Over the last 2 months I have been fortunate enough to assist new migrants to Australia secure professional opportunities in the Insurance sector. It’s always amazing to learn about the recruitment practices they have been through previously which is often vastly different to what we see everyday in Oz.

The one thing that stands out for me, is the value of being able to articulate individual experiences in variety of ways. I like to call it “The power of story telling”.

We all have unique experiences as we go through school, uni and work. These experiences have shaped us as humans, changed our thought process and the way we look at the world.

One of my managers once said to me “everytime I interview I should pretend that the interviewer is blind”. What a powerful statement. What would you do if the person that was interviewing you could not actually see you?

This is where I learnt the art of story telling, where my aim is to help the person I am talking to visualise who I am as a person, my personality and my experiences. More important than a resume in my opinion.

Its about bringing them on a journey where they can see how I managed a difficult customer or implemented a new process or deal with difficult team members.

Story telling to me is a tool that is often not thought about enough when conducting interview preparation. It’s a perfect way of engaging your interviewers and most importantly sharing with them your experience.

If done correctly you can create that WOW factor, where people are hooked to your stories and want to hear more……