But reading both the write up, and the various versions of his resume left me immediately with a sense of genuine anger - not for the situation, but at the author. As a somewhat self reflective person this naturally caused me to seek the source of this visceral reaction, and the conclusion I’ve come to is something nobody must have told him, or he was simply unwilling to hear. The problem here is his language / presentation. Now, I don’t mean his command of the English language, which is certainly quite good (especially considering that the author is likely multi-lingual, and English may not even be his native tongue).
As someone who has been working with seasoned executives for multiple decades, what struck a nerve with me was they nature in which the author chooses to express himself. It doesn’t “feel” like the way a seasoned executive would be expected to write. It seems much more like a crypto-bro, or a 20-something year old trust fund kid with delusions of grandeur. It’s perfectly possible the author is a genuinely professional, capable, and approachable person. But he doesn’t come across this way in both his blog or his resumes. And the truth especially a marketer should know, is that presentation often counts for a lot more than content.
Who uses language such as “findictators”, “COMB-shape hands-on doer” and “Pain Recognition”? And what’s with the infinity symbol graphic on the first resume? My favorite part is the long list of self-described “ABCs of me” at the bottom of the resume. It reads like a self-help guru book for business “wannapreneurs” with zero actual experience (which is in contrast to him actually having experience, and that contrast is the issue). Even the picture on top of the blog signals “bro” in every way. The feedback form the high-profile career coach was simply code the author couldn’t decipher - “you have nothing specific to offer” just means “you’re presenting like you swallowed a dictionary of cool business buzzwords which gives you no real shape or form, but leaves an impression of self importance and overestimation”.
Changing this is incredibly difficult, even more so because VCs used to pump funding into plenty of leaders with this kind of presentation, which infiltrated social media and normalized the appearance. And certainly losing some of the artifice of “traditional business” has long been a hallmark of the tech industry (I recall a time when Bill Gates was considered “edgy” because he didn’t wear suit and tie). And authenticity is increasingly encouraged and needed in modern business. But even then, you need to be able to read your audience, and the author simply is missing something there.