Episode 24: How to prep for interviews/promotions

The best advice I received was to re-evaluate my satisfaction with my role every 6 months. I ask myself 3 questions:

• Am I learning the things I want to?

• Am I interested/excited about my work?

• How transferrable is my skillset in different contexts?

These answers drive what I advocate for in promotions / internal moves or start finding a new role. Here are the habits I recommend incorporating:

Accomplishments doc (aka brag docs)

Historically, I struggled to articulate my impact on the company. I felt icky trying to quantify my results, and instead, I tried to let my work speak for itself.

Another narrative about my impact was created that lacked context and depth. My work was minimized, and credit was not given when I did the actual work, but it was because no one knew what I did to achieve the end result.

My solution to this situation is an accomplishments doc. The idea is to create a single document where you collect the positive feedback you receive and share the context of what you did.

Example of one entry below (in my actual doc I have the person’s name and I linked the update referenced below).

I share this doc with my manager, their manager, and any other peers I want to drive visibility on my work. Each quarter, I also write a summary of my work and the impact on the business (quantitative and qualitative) and link it to my accomplishments doc for additional reference. 

Tailored resumes

I currently have 4 versions of my resume. The versions match the job type to clarify that I have experience doing exactly what the company is looking for.

1. Master Version - This is multiple pages with every role I’ve done since my first internship. Each experience has 5-7 bullets (some are multiple variations of the same info).

2. Product marketing - The role of product marketer overlaps with competitive but is typically restricted to a specific product/persona the company focuses on. There is also a wider remit focusing on product launches that aren’t as clearly related to competitive/pricing roles

3. Competitive - a full-time competitive role focused on starting a program from scratch (my specialty as a team of one) vs. scaling a fleshed-out program that requires different skill sets and backgrounds, so I create a resume for each.

4. Pricing -  While there is overlap with competitive pricing, pricing products requires a different focus than competitive pricing (typically more sales-focused). My mix of go-to-market and product/engineering background helps make my case as a unique candidate.

Depending on my interests, I have optionality to do one of these roles in the future or find a hybrid (e.g. pricing + competitive).

Pressure test skills & salaries

I also regularly take calls with recruiters about jobs. I respond when they reach out and also reach out to recruiters to share my interests. One avenue I’ve found for lead generation (my goal is one call a month) is reaching out to investors and sharing my skill sets/interests, which match those of their portfolio companies.

I have a running doc of all the roles & info like salaries, experience etc to have a clear gauge of market rates. Here’s everything I ask recruiters:

• Role

• Title & level

• Salary band

• In-person requirements

• locale/geo-restrictions

• stock

• bonuses

• other benefits

The lengthy repository of wins/impacts from the accomplishments doc helps tailor the resume, which I then pressure test for the right skills by regularly taking calls with recruiters. I also have a repository of salaries for those skill sets, so I know market rates.

For me, resume work is like cleaning—the more you can regularly do, the easier it is than trying to do it all in periodic bursts of work. As always, feedback is a gift, and I welcome any/all feedback on this episode—good or bad. See you next week 👋.

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✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏