How A Resume Review Helped Me Grow My Startup
Don’t focus on what you do, focus on the results you can get. One of the biggest learnings I got from my resume review was that I focused on the wrong thing. When you’re selling to someone they want to know what results they can get. And that’s what a startup is about. What problem you are solving for your prospective client? Aaron Ngan, the CEO of JA Australia sat with me over two review sessions to teach me how to sell myself.
A resume is where you trying to sell yourself to a prospective employer. Just like a dating app is you trying to sell yourself to a potential partner. I was always able to sell a product, but selling myself seemed foreign. It could be due to the fact I didn’t think I had any marketable skills, despite the fact I am an experienced Robotics Engineer and Mindset Coach. It was a limiting belief I had slowly begun to work through. A resume review not only helps you figure out what skills you potentially have to offer but it also helps you market them better.
This review helped me understand what professional accomplishments I had and how to pitch them. You could have the best product in the world, but if you can’t market it properly it’ll never sell. I always focused on what I did and what skills I had but never what results I got. I didn’t think that mattered. It made sense to me, but it doesn’t make sense to the person you’re selling to. “Great you can code in Python, but what have you actually done with it?” is what comes to mind when I imagine when a manager would read through my old resume.
Learning to sell yourself is a skill. Like any skill it takes time, practice and consistency. But in order to be better you have to know how. Getting a resume review taught me so many things I had never even thought of before. Without having some initial direction I wouldn’t have learnt these things.
Focusing on results and accomplishments rather than what you know are extremely important. Potential clients want to know what you can accomplish and what problem you are solving. They don’t care about how it is done as long as it is done.
Aesthetics and ‘looks’ are especially important. I have always cared more about function than aesthetics, but in the end looks are just as important. First impressions do matter and your resume is the first impression a potential employer gets of you.
Learning to sell is the most important thing a Founder can learn. You’ll have to sell yourself to a potential Co-Founder. Sell your company and yourself to potential investors. And sell your products to potential clients. You will have to sell constantly. A resume review is a useful way of learning how to take your accomplishments and skills and concisely explain them. This resume review has taught that people want to know about results not how you can get the results.
