Graduate employability dominates higher education discourse and as a result, universities continue to focus on equipping students with the right skills, knowledge and experience to navigate the job market successfully. But what if the missing trick isn’t just CV workshops and LinkedIn page preparation, but something deeper – the ability to tell one’s own story?
We’ve been exploring this question through Career Tales, an innovative new programme that helps students articulate their personal and professional journeys through storytelling and storyboarding. Rather than treating career preparation as a technical exercise in perfecting application materials, Career Tales places narrative identity at the heart of employability.
- Prepare your students for the job market: part one
- Sharpen your students’ interview skills
- Career mentoring can support student employability
The initiative guides students through a structured process that begins with personal branding, moves into storytelling techniques and frameworks, incorporates visual storyboarding, and culminates in students presenting their career narratives within the context of a job they wish to apply for. The result? More confident, reflective and compelling job candidates, who can effectively communicate their value to employers.
The graduate employability gap: more than just skills
Universities invest significant resources in career services, offering employability skills sessions, networking events and application support. However, many students, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, struggle with narrative fluency, the ability to connect their experiences into a coherent and engaging story that resonates with employers.
For students who may not have had traditional internships or high-profile work experience, the challenge is not necessarily a lack of skills, but rather a lack of confidence in framing their experiences as meaningful and relevant. Traditional approaches to employability often fail to address this, focusing on what students have done rather than how they can communicate it effectively. This is where storytelling can play a transformative role.
Career Tales: a new approach to employability
Career Tales takes students on a journey that starts with understanding their personal brand where they reflect on their values, strengths and the perspectives they bring to the table. From there, students move into narrative-building, using storytelling frameworks such as Freytag’s Pyramid to structure their professional journeys, much like a compelling novel or film. Rather than simply listing experiences or skills, they learn to craft cohesive, engaging narratives that demonstrate a growth mindset, resilience, adaptability and self-awareness.
The third stage introduces storyboarding, a technique more commonly associated with film and advertising, to help students visualise their career journeys. This process encourages self-reflection and clarity, enabling students to map and organise their experiences in a way that feels both structured and personal.
Finally, students present their career stories within the context of a job they wish to apply for, ensuring they develop a real-world application of their storytelling skills. The final presentations, delivered in front of industry professionals, provide immediate feedback and employer engagement. This helps students refine their messaging in an authentic, confidence-building environment.
The impact of storytelling on confidence and employer engagement
Initial feedback from students and employers has been overwhelmingly positive. Students report the process enabled them to reflect deeply on their experiences and achievements so far, and to feel more confident in preparing for job interviews, better equipped to explain their experiences and more prepared to navigate an unpredictable job market. One student reflected that before Career Tales, they felt they had “no real career story” but by the end of the programme, they had a clear, structured and engaging narrative that linked their university experiences to their career aspirations.
Employers, too, are responding favourably. In a competitive job market, recruiters often see hundreds of applications that blur together. Candidates who can tell a compelling story stand out – not just because of their qualifications, but because they can articulate their journey in a way that is engaging and memorable, and in a way that sets them apart.
The case for expanding storytelling in higher education
Career Tales is just one example of how storytelling can be integrated into employability education, but the implications for the wider sector are profound. What if more universities embedded storytelling into their employability strategies and even their curricula? By moving beyond transactional job application support and into reflective, narrative-driven development, universities can better equip students not just with skills, but with the ability to communicate them in ways that make an impact and are memorable.
At a time when AI-driven recruitment tools are automating much of the hiring process, human stories matter more than ever. Employers don’t just hire CVs; they hire people. Helping students shape and articulate their narratives ensures that they don’t just enter the job market as another applicant, but as a confident, self-aware candidate with a story worth telling.
Career Tales is proving that storytelling isn’t just an art, it’s an employability skill. If universities want to prepare students for the future, it’s time to embrace the power of narrative identity in career development.
Lucy Gill-Simmen is vice-dean for education and student experience in the School of Business and Management and Maria Simons is a reader (senior associate professor) in HRM & organisation studies, both at Royal Holloway, University of London.
If you’d like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter.
comment