How storytelling can turbo-charge IT contractors’ careers
Last week’s grim story by the ONS about how UK businesses are treading water, by ‘hiring but hiring at a slower pace than any of us would like’ (as the REC put it) confirms what many IT contractors will be feeling right now.
And a second sorry story…
Coupled with the CIPD warning in its own equally glum tale that Employer NIC changes from April 6th 2025 made employers in February 2025 “rethink their workforce strategies,” the narrative right now is of a highly competitive landscape for job-seekers like contractors.
An extremely challenging level of competition makes it harder to stand out from other temporary tech job applicants, writes Matt Craven, founder and CEO of The CV & Interview Advisors.
A hastily cobbled-together CV, an underwhelming LinkedIn profile, or even using Artificial Intelligence to generate your CV is unlikely to grab attention; be engaging enough, and then convince sufficiently to land you an IT contract offer.
The value in company stories and business storytelling
No, for attention-grabbing (‘the beginning’), engagement (‘the middle’) and action (‘the end’), you can’t beat the age-old story. And you also can’t beat the tactic IT contractors should be deploying to stand out in a competitive market – storytelling.
Indeed, when the chips are down, it’s up to technology workers vying for temporary roles to take a more innovative approach to selling themselves to prospective employers, by using the power and format of story.
Here, exclusively for ContractorUK, I want to share some insights around storytelling and how contractors can use storytelling tactics to win more work – ahead of my webinar on Wednesday dedicated to this topic.
Ask Aesop
The effectiveness of storytelling has its foundations in human psychology.
Think about the power of a good story. There will be some that immediately spring to your mind, perhaps from your childhood.
The Greek fabulists were experts in wrapping a message in a story.
Who doesn’t remember the cautionary tale of The Boy Who Cried Wolf?!
Chemistry
Neuroeconomics experts suggest that stories trigger the release of hormones that build trust, empathy, and decision-making capability.
Trust, empathy, and decision-making capability are three ideal goals to focus on when tailoring your CV.
These are pretty decent goals to have, too, when trying to come up with a story about yourself to a potential client.
When writing a business story, know your aims
At the least, you need to have down the objectives that your story is going to achieve.
It’s worth composing a few stories about your business, skills, achievements, and journey as a contractor in the UK tech industry. Nobody likes them too long, but stories are super powerful when it comes to delivering YOUR unique message to a hiring decision-maker. Again, a tried and tested way is to build trust, build empathy and promote enhanced decision-making.
Here are some ways you can apply this storytelling strategy when pitching for freelance IT work.
Storytelling in CVs
Recruiters regularly complain about three key issues with IT contractor CVs:
- A lack of customisation to specific roles;
- A lack of achievements/evidence of success (and more recently);
- Using ChatGPT to create huge chunks of the document.
By incorporating storytelling tactics into your CV, the first two complaints are firmly and squarely headed off.
To incorporate these tactics, write out a few tiny stories, or what us CV and interview advisers might describe as ‘mini-case studies.’
Storyteller at work: Framing, building a bank, editing
Frame the narrative around your biggest projects, or proudest achievements.
Ideally, create a ‘bank’ of stories -- a large selection of them (for help doing this, see the below section entitled Career Autobiographies).
Then edit and adapt the best three for each job application or contract you’re going forward for.
Telling stories on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is an important part of work-winning in a contractor’s arsenal.
It’s a platform where recruiters and employers often go in 2025 to find talent.
Having a great LinkedIn profile is as important as having a great CV.
LinkedIn profile: IT contractors, don’t settle for default settings
You may or may not have noticed, but a LinkedIn profile has several elements that are there by default, notably the sections entitled:
- Headline;
- About; and;
- Experience.
However, one lesser-known LinkedIn profile section is “Projects.”
On LinkedIn, here’s how you add ‘Projects’ to your profile
The “Projects” section needs to be manually added to your LinkedIn profile.
To add it, from your profile page, click:
- “Add profile section” – it’s under your name, then select;
- “Recommended” – it appears as a drop-down menu, then select;
- “Add Projects.”
Now you can add the same case studies you used on your CV. But on your LinkedIn profile, you can pleasingly have as many as you like!
Storytelling in a job interview is a good thing
By this, we don’t mind getting face-to-face with your interviewer and then bursting into “Once upon a time…!”
But the STAR framework is a great tool for writing mini-case studies, or when trying to prepare a story for a job interview that ‘sells’ you or your services.
You may recognise STAR as the widely recommended structure for answering competency-based questions in an interview. It stands for Situation; Task; Actions; Result (STAR).
Another story in your next IT contractor job interview that you may want to master, so you can turbo-charge your chances of success and tell it fluently, is your Career Story.
It’s also known as a Career Narrative.
How to write a Career Story: four must-include chapters
Being able to concisely - and in an interesting way - articulate the following four, to form your own Career Story (or Career Narrative), is a fundamental part of interview success:
Chapter 1: Where/when your career started;
Chapter 2: How your career/skills developed;
Chapter 3: Where you are now, and;
Chapter 4: What your future ambitions or professional goals are.
Your autobiography
One of the most popular genres available in bookstores today is the autobiography.
Typically written by celebrities, an autobiography tells the story - in the A-lister’s own words (usually with the help of a writer) - of their life or journey.
The autobiography is a type of book aimed at the celeb’s fans.
But have you ever considered writing your own autobiography? There’s a good way in here. An extremely useful tool for freelance tech professionals is what’s called a Career Autobiography.
This account of your professional life serves as a ‘log’ of all the key events in your career. It could be a simple document or spreadsheet, but the idea is to have a record of all your very biggest career moments, including successes, lessons learned, projects and achievements.
Benefits of keeping a career log
We see all the time that contractors in tech who create a Career Autobiography are much more professionally self-aware and more adept at communicating their value, experience and track record.
We also find contractors who already keep such a career log are more readily available to pivot with their information when they want to change up their CV details or LinkedIn profile due to results we give them from our free, 1-2-1 and confidential CV/LinkedIn appraisal.
Free feedback? Get yours here
ContractorUK readers can take us up on this free review of their CV and/or LinkedIn profile by clicking the above link.
But if you want to deploy the best weapon against today’s extremely tight and competitive jobs market, and explore storytelling as a tool for winning more high-paying IT contracts, register for our live ‘Storytelling Tactics’ webinar on Feb 26th - here.
Stories are remembered 22x more than facts alone
Before you start penning your own story, don’t just take it from me that delving deeper into the art of storytelling is going to be massively worth your while.
Stanford University Professor Jennifer Aaker has found that stories are remembered up to 22 times more than facts alone.
Four chapters you need for a story to be effective…
Professor Aaker’s top tips on how to craft an effective story for business purposes are in italics:
1. Why are you telling the story? In other words, come up with a goal.
2. Why would the audience listen? In other words, grab the audience’s attention.
3. Why would the audience care? In other words, engage with the audience by providing details that will engage them and that they will find engaging.
4. How can your story be shared? Put another way for IT contractors trying to drum up business, ‘How will the story convince the audience to act?’
This fourth stage is what Prof Aaker describes as the ‘enablement stage.’ For IT contractors’ purposes, it is this final stage where contractors will want hiring decision-makers to make a favourable decision.
Only the beginning…
Need more insights? Tell me your story this Wednesday from 1700 and together we can make some choice edits to make your services read like the sorts of services that companies just won’t be able to put down.
