What is the most important skill to get a job?

Knowing how to tell your story to design your life 

As we all know, finding your way around and getting a job is no easy task. What's worse, it's become much harder in recent decades. Gone are the linear and uniform life models where one progressed step-by-step on a marked trail: study, join a company, gradually climb the ladder, etc. 

Between globalisation, the digital revolution and the upcoming ecological revolution, the world we live in is no longer stable and predictable. It is a pity, because we used to have models such as that of the psychologist Erik Erikson, who divided life into 8 stages and 4 periods. Clear and practical. But in today's context, everyone has to be the designer of their own life and career path. This is what we call life design. 

Endless possibilities 

The good news is that we have never had so much freedom and choice in our lives. The bad news is that making and justifying these choices is becoming more complex. In fact, too much choice kills choice. In his book The Paradox of Choice, the psychologist Barry Schwartz warned that too many choices make us unhappy and frustrated. This is known as the Freedom of Choice Paradox or FOBO (Fear of Better Options). And if you've ever ended up not watching anything after spending the evening searching for the right programme on Netflix, you know what we're talking about. This possibility of choice can be frightening, but it is also what allows everyone's stories to be unique, differentiable and differentiative. Moreover, in HR, it is well understood that so-called atypical profiles shall become the norm. 

Knowing how to tell your story to get to know yourself better 

Given the number of possibilities available to us, producing a story about ourselves is becoming increasingly complex, but also very useful. Mark Savickas, the father of Life Design theory, also has a lot to say about self-narration. A concept he defines as “the ability to articulate and tell your life story in a coherent way”. 

When we talk about knowing how to tell our story, we are not talking about being able to draw up a pretty portrait of ourselves. It is more about being able to link elements of one's life together to form a coherent narrative. Indeed, Savickas considers that language provides “the necessary words to form conceptions of self and constitute a self”. 

Putting one's life into a narrative is not just a stylistic exercise to blow smoke during an interview or a dinner party. On the contrary, it is a way of getting to better know yourself, which is always useful, whether it's to get a job, find your bearings or make choices in your personal life. 

Knowing how to tell your story to stand out 

Being able to put your life in a narrative is a tool to know yourself and where you want to go. But it is also a powerful way to stand out in a recruitment process. And therefore, to get the job more easily. 

Two seemingly similar backgrounds can be presented in two very different ways. Just like when two friends tell the same story. They talk about the same sequence of events but they don't do it in the same way because they don't give the same importance to the different elements that make up the story. That's why they say that some people tell stories better than others. 

With a coherent and smooth-running story, you don't need to have traveled the world on your hands to sound unique to the recruiter. Telling your story well also makes you more readable when your CV is all over the place. And recruiters who only have 30 minutes to understand who you are enjoy that.