Stories Sell
If you are a job seeker, it's very important to weave many stories about what you've done as examples of your success. People love stories. People remember stories. People remember you when you tell them stories about your past. Stories bypass conscious resistance and preconceived notions. Stories, analogies, metaphors about you that pertain to the hiring authority’s needs are absolutely the best way to be remembered. Of course, they need to be short, no more than 45 seconds, to the point and above all pertinent to the opportunity for which you are interviewing. Stories are more than entertainment.
Philosophers tell us that they teach us the art of being human. From psychologists we learned that stories are successful because they remove the prejudice of the listener towards the story teller and encourage the listener to identify with the person in the story. People remember stories because they identify with the people in the stories. By doing that, the listener becomes more engaged with the storyteller and asks themselves questions like, what would I have done in that situation? We are so caught up in the drama of the story, we have little emotional energy to disagree. That's why Jesus Christ taught in parables. Buddha, Aesop, and other great teachers all taught with stories and one of the most important revelations about stories comes recently from the Princeton neurologist Yuri Hassan. He recently discovered that the listener of a story develops the exact same brain waves and brain patterns that the story teller has.
The story teller literally makes the listener's brain pattern match their own. So if you want people to see the world the way you do, tell them a compelling story and get their brain patterns to match yours. Story telling breeds a connection between tellers and listeners, a shared flourish of joy at the climax or mutual gloom at the relation of something tragic. Does this interpersonal link also take a visual measurable form? Well, a team recorded videos of eight students as they recounted emotional experiences from falling in love to the death of a friend as they spoke and eye tracking device measured the dilation of their pupils, which research indicates expand and contract with the ups and downs of mental engagement. Later more than a hundred other students watched the videos as they too were monitored with an eye tracker. During parts of this story rated as especially engaging the researchers found the dilation of the listeners' pupils more closely matched dilation of the speaker's pupils.
Synchrony was greatest between participants who rated high on a measure of empathy and speakers high on expressiveness results that held even when the listeners did not view the speaker. The findings are indicative of mental coupling or shared attention to what the speaker is saying, according to Dartmouth College neuroscientists, Thilia Wheatley, a coauthor of the study. Without people listening, speaking is just disturbing air molecules. Communication requires coupled minds. Story telling experts tell us that there are six types of stories. “Who am I?” stories, “Why am I here?” stories, “Vision” stories, “Teaching” stories, “Values” stories, and “I know what you're thinking” stories. It's not hard to come up with these types of stories in the interviewing process. They can be very powerful. We had a candidate a number of years ago who had been born and raised on a chicken farm in East Texas. During the interviewing process, he would talk about what it was like growing up on a chicken farm, how hard they had to work, the long hours, the difficulty.
It was a great story. That candidate was chosen over nine other very well qualified candidates. The hiring authority told us that what made the difference was the candidate's stories about growing up on a chicken farm. “Why am I here?” stories could be about why you had to leave your present job or why you left your past ones. “Vision” stories could be about the company you're interviewing with and how it might look when they hire you. “Teaching” and “Value” stories can be about the mistakes you've made in your career and what you learned from those mistakes. “I know what you're thinking” stories can explain why you've had too many jobs or have been out of work for a very long period of time before the hiring authority brings it up as a concern. Your stories will make all the difference in the world. People who tell stories are remembered.
ABOUT TONY BESHARA
Owner & President
Babich & Associates
Tony Beshara is the owner and president of Babich & Associates, established in 1952 and the oldest placement and recruitment service in Texas. It is consistently one of the top contingency placement firms in the DFW area, and has been recognized as one of the “Best Places to Work in DFW” by the Dallas Business Journal. He has been a professional recruiter since 1973 and has personally found jobs for more than 10,500 individuals. He sits behind a desk every day, working the phone literally seven hours of the twelve hours a day, making close to 200 calls a day. He is in the trenches on a day-to-day basis. Tony has personally interviewed more than 26,000 people on all professional levels and has worked with more than 23,000 hiring authorities. Babich & Associates has helped more than 100,000 people find jobs using Tony’s process. Tony is one of the most successful placement and recruitment professionals in the United States.
Tony received his Ph.D. in Higher Education from St. Louis University in 1973.
The second edition of his best-selling book, “The Job Search Solution” The Ultimate System for Finding a Great job NOW!” came out in January of 2012. He also created a 45 hour online program about how to find a job, www.The Job Search Solution.com. Tony’s second best seller, “ACING The Interview”, answers almost any question regarding interviewing in today’s erratic job market. “Unbeatable Resumes,” discusses resumes for the present, unique employment market. His latest book for job seekers, “Powerful Phrases for Successful Interviews,” published in February of 2014, offers 400 ideal phases for every interviewing situation. His newest book, co-authored with Rich Lavinski, the managing partner of E. 57th Street Partners, “100,000 Successful Hires, The Art, Science and Luck of Successful Hiring” is about the “other side” of the desk… advice for the hiring authority. It, too, is a bestseller.
Tony recent TED Talk, “The 10 Principles of Loving Your Career and Your Job” was presented in October of 2015 at Mountain View College in Dallas. It can be viewed in its entirety on Tony’s YouTube channel.
He is a frequent guest on the Dr. Phil Show, offering Dr. Phil’s guests advice on the job search process. He is also a frequent guest/expert on various local and nationally televised business shows, including those on Fox Business News. Tony also hosts a weekday radio show, The Job Search Solution on The Word KWRD-FM, 100.7 FM, every weekday evening from 8:30pm to 9:00pm. Tony and his beautiful wife of 51 years, Chris, have four grown sons.
Interviews & Appearances Contact:
Tony Beshara
Phone: 214-823-9999
Email: tony@babich.com