The art of storytelling is often a technique used by successful people to persuade their audience and achieve success.
Once upon a time, a job-seeker underwent a frustrating series of interviews over a five-month period with no job offer. Then the discouraged individual read a book that suggested composing personal stories. Doing so, the job-seeker found, provided him with better interview preparation than any coaching he had ever experienced. Using stories he hadn’t remembered before he read the book, he said, made him more confident, convincing, and persuasive in his interviews. Stories enabled him to present himself in a personable and powerful way to his interviewers. He again used stories during the next round of interviews. The story ends happily with his hiring in an executive position that represented a major advance in his career. The job-seeker is a real person who posted a review on Amazon.com of Annette Simmons’ 2006 book, The Story Factor.