Tips for Accountants: How to Build Your Career Story

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Any good story captures us within the first paragraph, reels us in, and demands that we pay attention.

If you want to craft a compelling career story that connects to your audience, consider the three tips below.

Personal Brand

At the heart of your personal brand is a theme. And while it doesn’t have to be as grandiose as good versus evil, a theme that forms the central part of your personal narrative can help the listener understand who you are and what you love to do. Are you a builder? Stabilizer? Someone who rescues companies from the brink of bankruptcy? Look at the decisions you’ve made in your career and find a central, unifying theme. Now support that theme with the attributes that have made you successful. At the end of the day, you are not just your job title. By developing a personal brand that resonates with people, you create impact and impact is memorable.

Purposeful Choices

A career story filled with purposeful choices is compelling. Make every career decision a checkmark in the plus column. Even if things went sideways, talk about the lessons you learned. Your narrative should demonstrate an upward trajectory founded on conscious choices. You’ll be seen as someone who owns their decisions, takes control and shapes their world.

Consistency

Whatever story you tell, keep it consistent. A consistent narrative delivers the same message. The result: people know who you are, what you stand for and what you love to do. This consistency in your personal branding can lead to opportunities because you’ve been clear about what you want.

What is your image? What are you trying to project? With our tendency to define ourselves as a job description or title, we sometimes lose sight of the power of a personal narrative and brand that are emotionally resonant. A career story that is filled with purposeful choices, thematic heart and consistency can deliver us to the next step in our career.