Searching for a new job in this economy can be hard work. If you have a criminal record and are looking for jobs for felons it can be even harder. Here is an easy way to gain more confidence and prepare for job interviews: write down a story about your life.

The story should be something you have accomplished – finishing a long-distance marathon, helping to run a successful charity event, teaching your children to ride a bicycle, getting a perfect attendance record in school, cooking a Christmas dinner for 20 people, acting in an amateur production and other such stories.

It does not have to be a very important or huge undertaking. All that matters is that it is a true story about something you felt happy doing, it’s something you think you did well and it gave you a feeling of accomplishment.

When you write your story down make sure you do the following:

• Narrate the circumstances of why you decided to do that, what difficulties you encountered and how you overcame those difficulties.

• Enumerate all of your roles. Did you function as a teacher, cook, organizer, graphic designer, secretary, accountant or leader?

• List the skills that you used. This includes stuff like "figuring out a realistic budget and sticking to it," "designing a costume" or "getting along with people from all walks of life."

• Write about how you felt after you accomplished something – the feelings of pride, happiness, satisfaction, etc.

Do this seven times.

This is the Seven Stories exercise and it can help you land a job by helping you to assess your skills and gain self-confidence. By writing your life stories down, you can evaluate your strengths. This will help you to explain what you have learned and experienced in terms that you can use during a job interview.

This exercise can help you during the resume writing and interview parts of the job hunting process because it helps you to:

1. Gain self-confidence by listing down your skills and successes.

2. Use appropriate action words like "drew" "mapped" "marketed" "supervised" in your cover letter and resume.

3. Be more specific and use better vocabulary when describing your skills. Instead of saying "I get along well with people" you can say "I once put together a team of perfect strangers and we raised $5,000 for charity in a week."

4. Discover what you really love to do. For example, why do you still remember that school event from twenty years ago with such happiness? Did you love being the leader? Was it buying and selling at a profit that you enjoy? Or was it the artistic elements that you liked most?

When searching for a job you need to make sure that you are prepared the best you can when you actually get an interview. If you can describe your skills in a concrete and specific way, you can impress potential employers with your answers during your job interview and hopefully land your dream job. If you are looking for jobs for felons you certainly must make a great first impression.