Occupational Storytelling

The way we narrate our careers comes with a lot of effort and a little bit of magic. Everyone has a few sentences that answers the ubiquitous question of “What do you do for work?”. But when we reduce our careers to these surface-level summaries, we miss the chance to connect with the deeper impact of our work. I want to outline a thought exercise that I’ve been engaging with for the past few weeks, because it has helped me immensely to define the way I view my own career, how I want to be remembered, and what I’d like to do in the future. Of course, I’m talking about storytelling.

You can utilize storytelling to form a deep connection with your work and craft a compelling narrative of who you are and what you can do. Most people will think of their career as the set of bullet-points that are important enough to put on their resume. Over time, this shallow framing can leave us disconnected from the real value we bring and the growth our work enables. To strengthen your relationship with your career, it’s worth going deeper. Our real value can’t be determined by how many projects we’ve shipped, the tables we wait at rush hour, or how many people we manage. Only by layering our accomplishments into their broader context and aligning them with a clear vision can we fully reveal what we’ve learned and where we can go next.

The term occupational storytelling encompasses the process of distilling your impact on a company, team, organization, or industry, and using these “impact statements” to highlight your strengths and identity. Instead of asking, “What have I done?” ask, “What unique value did I deliver, and how did it change the people or environment around me?” The difference between a bare list of responsibilities and a compelling career narrative often lies in what you choose to spotlight. Let your impact speak for itself; allow the narrative of how you made a difference lead naturally into conversations about the specific ways in which you drove change.

My company has been piloting an internal mentoring program which paired me with a colleague I’ve known for several years. The interaction that inspired this post was when we were talking about how much we’ve done in the last half-decade together, and he asked me to start explaining the stories of my tenure with the company.

At first, I started listing off the different projects that I played a role in building, which ultimately didn’t make for a good story. After some time, he helped me realize that the more fascinating story was about how I’d shaped our work style; ie. rewriting our team’s relationship with scrappiness and building a blueprint for fast iteration that set us up for meaningful growth. Part of my impact on these projects also naturally highlighted my abilities as an engineer that can turn legacy code (or just an idea/design file) into production-ready scalable solutions time after time. Iterating over the various chapters of my time at Jellyfish and crafting an impact statement for each one was an eye-opening exercise for me, which helped me identify and have control over how I’d like to be remembered.

I understand that this whole notion may come off as obvious; of course your career is more than a list of achievements and titles. Yet, it’s astonishing how deeply ingrained that checklist mentality can be until you actually try putting pen to paper and recounting your journey in a more reflective way. Only when you begin cataloging the moments of genuine impact, the unexpected collaborations, or the creative pivots can you see your own growth more clearly, which gives fresh insight into where you want to go next. If it’s hard to identify these moments, this might also be a genuine wake-up call to do more impactful things!

Regardless of your field, it’s about showing how your unique approach shaped outcomes and influenced others. Share the ways you tackled challenges, built trust, or transformed the ideas around you into tangible results. Identify the ways in which your past roles were similar or different, and use this to your advantage to show growth, consistency, or reliability. This more resonant storyline can capture how you identified and nurtured emerging leaders, learned to pivot under pressure, or built something (culture, technology, systems, etc) robust enough to outlast your tenure.

This practice also invites you to look towards the future. Ask yourself: What stories do I want to tell five to ten years from now? Will you be the engineer who keeps a company afloat by refactoring a system no one else could fix? The professor who thousands of students will remember for the rest of their lives as an educational role model? The manager who builds a supportive environment where junior talent evolves into seasoned experts? Imagining the narratives you’ll share someday can clarify your present actions; it’s a form of reverse-engineering your future. Working on side projects related to a field you’d like to break into will display your willingness to learn. Taking a class in humanities allows you to acquire taste and practice craftsmanship (through writing, poetry, art, etc.) that you can bring with you anywhere. Stories are told from start to finish; the chapters you write now will influence the rest. Curiosity begets passion, passion begets success.

Remember that your occupational story is always allowed to change. It evolves alongside your experiences, and every twist or turn is a chance to refine how you speak about your impact. By seeing your career as a collection of impact-driven events, you can give structure to your past accomplishments and a clearer direction for the road ahead. If prospective employers, friends, and colleagues know your story, the one you want to tell about your occupational life, they will undeniably know what you’re capable of and how you can change the world. It’s imperative in the coming AI era to think about how you perceive yourself, and to sharpen the story of your career. In a world where people can seemingly build anything they can think of, the real value is in knowing what to build. Portray yourself through storytelling as someone who knows exactly what that is.