last week's interview still stings.
they asked about your biggest win and you just... “felt off” after saying the answer.
not because you haven't done anything.
because you couldn't position it right.
couldn't connect your work to
what they actually needed.
memory is a terrible career strategy.
here's what kills me. you're drowning in proof of your value. scattered across slack threads, jira tickets, email chains, notion docs. but you have no idea how to package it for the companies you actually want.
every high performer i know
they have the same problem. they've solved million dollar problems but can't articulate why those solutions matter to their target company.
the final step of positioning.
we’re mapping your actual wins to what the market actually wants.
please note: we will reference past articles that i am hoping you’ve read over the weekend, if not, no stress? do it today.
at the end of the article: you’ll understand exactly where to positioning yourself to what the market wants.
step 1
collect all your work wins.
the obvious layer
start with what everyone tells you to check: your resume, performance reviews, launch announcements. that onboarding doc that "someone" updated? the spreadsheet that "evolved" to actually work? find the processes you fixed. the spreadsheet everyone still uses. the notion template that became standard.
external proof of work
beyond company walls, what exists? oss contributions? side projects?communities you've built or actively shaped? newsletter? look at your teaching artifacts. workshops you've run. mentees who've grown. the junior engineer who's now senior because of your guidance.
no matter how many questions i probe, you’ll forget. so i’ve made a checklist for you all to follow.
product management checklist
marketing checklist
growth checklist
tech checklist
step 2
companies/industries you’re targeting.
remember yesterday's article?
where you identified target companies and their problems? please read it if you haven’t.
we covered people intelligence, product signals and market forces to understand exactly what the hiring market wants right now. if you haven’t read the article read the full article here first.
you want to take those raw notes and start categorising them. basically, strip your raw market research notes down to what matters: concrete problems, explicit skill asks, and the proof signals each company uses in hiring.
make a table like this.
once you have you two things in a structured manner. your real wins and their real needs. time to overlay them.
step 3
map the fit and find the gaps
now, overlay your wins against their needs.
build a quick matrix
rows = your tagged wins, columns = the highlighted problems/skills.
score each cell
2 strong match (direct metric) 1 partial (adjacent evidence) 0 gap.
for positioning
any row with two or more 2s is a positioning edge rows with only 0s mark are your learning goals.
any win with multiple 2s
that's your positioning edge.
rows full of 0s? those are gaps.
now you know what to build proof for.
i’ve made a customGPT for you that does this. just input your work ex and the company and industries you’re targeting.
avoid this mistake.
don’t list achievements chronologically or by impact size. wrong. you list by relevance to your target's specific pain. lead with it first in the CV, under the respective company experience it belongs.
after this exercise you’ll clearly see two things.
first, you weren’t positioning yourself what the market wanted in the words they cared.
second, there are gaps that we need to build some proof of work for. either in our current orgs or via some side projects. (yes yes, before you ask.. i’ll run a full series on building proof of work in the coming days.)
the compound effect
this approach forces pattern recognition. you start seeing which problems you naturally solve. which impacts you consistently drive. your actual expertise emerges from the data, not your assumptions.
but it's bigger than just landing interviews. when you position precisely, you attract the right opportunities. companies pursuing what you're genuinely good at. roles that use your actual strengths.
congratulations!
we’re now 90% done with the positioning series! the 10%? we stress testing this with actual people. tomorrow, i’ll give you a structured way to test out your positioning.
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