Article 3: Using the Basic Three-Act Structure to tell your story

The Basic Three-Act Structure defines how stories are developed by using a sequence of three simple concepts:

The Beginning

The Middle

The End

Way too simple for preparing for your job search, right?  

Well, if it were that simple, I wouldn’t be writing these blogs to help you with the process of using storytelling in your job search. I will say, though, it is easier (and more exciting) than the Challenge, Action and Results (CAR) resume and interview methodology that has been around for so many years.

Think back to your interviews where you stated the problem encountered (challenge), what you did to overcome the problem (action) and what happened in the end (results).

Was the hiring manager enthralled by what you shared? Or had she already moved onto her next question, where you once again stated the challenge, your action and the happy ending? No offense, but that sounds pretty dry to me. In fact, when I have used the CAR method myself, I sounded canned and repetitive. Not exactly the result I want during an interview!

CAR may have worked years ago when there wasn’t the competition there is now for every posting on the various job boards. Today, CAR can be stale and boring – and why would we want to be that, especially when we have the exciting new world of storytelling available to us?

If you want to stand out, and I mean really stand out, for a job on which you have passion and drive, don’t settle for what worked twenty years ago. It’s a new world out there for job seekers.  And because of this, we need a new way of looking at resume crafting, what we say during interviews, and how we set up our on-line persona.

I say, it’s time for something new, something fresh, and something bold!

The first thing we are going to do from here is to break down the Basic Three-Act Structure to see how it can be applied to your job search. Once you understand the basic structure of storytelling, you will be able to easily identify your greatest successes, putting each of them into a story with a beginning, middle and end.