resumes need a narrative

optics matter more than you think.

if you're just joining the series.
welcome to day 10 of #100DaysOfCareers.

before diving into positioning,
you might want to understand:

why you feel stuck
which discomfort you're in
your career blind spots
where you're headed

but if you're ready to understand
why being good isn't good enough anymore, let's begin.

you're refreshing linkedin jobs at midnight. 847 applicants. role posted 3 hours ago. you apply anyway. your perfectly formatted resume joins the digital void.

two years ago, that same resume got you three offers. today? crickets. not because you got worse. because the game completely changed. and you're still playing by 2021 rules.

the market correction nobody's talking about honestly

remember 2021? companies hiring anyone with a pulse. engineers getting 70 lakh packages straight from college. people juggling three remote jobs. growth at any cost. hire first, figure it out later.

then reality hit. mass layoffs. hiring freezes. that team of 50 that could've been 15. suddenly everyone's fighting for the same roles.

now add ai to the mix. why hire 10 analysts when chatgpt can do basic analysis? why staff up customer success when ai handles tier 1 support? every hiring manager's asking: "do i really need this person?"

here's the brutal math:
5,000+ applications at decent companies
90% are not even opened
10% seen for 4.5 sec max
1% are properly read
0.1% get callbacks

at growthx, we have more than 500 hiring partners, the median salary in the community is 29L and work ex is about 8.7 years. i can tell you that for our members the numbers are 3x-5x better but that’s still 0.8%-1.5%. BUT that’s still shit yo!

your bullet points about "driving 30% growth"? the hiring manager or the TA saw 47 identical bullets today. your resume looks like everyone else's because everyone's using the same templates. the same action verbs. the same metrics without context.

but here's what everyone's missing
companies aren't hiring skills. they're hiring solutions to specific problems. and your resume doesn't show which problem you solve.

that’s narrative.
but not any narrative.
their narrative.

swiggy doesn't need another "experienced product manager." they need someone who's solved quick commerce unit economics. who's figured out dark store optimization. who understands why 10 minute delivery breaks traditional fulfillment models.

razorpay doesn't need a "growth marketer with 5 years experience." they need someone who's cracked smb adoption in tier 2 cities. who knows why merchants resist digital payments. who's built trust in cash heavy markets.

is your narrative changing?

take tanya (gx member since 2022, alias for privacy). eight years in product. 3 years in ola. applied to 2 companies last month: same person. two different stories.

for zomato (food delivery): "i've solved the exact problem that's killing your delivery margins. at ola, our drivers would cancel rides after accepting because they found better surge pricing elsewhere. sound familiar? your delivery partners do the same with peak hour orders. built the dynamic earning guarantee system that reduced post acceptance cancellations from 34% to 12%.”


for porter (intra city logistics): "i understand why gig workers reject certain trips. at ola, drivers would ignore airport runs during evening rush. why? the return trip was always empty. dead kilometers. porter faces this with one way goods delivery. built ola’s round trip matching algorithm that paired airport drops with city pickups. increased driver earnings by 25% without raising prices. your delivery partners hate one way trips for the same reason."

same person. same ola experience.
but for zomato, she's focusing on order reliability and cancellation behavior. for porter, she's highlighting asset utilization and dead mileage.

both problems stem from her actual ola work. both framings are true. but each one speaks directly to what keeps that specific founder/leader up at night.

that's a narrative that gets callbacks.

how to build a
narrative that lands

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step 1: forget your resume exists.

seriously.
put it away.

you can't edit your way to clarity.

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step 2: pick one target company

not "fintech" or
"series b startups."

let’s be specific.

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step 3: understand their actual problem

not their job description.
their business problem.

their recent challenges
– read reviews on glassdoor
– scan their leadership's recent posts
– look for job postings patterns (what are they desperately hiring?)

their competitive context
– who's eating their lunch?
– where are they losing talent?
– what market shifts threaten them?

their cultural markers
– how do they talk about problems?
– what words show up repeatedly?
– what do they value in public?

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step 4: map your experience to their problem

write down 5 projects from your past.

for each, answer:
what was the core problem?
what made it hard to solve?
what approach did you take?
what actually changed?

find the parallel:
take their biggest problem from step 3.

then ask yourself:
– when did i face something structurally similar?

– what's the human behavior at the core of both?

– which of my experiences has the same constraints?

write it down:
"you're struggling with [their problem]. i solved [parallel problem] at [company] by [approach]. the core challenge is the same: [underlying pattern]."

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step 5: prove it with specifics

1/ the before picture

paint the mess you inherited.
use numbers:

"support tickets at 200/day"
"3 month sales cycles"
"45% drop off at payment"

2/ make them feel the pain you walked into

the insight that changed everything
what did you figure out that others missed?

in one sentence:
the "aha" that unlocked the solution.

3/ the specific action

not "improved the process."

exactly what you did:
"embedded with support for a week"
"built a prototype in 2 days"
"got five customers on whatsapp"
"killed the monday review meeting"

actions someone can picture.

4/ the measurable outcome

number plus why it mattered to the business.

"cut tickets to 50/day →
support team could handle growth"

"sales cycle to 6 weeks →
doubled deal velocity"

"drop off to 15% →
unit economics went positive"

5/ the proof structure
before (painful numbers) →
insight (what you realized) →
action (what you did) →
after (better numbers + impact)

make it max sixty seconds to read.
impossible to forget.

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ensure to use their language.
mirror their priorities.
show you get their world.

litmus test to for your narrative
ask the following:

1/ which problem do they need solved?
2/ have i solved something similar?
3/ can i prove it with a real story?
4/ does my narrative make their decision obvious?

if you cannot answer at least 3, keep researching.

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here’s your exercise

– pick three companies
– spend 30 minutes researching
– write their biggest problem
– write when you've solved similar
– connect the dots in under 100 words

that's your narrative.
everything else is decoration.

the market's not getting easier
more layoffs coming. more ai automation. more competition for fewer roles.

the companies that are hiring?
they're paranoid about making mistakes. there are 800 founders in growthx, trust me, every single one of them is paranoid right now.

bullet points are dead.
generic resumes are dead.
"experienced professional" is dead.

what wins?
clarity about which specific problem you solve. proof you've solved it before. language that shows you understand their world.

do not keep sending the same resume to 100 companies. do not keep hoping the 2021 market comes back. do not wait for your bullet points to magically stand out.

the market's brutal.
but brutal markets reward preparation. and preparation means knowing their problem better than they do.

your resume doesn’t need more polish
it needs to feel inevitable like this role was made for you and this resume just explained why

remember.
it’s all about positioning.
optics matter more than you think.

your resume needs a narrative.
and so do you.

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