We made these 3 fixes to his CV

The first time I worked on a job search with a TED speaker, I was taken completely by surprise. During my pharma days, I would spend my lunch breaks watching TED talks with my coworkers. I had a tremendous respect for the organization and for the people who gave these talks.

It's 2019, and I log into my LinkedIn account to see a message from someone whose name I recognized. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I wondered if it might be a fake account, but it wasn't. Here was a TED speaker whom I deeply admired, and he was messaging me for guidance on his job search.

So, I did my best to set aside my star-struck mind, and I put on my career coaching hat, and we talked about what was going on with his search.

He was trying to land a job in California, where he could use his skills to serve product teams in the tech space. He'd applied to countless jobs, and gave each application plenty of time and care, but nobody was calling him.

He was a person who'd been given an award by the prime minister of his country. He had patents and accolades and a talk that was viewed by half a million people. You'd think someone as genuinely impressive as him would be able to land at least one interview, but that wasn't the case.

I asked him to give me his CV, and I studied his LinkedIn profile. These were the fixes that I recommended:

1. I asked him to change his address from the small island where he lived to San Francisco, the city where he wanted to relocate. I asked him if he was willing to move at the drop of a hat should he land his ideal job. He said yes - he had dual citizenship, he was authorized to work in the U.S. I had him change his address on both his CV and LinkedIn profile and specifically write, "Relocating to San Francisco, CA."

2. I asked him to make major changes to his CV and, even better, switch to a 2 or 3-page resume. He gave me pushback, because he was proud of his CV. (And understandably so!) On the first page, he listed every award he'd ever received, including the honor given to him by his prime minister. My argument was that as impressive as his accomplishments were, and as hard as he worked to obtain these accomplishments, they weren't serving him in the way he thought they were.

3. I asked him to take his experience in building products and platforms and place it all on page 1 of his resume. I wanted him to think like the teams he was hoping to work with. What exactly would these people care about? What skills, abilities, and knowledge did he have that would actually bring value to his future teams? These were all page 1 items. Everything else could go on subsequent pages.

The result? Not even 30 days after our Zoom call, he and his wife were packing their bags and moving to their new residence in Central California, signed job offer in hand.

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