Origin story, Pt. 1
It was November 2014, and I'd just returned to my apartment from a dinner I had with three of my colleagues. We were all scientists in the pharmaceutical industry. Two worked in the lab adjacent to me, and one worked in a different building. They had treated me to dinner because all three of them had successfully interviewed and secured new roles within quality, lab management, and project management. Everybody had negotiated a pay bump of $2-$3,000 at my recommendation. And starting in December, they were off to do bigger and better things.
These were the first three testimonials I'd secured for my company, although my company didn't exist at the time. I didn't know what to do with the testimonials, so I saved them to my Facebook page. The following month, I had a connection request from a business development professional, a colleague of my colleague.
His dream was to leave pharma, and so we rebuilt his resume and created an online portfolio. Not long after we finished working together, he secured a role at a Fortune 500 based in Minneapolis. Then it happened again - an email this time, from a business development professional at that Minneapolis company, asking if I could work on his resume and job search. He also walked away happy. He left Minnesota and moved to the West Coast to work for a different Fortune 500.
And again and again it kept happening: managers and project managers and engineers and scientists, all sending me emails and all asking for the same thing, a way out of their situation and into something better. Then I landed my first CEO at a huge software firm. Then for a short time, it seemed like all I did was work with CEOs and members of the C-suite.
Then came my international clients: Chiefs of Party, government officials, diplomats, TED speakers. Everyone still wanted the same thing. A way off of their professional plateau. A better salary. Opportunities that would give them a chance to use their gifts.
When I stop to think about what exactly it is that I'm doing for these people, it comes down to the same steps:
1. I rewrite their resumes to give them an entirely new positioning. The facts stay the same, but the narrative is almost always entirely reconstructed.
2. I look for any value-adds and points of leverage that haven't already been tapped into. I interview the customer first, and then I dig into the target industry's ecosystem.
3. I reduce as much risk as I can for any hiring decision-maker who's interested in my customer. The professionals with the lowest perceived risk are almost always the professionals who earn the highest salaries.
—
Follow #GabbyTurmelle on LinkedIn
