Mr. Pickles and too many hats
Reframe diverse experiences to tell a compelling, consistent career story
Meet Mr. Pickles.
Mr. Pickles is my third-grader’s art project. This pumpkin has a unicorn horn, cat ears, and bat wings. When she brought him home the other week, I was struck by the expression on his pumpkin face. This is a uni-cat-bat-kin that is struggling.
It’s a pretty spot-on representation of what it feels like to explain a varied career without a connecting throughline. I’m a journalist supporting newsrooms and also a book reviewer and also the founder of a career coaching business, and oh yeah I also got my master’s in marketing.
That takes a lot of effort to explain.
The career river offers a powerful way to reframe our professional journey. We can uncover the throughline hidden beneath disparate job titles. Here’s how I bring it together in my introduction using the Cocktail Party Challenge (and by the way, I’ve got another free Career River webinar coming up next week! Register here.) You can uncover your career story by following the tips below the video.
Create a compelling career story
Find the underlying connection.
As you review your Career River map, consider skills you used in previous roles. Focus on what Dick Bolles, author of “What Color is Your Parachute,” deemed transferable skills, which you can use from one job to another without any additional training. It can help to focus on using verbs for this list, for example: analyze, coach, build. List out a few for each role or group of roles and look for skills that show up in more than one place.
Build from those skills to find the underlying connection between the skills you used across different jobs. For me, it was connecting people to information. Build that core interest into your story.
Let go of what doesn’t fit.
You may have caught in my introduction video that I didn’t mention anything about being a book reviewer. Like any good author, you’re going to need to edit your story down to the essentials. Cut anything that doesn’t contribute meaningful information. You can always add supporting details later.
Test and refine.
Ask a few people to listen to your quick career explainer. See how they respond — do their eyes light up or glaze over? Are they interested in learning more or looking for the door? Keep testing out your pitch until you’ve found the story that reliably sets you up for deeper discussion.
Want more support in creating a compelling career story? Reach out to me at bridget@mycareerriver.com for information on one-on-one coaching calls!
Telling a consistent career story isn’t just helpful for job interviews. It allows us to identify new possibilities and feel more confident about where we can contribute. Ultimately, we’re all Mr. Pickles. We just need to learn to embrace the different parts of our professional experience to see how they contribute to a unique, unified whole.
Happy navigating,
Bridget