<aside>
if you're just joining the series.
welcome to day 10 of #100DaysOfCareers.
before diving into positioning,
you might want to understand:
but if you're ready to understand why being good isn't good enough anymore, let's begin.
</aside>
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?
same person. two different stories.
take tanya (gx member since 2022, alias for privacy). eight years in product. 3 years in ola. applied to three companies last month:
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
step 1: forget your resume exists.
seriously.
put it away.
you can't edit your way to clarity.