Step two
The CV walkthrough
We go through your career one role at a time, oldest first. This is not me reading your CV back to you. It is a different set of questions, and they tend to surface things you had stopped noticing about your own career.
The questions
For every role, the same four:
- What was the role? Briefly. Enough context that we both know what we are talking about.
- What are you proudest of? Not what was most impressive on paper. What you are actually proud of.
- What are your deal breakers? What came out of that job that you will not do again.
- What did you take with you? The thing you learned that still shapes how you work.
Depending on where you are heading, I will add a fifth lens and read every role through it. For someone moving into product, that is the product thinking you were doing without the title. For someone moving into leadership, it is the leadership you were already doing before anyone called it that.
What to bring
Your CV, or your LinkedIn profile if that is more current. It does not need to be tidy. We are not editing it. It is a map so we know which stop we are at.
Come with time rather than preparation. How long this takes depends entirely on how long your career is and where you want to stop and dig. One session for some people, two or three for others. The rabbit holes are usually the valuable part, so I do not rush them.
What comes out of it
I take notes throughout and write them up afterward. You get a document with your roles and what you said about each one, and above that, the themes.
The themes are the point. Patterns you cannot see from inside your own career because you lived it one job at a time. The inflection where you stopped being a craftsperson and started being a systems thinker. The thing you have been doing in every role regardless of what the title said. The deal breaker that turns out to be the same deal breaker four times over.
This is also where your interview stories come from. We do not go looking for them later. They are already here, in what you were proudest of.
What you walk away with
A written document with the themes from your career and detailed notes on every role. It feeds the "What I have done" section of your narrative, and it is the source material for your story map at the end.