“When You Lose Your Job — and It’s Your Whole Identity”
When I was browsing through HBR’s website, I came across many many articles with different types of headlines. I found myself scrolling quickly past multiple headlines for over 5 minutes but none of them made me stop in my tracks to look at them, I scanned them all within seconds but none resonated with me; That was until I came across this headline “When You Lose Your Job – and It’s Your Whole Identity.”
This headline instantly resonated with me because it felt personal. It might not seem like anything special when you first look at it, there are no numbers that can grab your attention, and no question is asked or imposed that could make you want to know more, but the biggest thing that makes this simple headline so effective to its audience is that it feels real and personal to the reader. This is something that we learned in class, where we covered that headlines should be easy to understand, feel human, and connect with the reader’s emotions. The way it adds “and It’s Your Whole Identity” is the key part of why it’s so powerfully effective and why it made me stop in the first place because it hints at the emotional feelings of losing a job. It’s not just about the fact that you lost your job; it’s HOW it affects who you are as a person after going through it, the feelings of eating yourself alive for days, weeks, or even months because you start to feel doubt within yourself. I know this exact feeling because I went through it a couple of years back! This is why this headline resonated with me so quickly and why it caught my attention within seconds.
Another thing that made this headline effective for me is that it created some type of curiosity within me; it made me wonder what the article would be delivering and if I could relate to absolutely any of it, if truly what I felt back then is how others how felt too. It gave me some sense of relief, kind of because it made me feel not alone. That type of curiosity made me want to click on the headline instantly, which I did. By learning about curiosity gaps in class, I knew that whoever wrote this headline did a great job of touching on the points of human emotion and relevance, writing clearly and straight to the point, and with a touch of curiosity that leaves readers wanting to know more.
I really liked this headline because it’s written so simply, which, in my opinion, actually makes it so much more powerful. It has no other elements added to it that could make it instantly stand out from other headlines by adding numbers, bolding the words, or even using exclamation marks. It’s short and goes straight to the point, but it’s written in an effective way that can easily relate to so many different people, including myself, by adding the “When YOU Lose your job – and It’s YOUR whole identity.” When you add the word “you” into a headline, it becomes more apparent to an audience because people like it when things are about them or when they can relate to something. It makes it feel like they are speaking directly to you, so this tactic really works.
So with all that being said, this headline resonated with me a lot because it spoke directly to an experience I’ve had in my life, it made me relate to it, it created curiosity making me want to read more, and it triggered an emotion within me.