Write Your Career Story

The clocks have gone back an hour. I am watching BBC Business Today at 5:45am, wondering what happened to the missing hour and where I go next in my career. No matter how furiously I pummel the buttons of my digital clock I cannot go back in time to guarantee career success.

If only I had done this job or seized that opportunity I would be a talking head on BBC Business Today, not a sleepy head on my sofa waiting to hear if I have been successful for a job that would put a big smile on my face. I am counting down the days until I find out.

Copilot tells me my career has a brand positioning problem. Great, now AI has joined the humans in questioning where I fit in the organogram, with Copilot asking: "Is Paul more of a communications person than an HR person?"

Why can’t I be an HR communicator who is good at both professions? Not a generalist or a specialist. A multipurpose professional. I don’t like everything about HR and am not a conventional communicator. I take a storytelling approach to work to give you a beginning, middle and end. That is what makes me unique, right? I don’t need AI to communicate, but it is becoming an essential ally, doing things I can never do.

Copilot tells me, “One thing that may be hurting you is you sometimes underestimate how unusual your profile is. Your challenge is translating a rich Civil Service career into a simple market-facing narrative that employers can grasp within 30 seconds.”

As I am an aspiring writer I should find it easy to write my tag line and elevator pitch for who I am and what I can do. I am a people, culture and organisational change leader with deep expertise in complex employee relations, communications and workplace transformation. But I also more than that and inclusive organisations should tap into people’s talents for mutual benefit.

Obviously this depends on how good your “talent” is and if the organisation needs it. Your colleagues should not be a captive audience to your comedy, dancing, politics or slam poetry unless it is work-related. Channelled correctly, development outside work can enhance in-work performance.

It is about finding your Force. I am starting to believe I am like Luke Skywalker with Copilot morphing into Princess Leia saying, ‘You have a power I don’t understand and could never have.” I must confront the Darth Vader spectre over my career to tell my career story the way it is meant to be told.

Establishing cause and effect in the second half of my career. Because I did this at work or in my life it led to the next chapter in my career. That is better than and then this happened and then this happened.

Inspiration

What we talk about when we are working and living

© 2025. All rights reserved.