In his excellent and rich, Personality Not Included, Rohit Bhargava, discusses why corporations need to move beyond facelessness, and develop a personality to make an emotional connection with customers. As he discusses how to define your organization's personality, he lays out the importance of the backstory:

A backstory is the history behind the organization and how it became what it is today. It is not a timeline of accomplishments or the boilerplate history that can often be found on company Web sites. The backstory is something more meaningful. It has real characters and a believable tale of how these characters had to evolve and overcome challenges in order to make their business successful.

While reading this book, it occurred to me that there are a lot of faceless professionals. They are people who expect their title and resume will speak for them. They don’t really get the need to show real personality in their communications – especially their LinkedIn profile. This is unfortunate.

In a world awash in qualified people, your title and timeline of accomplishments simply aren’t enough.  You need to establish the arc of your career, going beyond what you can do to highlight the pivotal experiences, events, conflicts, and insights. You need to tell people where you came from and where you’re headed. It makes you human, creates an emotional connection, and makes you more attractive.

In short, you too need a backstory. So, what’s yours?