Telling Your Story

Learning Goals

• Understand the value and purpose of storytelling in both professional and personal relationship-building contexts
• Craft the first version of your software developer story

Professional Storytelling & Branding

In this lesson, we’ll build off of our last session on thinking about your strengths to craft a compelling story that describes who you are, how you came to this industry, and where you see yourself going.

Where might you tell this story?

• Meet and greet networking events
• 1:1 coffee chat / informational interview
• Formal interview

From your professional story, we’ll craft your LinkedIn summary, your resume, and your Terminal portfolio.

Personal branding is the act of telling a consistent story about yourself, building out the details of this story with each profile. As you start this new career, telling your story as a new member of the software industry in as many consistent ways as possible will help you stand out and embrace that identity even more.

Section 1: Professional Story Telling

We are all inherent storytellers. Stories are how we connect with each other. From fairy tales to novels to movies to podcasts, stories provide a way for people to share their experiences with others, building empathy and awareness of our universal experiences.

Storytelling is our first step in the job search at Turing. You are a member of the software industry now, and as you start connecting with others in the industry, you need to be able to tell the story of your transition – how did you get here? How do you uniquely make up a part of this industry?

Let’s start by thinking about stories. What do you love about stories? Emma Coats, a former story artist for Pixar, shared her 22 rules for storytelling here, and we’ll apply some of them to our storytelling. We’re going to start with rule #10:

Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.

Section 2: Develop Your Professional Story

When you reflected on your meaningful story, you may have thought about what happened to a character in that story, most likely the main character. And that character probably underwent some change throughout the story. That idea of change is going to be a key component of our own professional stories.

Taking more lessons from Pixar as well as storytelling theory from Joseph Campbell, most stories (in the western tradition at least) follow the 3-Act Arc. Your story should too!

Act I (Set-Up)

• Introduction
• Inciting incident
• Turning point

Act II (Struggle)

• Obstacles & Crisis
• Looking for ways to solve the problem
• Learning what it will take to actually solve problem

Act III (Finale)

• Climax
• Denouement/Resolution
• Show what’s been learned
• Protagonist is changed

Two Examples

Example 1:

“I started my career as a high school special education teacher. Then I went to grad school. Then I became a director at a charter school. Then I became a career coach and now I’m here.”

Example 2:

“I always knew I wanted to help people, and that motivation led me to education. I started my career as a classroom teacher, and I loved the opportunities I had to connect with students on an individual level. Eventually, I felt there were limitations in K-12 education, and I wanted to look for something different. After some exploration, I found that I could help people in a new way by combining my love of teaching and connecting one on one with people through professional coaching. I aim to continue helping people through providing them with the tools they need to transition careers and realize their full potential.”

Your 3 Acts

To understand your own story and character arc, use the following questions to help you create that act structure:

1. Act I: Who are you? (as a developer, a teammate, a worker, a career changer)
2. Act II: Why are you here? (Why software development? Why now? Consider both your background but also what drives you to be in this field)
3. Act III: What’s next? (Where do you see yourself going in this career?) Telling the story of your professional transition into software development helps others understand your motives, character, and capacity to reach the goals that you’ve set for yourself. In short, your story makes others believe in you.

Your story is one of transition. These stories are inherently interesting as they have all the elements of a classic story, and most importantly, they have the important elements of change, conflict, and tension around the transition. Where are you going? What will happen next? It’s so exciting for the listener! But it also depends on how you tell that story.

Disclaimer: When we say story, this is not something that has been made up or embellished in any way. People can tell when you’re not being truthful. Rather, this is about how to make a true account of a career trajectory engaging and inspiring.

Decide on a Theme

Consider your values and motivations: what is something that connects your career path together? What is one theme you want employers to take away after talking with you or reading your LinkedIn profile or resume?

• What are your top strengths, values, and accomplishments?
• What value will you bring to a company?

Work Time

Take some time to work on crafting the first draft of your story!

Practice

Sometime this week, practice your story with 2 others you trust, this can be your classmates or someone outside of class.

Gather as much feedback as you can:

• Is it clear why you’re entering this career?
• How can you connect with others through your story?
• How does it feel to talk about yourself?
• What’s missing that could make this story stronger?

Further Reading

• Harvard Business Review - What’s your story