Make Your Career Story Powerfully Compelling

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Rohit Bhargava. And he is a trend curator, storyteller, marketing expert, and the founder of a non-obvious company. He is a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of several business books, a sought after keynote speaker, and professor of marketing and storytelling, which is kind of our focus today at Georgetown University. Rohit, thank you so much. I'm fascinated by the way that you approach storytelling. Maybe you can tell us what you consider to be three key elements of a compelling and powerful story.

Rohit Bhargava: Storytelling sounds sometimes like an intimidating thing to try and do when it comes to talking about yourself, but storytelling, to me, is really about trying to get beyond the facts, get beyond the bullet points, and actually share something that transformed your career. Something that tells someone. If you're in the situation where you're looking for your next role, something about you that goes deeper.

If you're in an interview like that's what someone wants. The three things that I would say, someone who wants to try and share a compelling career story needs to do is, number one, don't see your personal and your professional life as two wildly divergent things that should never cross. At the end of the day, if someone's going to bring you in and work with you, they're bringing you in as a person as well as for your skills and your education.

What you know. One mistake I see people make a lot is they try to keep those things so separate that you actually don't end up revealing anything about yourself. And you can imagine how well you would do in an interview if someone doesn't actually get to know you. The second thing is to demonstrate humanity, which sounds simple to do, but can actually be really easy to forget because we focus so much on those little details that we forget to do the human things, listen to someone, pay attention, those sorts of things.

The third one is stories are made from key moments and key markers. When I work with my students or with other folks, one of the things I encourage them to do is create those remarkable moments and then talk about those, as opposed to this percentage increase in sales over this period of time. I mean, that's the easy stuff that you can have the facts for and stick to a bullet point summary. And the harder thing is, what was the moment that transformed things for you?

Anita Brick: It's a really interesting point. Some people have big dramatic, remarkable moments. They can point to a time where they had this big disaster that they turned around, or they met the right person at the right time that transformed their lives and their careers. How do you identify, especially with people who are very humble and they think anybody can do it? How would you suggest someone find even a little moment that could be told in a remarkable way?

Rohit Bhargava: It comes down to thinking conversationally, just something I spend a lot of time doing and trying to teach people to do. Here's an example. Right? I could talk about the fact that I had a very global career and give you all of the bullet points around that. Or I could tell you about this moment when I was traveling to London, and I had just enough time in layover to take a shower and get ready for my next connecting flight to Germany. And then I was going to go off the plane and have a meeting. I was in the London airport, the lounge with all the showers was actually inside of the airport on the other side, so I had to go through security and immigration. So I got to immigration and they asked the questions they always ask, what's the purpose of your visit?

I said to take a shower. He said, how long are you going to say? I said, probably two hours, because I was just going to go and take a shower, then go back to the airport. And when I tell people that story, they're smiling and imagining that moment of standing in front of that unhappy, non smiling immigration officer and trying to explain that the purpose of visiting London was to take a shower.

It was a formative moment when I shared that story. It tells you a couple of things about me, says that I'm pretty comfortable traveling, that I've gone all over the place, but it's not the bullet points, right? I mean, that would never be on a resume. So I'm using a story to take someone inside of your life and you know what you find entertaining and what your sense of humor is like.

Anita Brick: That's great. I mean, I think most people are not very comfortable doing that. And there was an evening student who is making a transition from tech to marketing. She said, I've been telling my story chronologically, obviously, the bullet point method, since I'm making this major career change, this approach is not really working for me. I do have relevant skills and examples, but not a good structure. Your advice on a potential new approach would be greatly appreciated.

Rohit Bhargava: Appreciated in filmmaking. The background information that you share with someone is kind of called the exposition. When you're doing something like a film, I think that's a great analogy for telling the story of our career. You give someone what they need to know, but you don't give them the whole history. You can imagine if an entire movie was spent on just giving you the background details.

You'd never get to the point. When we think about our careers chronologically, a lot of times we put too much weight on ourselves to first of all have everything in our background have equal weight. And then we say, okay, we have to cover everything because we don't want to have any gaps. And the problem with that is that we spend too much time on the exposition.

And then when we get to this point, you look at that chronology and you're like, wait a second, this doesn't make sense because our lives are not perfectly scripted in a chronology. They're messy, and sometimes you end up doing something that didn't seem all that strategic when I moved to Australia. I spent a bunch of time both waiting tables and doing programming and coding, and then for a year I quit programming because I liked waiting tables better.

Anita Brick: Interesting.

Rohit Bhargava: If you looked at my resume, you'd be like, well, why would you quit the quote unquote professional thing? But that year of waiting tables gave me all sorts of understanding about human psychology, how people behave, how to tell someone's real personality versus their fake personality, and all these different skills that ultimately became really valuable for me. When I then started doing the marketing and telling stories and trying to be persuasive.

Anita Brick: That's a really good point. Here's another situation. This time was an alum, and he said, I've been out of the workforce for the last few years taking care of a family member, and I'm ready to reenter full time. I feel uncomfortable sharing the specifics of my family situation. How can I tell a solid story without being too self revealing?

Rohit Bhargava: We often put a little too much fear into our heads of things that we're thinking about that other people really aren't. I think in the business world today, the idea of taking a break, for whatever reason it happens to be, I mean, maybe you're taking care of a family member, or maybe you have kids and you want to stay home for a couple of years.

Those are much more acceptable now, but we put too much pressure on ourselves to try and have a good explanation for them. Choosing to prioritize a family member is a good explanation. You don't have to share the details of it, and I get that that can be awkward in a professional setting. I mean, especially in an interview setting.

I think the other thing, though, is if there's a way of talking about how you move forward as a result of that time, that's where the really powerful story comes in. Taking that time off, quote unquote, doesn't actually mean that you decided to switch your brain off. You're obviously doing things still. The challenge is, how do you tell that story in a way that adds to your experience instead of like, oh, I just took a five year brain break, and now I have to explain why.

Anita Brick: Very, very good point. There was an executive MBA student who said, I've been in a career field for about 20 years. I have a solid reputation in that field. However, moving to general management, I don't really have the support to advance. What are a few things that you've applied in a career or rebranding strategy that might help me with my rebranding story? And I think this is a very common question. And this is a big issue. How do you help people rebrand their story when they're doing something where they don't necessarily have a solid reputation in it?

Rohit Bhargava: The first answer is maybe something that your student may not want to hear. It's an answer I have to share, which is that sometimes when you've been in a particular role in a particular company for a long time, your reputation is almost set, and it's very difficult to transform the way people see you because they've seen you in one way for such a long time.

And in that situation, the people who do the best are the ones who go somewhere else. They go to a different company. That's a sad reality, but it's the way that many people in their minds kind of work because they've seen something for 20 years and they're used to it. Now, in this case, it sounds like they're asking a little bit more about whether I've been in a particular career and I want to move forward.

And there was something interesting in that question that I really hone in on, which was I want to move to general management, but I don't have the support to advance. And I wonder in this situation, if it is less a case of not being able to rebrand themselves in more of a case of not having a champion within the company, who really will help them to propel into that next role.

Every chance I've ever had in a corporate role to evolve to the next level have had to have someone who was my champion, who was advocating for that to happen, because if I was going uphill by myself and nobody else thought I could do it, it was impossible. So I wonder, in this case, whether it may really be a challenge that they don't have that champion for them.

Anita Brick: I would agree, and maybe they need to craft their story to get that advocate, to get that champion. Not to sound too esoteric about it, but I wonder if they believe that they can do it. It's hard for us to engage others, to help us or to champion us if we have a lot of uncertainty, because people can lean on that.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, and frankly, one of the great ways to champion that reinvention is with what all your students are doing, which is going and getting that degree and demonstrating their commitment to learning something new so that they get to that next phase. One of the elements of that transformation can be earning that degree. And then saying, hey, I've now been transformed through this process and I've learned all these different things, and I'm not the same person that you might have seen in the past.

Anita Brick: Another executive MBA student had a related question. She said, I believe I'm ready to move to the C-suite, but I have been unable to get recruiters to present me for such roles. They like me but reject me because they want someone who already has at least a few years in that executive level. How would you recommend I break this no win situation?

Rohit Bhargava: Risk is not good in that case. So the real question isn't so much how do you get a different background? The real question is how do you reduce their risk in presenting you? Because right now it seems like what's happening is that recruiters are just looking at the resume and saying, oh, if I put you in front of my client, the first thing my client's going to say is they don't have any experience.

If you're in that situation where you don't get the opportunity initially to directly represent yourself, you have a third party like a recruiter representing you. You've got to do a better job of arming them with those responses to those sorts of things proactively. So in this case, I would go to the recruiters and say, look, I don't have a few years of experience doing this type of executive role or this, but instead of that I have these 2 or 3 things.

And that's why I think I'm best suited to this role, because then you still may have some of those recruiters that say, look, I need the bullet points on the resume. Otherwise, I'm not going to do it. Even if you can just convert one of those recruiters to say, you know what? Your background does look like a good fit. Now that I have something as a response to that potential concern, I'm going to go and present you anyway and see what happens.

Anita Brick: I agree. It's all about reducing that data because even if the risk is not actual risk, it's perceived risk. What you said and finding ways to reduce that is super important.

Rohit Bhargava: Because at the end of the day, for a recruiter, their clients are always going to be way more important to them than you.

Anita Brick: Right. You're absolutely right. Here's another executive MBA student. And he said, I don't really feel comfortable going off script. And yet I know this doesn't work for my career story. How could I create a flexible structure that's concrete, fluid, and yet feels natural? So the other person sees me as natural and spontaneous?

Rohit Bhargava: So it sounds like this student's asking about a presentation situation or maybe even an interview situation, something that a lot of people struggle with is being articulate in that moment when you have to present or pitch sort of related to the idea of public speaking. And I think a lot of us have this barrier that, well, I'm not a great public speaker.

I get nervous, I get flustered, I can't remember what I want to say, I need my bullet points or anybody like Cheatsheet, otherwise I can't do it. I teach a class all about public speaking and presenting and pitching and storytelling. One of the first things that I try to teach my students is to have more confidence. And the way we teach that is by letting them present something that they are intimately familiar with, because it's harder to have confidence when you're presenting something new.

And so what they always start with is they present something about themselves. They present their life story, which is the thing that people are most confident with is their own life story. You're not memorizing data. It's your story. You know it. You lived it. So then the question is, okay, how do I start to tell that story in a way that feels spontaneous and not like I'm reading from a script?

And that's where I think it comes to this idea of sharing a situation, sharing something that happened to you instead of sharing the bullet points. First I did this, then I went here, then I got my undergrad from over here. Then I spent this year and that year. This place I never mentioned for years unless there's a specific reason for it, but it's always about what I took away from this moment and what I learned for that moment. It's not from this year to this year, I was doing this and this is what I achieved.

Anita Brick: I think the other thing is that maybe you're creating a dialog, not a monologue.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, that's also really important. It gives you time to pause and react. Also, because when you're doing a monologue, you don't necessarily know what the other person is thinking or wondering about. And so there are many techniques around this idea of having conversations. For example, we do a whole exercise to help people get comfortable with the pause when you say something and then you pause, you don't feel like you have to fill that with and, or with something else. You can let someone respond to it and say, okay.

Anita Brick: Agree to this next question. And I know the person. I have a real challenge with my story, and he's absolutely right with this next part. I am better with written communications and verbal employers really like my resume and cover letter and invite me for an interview. It's clear that they are disappointed with me and my story. Any suggestions on how to make my story more engaging? I really appreciate it. What's something that someone can do to create that engagement when clearly they're very, very smart, but maybe a little uncomfortable?

Rohit Bhargava: This issue, it really seems to me, comes down to a little bit of nerves and a little bit of lack of confidence in the conversation. And the good news for this student in particular is the world is moving towards people who are amazing at written communication. Writing is more important than ever. So that's all good news. To solve this challenge, or at least help with this challenge of feeling like that in-person conversation is disappointing. I would say, number one, do what anyone with a disability learns how to do, which is you rely on what you are strong at to compensate for the things you aren't strong at. In this case, after the interview, you follow up with a written communication and based on how the interview went, maybe you say, oh well, you might have noticed that I was a little reluctant to talk about this. And this is why they demonstrate some vulnerability. Say, I think you're better at communicating in this way. However, these four things are what is most important in this role. And why I'm great for the role.

Anita Brick: Got it. An alum asked this question a little bit intriguing. My transition story is rather complex and complicated when I share it with people who know me, they got it right away. But with people who don't know me, they don't get it at all. And even worse, I think I may be derailing potential relationships before they start. How can I create a relatable story for people who don't know my backstory?

Rohit Bhargava: Sometimes when we're sharing stories, we don't necessarily need all the backstory. We don't need all the details. We need enough to understand where someone's coming from and what their situation was like and why they do what they do. In this case, one way to do it could be to turn to a technique storytellers often use, which is to try and script out what this story is and actually actually write it down and do it in terms of beats, the beats are. At first this was happening, then this was happening almost like scenes, and then tried to take things out and see if it still would make sense. And that's one way to help simplify something. When it becomes simpler. If people can follow along with it, they can relate to it a little more easily. And some of the challenges that this person shared are set to go away.

Anita Brick: If we go back to the beginning of our conversation for him to go back and say, here's a remarkable moment and centered around a moment rather than a chronology, would that simplify it? No, that could definitely work.

Rohit Bhargava: The one thing to watch out for when you consider moments is we immediately tend to gravitate towards the moments that either make us look the best, or that where they are things that we figured out that we always knew. The challenge with that sometimes is the more of a success story you're telling, and the better it makes you look, sometimes the less relatable it can be.

Then the challenge is how do you make it something that really connects with someone else? And I think demonstrating vulnerability is such a big, big part of that. To be able to say, look, I didn't figure everything out and maybe I still kind of haven't, but these are things that worked for me and this is what actually made me want to do this.

Anita Brick: Got it. Okay. This next question again, it's not an uncommon situation, but it's sometimes really hard to figure out how to explain it without being defensive, a weekend student said. Through a down economy, a company being acquired, and a bit of my own impatience, I've had five jobs in nine years. I'm worried that my resume looks like I am an employee who can't commit to a company for very long. How do I create a story about the number of jobs I've held in such a short time? Without being defensive?

Rohit Bhargava: This is where I would turn to something that I use a lot in my life, but also when I'm doing marketing and storytelling, which is proactive honesty and proactive honesty is not just telling the truth, it's telling the truth when no one asked you to. And in this case, what I would do is proactive. We talk about the fact that you might be wondering, I've had five jobs in nine years.

Does this mean that I move around a lot? And actually it doesn't. And here's why. Sometimes you have to ask the question or at least position yourself against the question that someone is wondering. That proactive honesty in this case could be the strategy to help deal with that.

Anita Brick: Thank you for that. Do you have time for a couple more questions?

Rohit Bhargava: Have all the time you like.

Anita Brick: Okay, great. I like the fact that this person was self-aware and a little self-effacing. And this weekend, a student said, I've been told I am aggressive when I tell my story. What advice might you have for someone who wants to be powerful and compelling? And, as I've been told, not so annoying.

Rohit Bhargava: That's funny. That is self-aware. That's great. So I think when we feel like we want to be powerful and compelling in a situation, we feel like we need to speak more forcefully, and we forget that one of the most powerful things you can do is be a more active listener. You turn to someone like Oprah Winfrey, who for years had her TV show and she was one of the most powerful people on television as a listener and the reason she was so powerful was not because she would listen to you by being quiet and sit there nodding and say, It was because when you said something, she would ask the next deeper question. And that is a really interesting way to demonstrate power. And this is generally accepted now, management principle idea of being powerful through demonstrating empathy for other people. That's what's probably missing for this student. And so I would encourage him or her to try to reduce the amount of time that they spend speaking and trying to be powerful and spend more time trying to be powerful. If you're listening.

Anita Brick: I agree, there's a professor here in one of his books. He starts off with a quote I'll paraphrase by Confucius that says, seek not to be interesting, but interested. And I think it goes along with what you were just saying.

Rohit Bhargava: There are some very Golden Rule-esque types of things here, right? I mean, we want to be treated a certain way. We want to be respected. You want to be respected. You have to be able to give respect.

Anita Brick: Absolutely, absolutely. What are three things that you would advise someone who is listening to our conversation? What are three things you would advise someone to do to create a powerful and compelling career story?

Rohit Bhargava: I think one of the most valuable things that I have seen some of my students do and have done with some of them as well, is have a verbal interview about your story that then gets translated into how you write your story. That's, I think, one of the disciplines around storytelling, which is if you're telling your story with language you would never use, then change it.

I mean, this is not an English literature class where you're trying to use the biggest words possible. You think that's going to get you a better grade? I mean, this is real life, and in real life we see over and over again the people who are able to speak most naturally in most human ways tend to do better. The other thing about telling your career story is sometimes you can use different mediums to do it.

I would encourage you. I mean, my brand that I've been building is all around the non-obvious, which is how do we be non-obvious? How do you think in non-obvious ways, the obvious way to present yourself is to put your resume in a cover letter. The non-obvious way is to have a video to respond to someone's email, with a video, to use different mediums to send from one a magazine of your accomplishments after you meet with them.

I mean, there's all sorts of creative things you can do. These are the sorts of things that can sometimes help you to stand out. No, I'm not saying you should turn yourself into a musician and try to record a song on guitar, if that's not what you do. Thinking about how you can respond and position yourself in a way that isn't perfectly obvious is a really valuable thing to do, because we all want to stand out, spending more time thinking about that instead of one of the six bullet points behind each job, is a really valuable way of getting into the idea of storytelling. Instead of just resume writing.

Anita Brick: Any final words of wisdom?

Rohit Bhargava: At the end of the day, for me, what has worked most is being human and collecting those experiences that I then share in stories. So I'm an ideas collector, and because I do so much speaking, I'm looking for stories everywhere. Most of us go into situations, have experiences, leave not really remember them. And then when someone says, tell me a story about something interesting that happened to you, we're like, well, nothing interesting ever happens to me. Meanwhile, all sorts of interesting things are happening. We're just not serving them. Anything can be.

Anita Brick: Interesting. We are absolutely right. That's really our job, right? If we're telling a compelling and powerful story, it really is our job to inform. But also at some level, dare I say, entertain.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah, I wouldn't put too much pressure on yourself to be funny or to be entertaining. Just be yourself.

Anita Brick: Absolutely. People don't want to hire, like you said, a fake whomever, right? But they want to know what they're getting and they want to be able to see that person, when they're being genuine, authentic, actually sit down. So part of our responsibility is to make sure that we share that with us. Yeah.

Rohit Bhargava: I mean, when they're looking at your resume and your cover letter, they're looking for an answer to the question, does this person have the right skills and background? Are they qualified when they bring them in for an interview, they're looking for an answer to the question, could I imagine walking into work every day, getting my coffee and looking at this person in my office and not feeling a sense of dread?

Anita Brick: That's a really good point, right?

Rohit Bhargava: Really, really good point based on your skills. Otherwise you wouldn't have gotten the interview.

Anita Brick: Yeah, absolutely. Well thank you. I love the fact that you are authentic and you are practical. What you're suggesting is very, very accessible. So again, thank you for making the time and really, really appreciating it. I know this will be invaluable to students and alumni who listen to this and will be able to apply it to their careers and lives.

Rohit Bhargava: Yeah. Thank you. And non-obvious is the annual series. There's also a career advice book that just came out last year, and it's called Always Eat Left Handed, and that one's got all sorts of tips for how to get ahead in your career. And that one, I think would be a great read for your audience as well.

Anita Brick: Thank you very, very much. Thank you, and thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.