this is about how to make a true account of a career trajectory engaging and inspiring.

During a networking event explored in this Harvard Business Review article, senior managers who’d been downsized took turns telling what they had done before and what they were looking for next. Here are some takeaways:

  • Stories that only recap a list of a person’s resume are not interesting to the listener (“First I did this, then I did this, then I did this…”)
  • Stories that focus more on character motives, themes, and turning points – the moments that cause your listener to ask, “What happened next?” – are compelling to a listener.

Telling your story through Branding

Great brands dont just happen. They are nutured and shaped. LIke any company that develops an initial brand, over time and through changes they create a REBRAND: If creating your brand is new or if you are rebranding as you transition into software development it can be done succesfully. First, lets define branding.

Personal branding is all about telling a consistent story about yourself, building out the details of this story with each profile. Whats nice about rebranding is that you dont loose your DNA. Instead, you take the parts you want to shape and share as you move into your next career. The key is telling your story as a new member of the software industry in as many consistent ways as possible will help you stand out and embrace that identity even more. The key to succesful branding combines knowledge of your target audience, having a unique theme that is memborable and sharing a well crafted professional story that shows (not just tells) who you are, what you bring to the table and HOW you want others to see you (your brand).

Why is this important? According to the online reputation management consultantcy, BrandYourself:

  • 82% of business decision makers said that presence in search results was an influential factor when vetting people online.
  • 42% of US adults looked someone up before deciding to do business with them.
  • 27% have searched for someone they met in a professional setting, such as a networking event.
  • 23% of US adults have looked up a coworker.

Crafting your unique career story and brand is fundamental before networking or creating or refreshing your LinkedIn profile.

Application: Self Reflection Activity

Getting clear in the following areas that are within the career story template will help employers relate to your brand. When your brand and online presence is consisent, robust and clear, recruiters and hiring manager will seek you out.

Step 1 :

  1. Review the following career story and branding sections in this Career Story template
  2. Review and complete the branding framework reflection questions
  3. Review and complete the Running list of accomplishments document As you reflect and document your experiences and top career highlights look for patterns and themes.

Ask yourself these questions:

  • What challenges did you face in achieving these successes?
  • What skills did you bring to bear to overcome those challenges?
  • What did you most enjoy about that work?

Step 2: Write your story using this Career Story template

  • Write 1-2 paragraphs to answer who are you, why are you here, what’s next?
  • Consider:
    • Your motives and values
    • The turning points that led to your career change
    • What you envision for yourself going forward
  • Practice! Make sure to practice your story with others that you trust: your homeroom group, your accountabilibuddy, your mentor, your friends, your family, etc. Gather as much feedback as you can:
    • Is it clear why you’re entering this career?
    • How can you connect with others through your story?
    • How does it feel to talk about yourself?
    • What’s missing that could make this story stronger?

Due Dates & Reminders

Review the video lesson and reach out to Tracey Monteiro if you have questions on the content covered and next steps. Time block how and when you will complete part 1 the self reflection activity. Then, how you will break down drafting your career story. You will have a LinkedIN session in week 4 that will further help with your branding execution.

By the end of Mod 1 you have the following:

  • LinkedIn rough draft that includes:
  • Professional-looking headshot
  • Updated headline statement
  • Summary statement using your professional story
  • Turing added to Experience and Education sections