Mastering your 30 second resume

Nikhyl: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the skip podcast. I'm your host, Nikhyl Singhal. And, uh, this episode. is actually revisiting a prior discussion I had on storytelling. I think telling your career story is crucial. I've talked about this a number of times. I've talked about this in the framework around the importance of understanding what story you will be able to tell when you take your next job.

The importance of being able to tell your story on your current job, clearly telling your story is important. If you're in transition and generally, if your story is not improving, it might be time to leave. And so a few months ago, I recorded an episode. Using an example that I made up around someone telling a generic story, and then I went back and looked at, like, how to take it apart and make it a lot more compelling.

since then, I asked a bunch of people, hey, if this is helpful to you, given how important storytelling is. Record your own stories, share them with me, and maybe we can workshop together.

several of you volunteered to workshop with me And I appreciate all of the interest.

I had about a dozen people that I worked closely with and came away with a couple of big conclusions. One is that this is a very, very hard skill.

knowing what to cover, knowing what to skip, knowing when to say what, personalizing it for the person that you are talking with is an unusually difficult skill. I think that people tend to want their stories to be as profound as possible. And so they make them grandiose and abstract because by being big and abstract, it seems to carry more weight.

But in reality, I think that actually is the opposite of the truth. I think that more abstract stories make people feel your hand wavy. I think that people want to tell their story through what they built, which is great. those details. often get in the way of what you're mastering or what problem you're solving.

And so that's actually more applicable to the listener because they're trying to figure out where you fit into their organization or they're trying to figure out maybe how to tell the story that you're telling them to someone else. So oftentimes people were focused on the wrong things. Which is the details or the abstraction as opposed to what was compelling that would actually carry forward when they finish the discussion.

Jargon came up a lot. Lack of understanding that the person that's on the other side may not have all the details, may not know your industry, may not know your company. And so the jargon got in the way of clarity.

And then lastly, we saw a lot of folks would give detail about what the team did. But as I noted in the last episode, people also want to know what you did. And just like, it's hard to talk about yourself. Sometimes it feels a little egotistical to talk about your own contribution as opposed to the team's contribution.

So between being too detailed, being too abstract, not necessarily being clear on you versus team, telling a story that was maybe too much jargon, a little bit too complicated, It ended up being the case that almost every one of the stories I looked at, after I finished, I asked myself, could I play back the key points?

Could I tell that person's story to someone else? The answer was a vehement no.

So as I'm listening to all of these stories, you know, a second thought started to occur to me, you know, I'm a big stickler on being able to tell your narrative. And then I asked myself, well, maybe I'm asking for a skill. That is actually not that necessary. Maybe I'm being overly pedantic. Maybe because I like the marketing part of product, the ability to communicate things that travel.

I was getting myself a little bit stuck and perhaps leading you and the audience kind of in the wrong direction. But then I thought, well, in product in particular, if you can't explain yourself, if you can't explain what you've done, How good of a product person are you really going to be in the mind or the eyes of someone who's considering you for another role or someone who's thinking that they want to work with you and partner with you, whether it's to join you on your team or partner with you at your company.

Storytelling is kind of a core product skill. And so in one way I started thinking, boy, you know, I think that if I can't demonstrate it on the product, I should know best me. I'm definitely going to struggle convincing them that I'm a great product person.

This seems especially important as we think about how LinkedIn and resumes all seem to blur together. You know, if you've ever been on the other side of the table, You find that you start reading all of these documents on people and they all sound pretty much the same. They all sound good. You know, sure.

The companies may change. The experience may change. But you're always looking for things that stand out, and the way you tell your story is a big part of that. This especially is important if you're earlier in career, where you may not have as many brand names. I think that if you are perhaps later in career, you have lots of successes, you can point to it.

People assume that, no matter how you convey the information, you clearly have had some mastery. But if you're early and mid in career, you need to be in a position to be able to show how you uniquely can add value or what your unique contribution was and do it in a way that really resonates. And that is a huge separation between those that may be interesting to move on in a process and those that got stuck.

So a lot of times when I see people that are struggling, Hey, you know, I've talked to a bunch of companies, I think I've got good credentials, but I've been, you know, not able to get very far. I trace it back to the quality of their story, not necessarily the quality of their background. in fact, what really struck me was it's entirely possible That those that have this superpower of being able to tell their stories actually get much better jobs and in fact have much stronger careers than those with equal qualifications or perhaps even better qualifications, but that struggle with the ability to tell their narrative.

And that makes sense in some ways. you know, in the end of the day, there's a lot of qualified people out in the world, but if you can't explain that you have that qualification, it's easy to dismiss. And so it started to occur to me that, boy, this area that I'm harping on, this storytelling area, is like an essential skill and that most people struggle with it.

and the tools that are out there are actually quite weak. And so that's what leads us to today.

We need to work on a way to make it easy for the listener to understand what you're saying and to communicate it to others. and the harder it is for them to relay your information, the less and less likely people will give you credit for the work you've already done or potentially see you as a fit for an environment that they're trying to find a fit for.

So in some ways, the frustration that I had was that I recorded a framework episode a couple months back, as I said, to try to help people. You know, really improve their storytelling. I did believe, and I do believe that this is a very critical skill, but after I got these sort of dozen or so workshop examples.

I realized that the framework really wasn't resonating. You know, in fact, using my own words, they were kind of a bit abstract myself. My frameworks were accurate, but they didn't really help people workshop things. They didn't really help people improve. In fact, the only way I was able to do that was take a video that you've recorded and then go through every 10 seconds and actually give feedback.

and to make it less abstract. I actually have gotten permission to use some of the actual examples from people telling their story in some cases. They're the actual person, and I really appreciate the fact that people were willing to let me use their name, likeness, their voices, their video as part of this, episode.

In some cases, they were open to it, but I had to regenerate their content and maybe change a few words just to protect their privacy. Both of them, I think, were very, very helpful. And so today, you're going to hear half a dozen examples. And then me going through some very specific improvements that I think will make your storytelling dramatically better.

Okay, we're going to start with the most generic question that I can ask you give me an overview of your career This is the first question I asked the folks that I was workshopping with and I got somewhere between a Two to four or five minute video, which was essentially the bird's eye view of their career Now, I think the thing that I want us to work on in today's episode is is how to nail that first 30 seconds.

Because the start is I think the hardest part. The start is a part that convinces someone in a conversation that they should lean in, they should pay attention.

and if it's weak, I think it's a huge turn off. If you can't get through the first 30 seconds, it's really hard to engage someone in a longer conversation. All of you should be preparing 30 second version of your career story.

and a two minute version of your career story. The 30 second and the two minute needs to be good to excellent. I think if I asked you today, how good do you think your story is? I'll bet you vast majority of you are going to say, Mmm, C C+ I don't love talking about myself. It's not something I practice.

I want my words to not necessarily be the thing that people judge me by, but my accomplishments. I think that's insanely dangerous. I think all of you are walking around with a huge career divot because what you're essentially saying is I can't explain what I do 2, 000 hours of the year in a way that I'm proud of, in a way that travels, in a way that resonates, and I can't do it if you give me 30 seconds or two minutes.

I'll do a better job if you give me five to ten minutes, but I But the reality is most people aren't interested in giving you much time to understand you. And if you don't have that tight articulation, you're going to always struggle

because ultimately people want to be taught something very, very efficiently, because if you can teach someone something new relatively quickly, Then you know that you have ability, you have skill, and in product roles, it's a highly applicable thing because we're constantly working on things that are new and different.

And in this case, if someone asks you, teach me about yourself and you can't do so, how in the world do they think that you're going to be able to teach them about their product or teach the customer or teach the engineer? So this is why I maybe I'm overblowing this point, but I'm like. You know, pants on fire.

We got to get good at this. And that's the area that we're really going to deep dive on this first 30 seconds.

Okay. Before we hear some of these examples and some of the improvements that we have made to them I think I want you to keep a few specific things in mind. I think that the most common thing that people did when I was asking them to give them an overview of their career. Their response was to walk me through job to job a summary.

It's essentially a compressed version of however long they've been working. Here's the first job that I had, then here's the second job that I had, and here's the third job that I had. By the way, I'm pretty sure about 80 percent of you would be like, well, yeah, duh, isn't that exactly how you want me to answer the question?

But, think about it maybe from a Hollywood lens for a moment. If you are Interested in getting people to see your movie, and in this example, a movie is your career, you would probably want them to see a trailer, which is sort of a two minute version, three minute version of the movie, and a teaser, which is maybe the 15 second, 30 second version that you see before the movie comes out, right?

We see these all the time on television and before the movies. Now think about how Hollywood constructs teasers and trailers. Teasers and trailers aren't actually constructed let me give you a full summary of the movie in 30 seconds. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. It's like, let me give you just enough for you to be interested in learning more.

In this case, maybe buying a ticket and going to the movie. when people start asking you like, well, you know, Hey, at the high level, I'd love to know a little bit more about you. Love to get an overview of your career. Give me a general sense of what you've done in the past.

I mean, these are all effectively the same question. They're all like, could you play the trailer for your movie? Okay. Could you play the trailer for your career? That's kind of what they're asking. And you, you know, don't use loud noises and, and, and make a voices. Yeah. Although that would probably be quite memorable and would travel quite well.

I think that the point I'm trying to make is I really want you to think through the highlights, the thing that are compelling and try to engage that person to say, wow, that's very interesting. I can kind of understand what you're about ready to tell me that I know what to expect when I sit down and pay for the movie, I'll know what's coming and I'll know what to not only look for, but I'll know where to dig, where to pay attention.

And in this example, maybe this is where the analogy breaks down what questions I should be now asking, because I'll have a good sense of the overview, but I've done it quick enough. That I don't need to spend five to 10 minutes to be able to calibrate. I kind of get a sense of who you are and I can see you different from the other people that I'm either talking to or the other people that I know.

Okay. So hopefully at this point, you're like, all right, now I feel sufficiently bad about the fact that I'm probably not good at this, I'm sufficiently motivated by the fact that this is important, little daunted by the fact that, dudes work with like a dozen people after his last episode and all of them are really struggling.

And maybe to make things even more depressing for you, like most of these are executives and leaders that I'm talking to, they're not people that are super early in career. You're like, all right, let me get this right. You know, this is super important. I'm not gonna be good at it. And even the good people really struggle.

And yet you're telling me that this is maybe, uh, you know, as important as what I actually do. So if you've tracked up until this point, yeah, you're, you're at , you're tracking correctly. Uh, but there is hope because I believe this is a skill that can be taught. I believe this skill can be taught through example, not through just pure framework.

And that's why you're gonna start hearing some examples. That I'm going to start playing and then we're going to come in and we're going to say, Hey, here's some things that we could have changed and improved. And the good news is you're going to hear some of these improvements actually settle. They're going to hear examples of the person re recording.

And then my hope is when you start seeing the before, after, and some of these examples, you're like, I see what this guy's saying. I see what 30 seconds for me should sound like. I see what two minutes should sound like. this, by the way, is just scratching the surface. My expectation is I'll probably come back and do a version two of this where we'll go past the first introduction points.

We'll go past the first few minutes. We'll actually get into more depth, but for today, my hope is that you come away super excited about recording and nailing your 32nd, your two minute.

Okay, here is the first example I'm going to play you. And in fact, I'm just going to play the first 30 seconds of the response to this question. Give me your career overview.

Guest 1 (Before): So I started off my career as a software engineering trainee with Brilio, which operated in an onshore offshore model where client services were in Europe and the development teams were based out of Bangalore. But once I started C sharp coding, I realized that quickly it wasn't quite for me mainly because it was too slow for my pace, which made me look around and seek other roles within the company.

That got me a hands on opportunity to design database on a small initiative. Which was very successful and that led to bigger things and eventually I stumbled into client relations.

Nikhyl: Okay. What did you hear? You heard some of the challenges that I mentioned before. The first thing that I heard is, boy, after 30 seconds, I'm feeling like this is one of those pull up a chair moments where I'm going to need to lean in, sit for 30 seconds, sit for a minute, sit for five minutes before I'm really understanding what this person's done.

By no means is this a trailer or teaser of the career. This starts out very much as here's a little bit of depth on where I started my journey when I was early

and what's challenging here is that this is a successful product manager. With very notable career, but certainly within the first 30 seconds. And if I played the rest of this clip, you would hear detail of job to job to job to job, which will eventually get to like, Oh yeah, now I'm a general manager and I'm a leader.

And I've been doing like these very, very notable product roles. And so you're kind of like, well, if you've had the five minutes to hear it all. You would be in a position to say, okay, now that I understand why there's a lot of great stuff that happened in the year, the end, but I missed it because I was sort of tuning out relatively early in the conversation.

And that's a pretty common thing, by the way, nearly all of you, your most compelling work is actually your most recent work. It's not the first thing that you've done.

so we'll make this note a little later, but the sequence of what you choose to share is so crucial, especially when you're just going to provide a highlight in very, very short period of time.

Okay. So here's the second example of someone who I worked with who actually leaned more the opposite and focused on her most recent role.

Guest 2 (Before): I lead the growth product team here at Shopify. So Shopify has three product areas, core, self explanatory, merchant services, kind of additional features, and then growth.

Everything around how New merchants get up and running using Shopify. This is from where you land on our website to signing up, setting up your store, getting everything ready to go to make your first few sales and then continue to adopt. more of Shopify as your business grows.

Nikhyl: So the good news is we're pretty clear where this person works. We're pretty clear where they fit within their organization, and the articulation is very much in teaching mode. You know, I immediately understand how that company is structured. And I'm going to have a better sense of where the work that now she's going to describe it's in and perhaps it doesn't fit in.

And of course, it's a very sizable company and it's a very notable area of ownership. And so I'm immediately intrigued by the weight of the role as opposed to perhaps her first or second role out of college, which will be very irrelevant in comparison to what she's now working on. The downside is it also is going to require a fair amount of investment for me to get the overview of the person's, career in totality.

Now, if the person's only had one job, maybe this makes perfect sense because it's a deep kind of  thing that you should focus on. But in this case, you know, there's three or four very notable experiences. And again, I'm 30 seconds in and I'm going to be, you know, struggling to hear some of the other points.

So, unless I give the person three or four or five minutes. And so that's where this sort of, uh, maybe a little too deep, but it probably the right thing to go deep on at some point, but not necessarily the first 30 second trailer that I want to hear to make sure I'm grounded in what are all the professional achievements the individual has.

Let's try a third one.

Guest 3 (before): I've spent the last decade and a half uh, leading product teams and launching products in both larger organizations as well as startups in enterprise as well as consumer space that scale user engagement and bring new products to life uh, so that we can generate more revenue.

Most recently at Godarix, I am the single threaded owner for all of consumer experience across all platforms with a cross functional team of 90 to 100 members that are responsible for creating an end to end frictionless experience so that we can acquire new users as well as retain our existing customers

Nikhyl: Okay, so there's a lot of things in this one. Really, I want you to take a second and think about what do you carry from that? You know, and for me, there are sort of two things that we heard within the first 30 seconds. One was sort of a bird's eye view of what this person does from a product perspective.

You know, there are a little bit of their broad themes around how things are organized. And you also heard a little bit of depth around the specific role that they are most recently in. So in some ways we're heading in the right direction.

We're essentially saying like, this is my most compelling thing and this is generally how things are going to fit together. The challenge that you might feel is that it was pretty abstract and there was a fair amount of jargon and yet the person sounded like a product manager. You know, there was a lot of producty terms, but if you're not deep in product, you might not fully understand what those terms mean.

And if you are deep in product, you know, you can kind of say, look, those terms are sort of jargony or abstract and kind of drive a truck through them. So, if I hit pause and I said, Hey, I would love for you to go and tell the person sitting next to you, you know, what is this person's story, boy, after 30 seconds, even though you've gotten a lot of information, you might not have gotten any information because it's not very sticky.

It's not very clear, you know, compared to the last story we said. It was actually quite clear. I just don't know what the person did, nor do I have a general view. So hopefully you're starting to get a sense of, boy, this is pretty hard to dial in the correct altitude. Then to do so in the first 30 seconds, I mean, come on, that's like almost an impossible task, but don't give up.

This can be done. We're going to work through it. It's just, I want you to recognize that the mistakes that you might be making today are pretty common, pretty common to some pretty kick ass product people that I'm working with that really still struggle with this same skill.

what I'm now going to do is play you version two of the story you just heard after workshopping back and forth and giving some comments. Here is now how she talks about her first 30 seconds of career.

Guest 3 (after): I'm passionate about scaling products and building product teams. I'm known to bring a unique blend of making everyone feel heard. But making hard decisions when need be to drive focused execution in every project. In the past 15 years, I've had three pivotal experiences in companies with hip products, and my work helped deepen the customer relationships.

First was at bill. com, which is a business payments company. I eliminated the manual process of invoice processing by using Google's AI technology, which was in nascent stages in 2016.

Nikhyl: So my opinion is dramatically better. Is it perfect? Is she done? No, she's still working on it and there'll be a version three and a version four, because this is a bit of a iterative process. But boy, is it a lot easier to sort of understand what type of product person she is, as well as what role in this example, she chose a role to describe what was the sort of key contribution for that role.

the first tip that I want to share with you is to start your story with a career theme Now, that theme that I'm suggesting for you is essentially the tie that binds all of your work together. What is the through line that connects all of the work that you've done to date?

You know, an example might be like, look, I fell in love with product because I love this area. And I've done this type of work in multiple settings, or I have worked at three late stage companies owning product management in different levels of seniority, or I've spent most of my career deep in fintech, or I have found because of the way that my career unfolded That I have thrived in this nexus between marketing and product, or I've been an entrepreneur all my career, though it's been in multiple companies, or my area of depth is a growth product person is what we call it today.

And I'll talk to you about where I've seen growth and maybe where I have struggled to sort of engage with growth. You know, this theme. Is relatively simple thing. It's like any kind of writing exercise or any kind of product requirement essentially is like, look at the highest level, where does everything fit?

when I hear that, it's just so much easier to anticipate what's coming. And in this example, we kind of know, we know that there's a ton of consumer needs product. That's coming, and most likely you're going to hear about that theme in each of the specific roles that are going to be shared.

And so you're now giving the right to the person telling the story, if you're the listener. You're giving the right to sort of like, okay, I've got you gone through the first 30 seconds. Keep going. I always feel that, you know, you earn 30 seconds at a time that every 30 seconds, if you may lose your audience.

And so each 30 seconds has to be compelling. So the first few sentences needs to be this theme is the point I'm trying to share with you.

I think that that's especially important in the world of TikTok. Where we've seen people move from long form to short form video. That's many ways, the same thing, and part of the reason I think this is important to harp on is that people actually won't remember the details.

You know, today you're probably, when you just heard the story, you'll remember a bit. About where this person orientation is when it comes to product roles, but you're probably not going to know the details on the company that she used. what you really want and what all of us are preparing when you're listening to these stories is like, well, what are the things that you're going to remember and tell others write down?

Perhaps. And the more that you tell people, here's how it connects, the more The more that that's what they're going to remember, because you can assume they won't remember any specific detail, unless it's terribly compelling in a product or an experience that they completely connect with. So that's why it's like less on the detailed roles, more on the connective tissue between the roles.

So, I mean, this is kind of fun because I have all these examples and again, I appreciate everyone that volunteered and shared them with me. I mean, they're, they're essentially doing that to help all of you improve your stories. So in this next example, we're going to use a new example. We haven't shared this one before this example is actually, I'm going to play the before and then we're going to pause, we're going to play the after, and you're going to hear how the sort of career theme was introduced.

Guest 4 (before): So my background spans different roles in consumer growth and monetization. Um, so I started out my career in brand marketing at an agency, helping, uh, tech clients like PayPal with their brand architecture and information architecture. I then quickly realized I wanted to move in house, um, versus, you know, working in agency life.

So I discovered product marketing and took on a role at LinkedIn, which I just IPO'd and worked horizontally across several business lines, helping with things like content strategy, user research, uh, campaign management and optimization.

Nikhyl: So that's a little bit over 30 seconds and, you know, this example, it's pretty similar to our first one that I played for you, which is A deep dive into the first role where, again, this, person has quite a remarkable career.

And so it's clear that the best examples are well backloaded. So what we're looking for is this theme that ties them together. And we didn't hear that in the first example here. This is the second version. This is the version two. After we kind of worked on this theme,

Guest 4 (after): My career has spanned roles across consumer growth and monetization, initially as a product marketer and then in product management. I'll share a few highlights from my time at LinkedIn, Credit Karma, and Headspace. So I started my career as a marketer at LinkedIn, co owning P& L for the JobSeeker Premium subscription, growing it from 30 million to 100 million in a few years.

Now this was a time when LinkedIn was starting to focus on monetizing the free user base and diversify revenue streams beyond the flagship recruiter product.

Nikhyl: a couple of immediate things. One is a really nice, clear theme that we hear that ties things together. But then more importantly, the role that's being described is also extremely clear.

There's almost a teaching element and tone to the way that it's being described now. It's not like, let me tell you all the stuff that I did so you can put it in your notes.

It's more like, well, you know, here's what this company was perhaps asking me to do or that we needed to work on. And these are sort of the growth of it. It's a little high level. It's not entirely clear exactly what the person did yet. It's only first 30 seconds. But it's pretty darn clear that there is definitely a lot more coming and you're clear on where things fit and the altitude is right.

We've gotten this dialed in to not too much detail, but not so little detail that I'm not either interested in hearing more or unclear that I can't relay some of the core bits into the next conversation.

The second tip that I want to highlight is around business jargon and really to just avoid it. So my assessment. is people use these business jargon terms because they're trying to sound more important. They're trying to have the work feel more, let's call it weighty. I don't know if weighty is a word, but I'm going to make it into a word if it's not, you know, it's more profound. If I talk about, you know, these broad, product terms, business terms, MBA terms that people hopefully want to see on their bingo card when they're listening to your story.

I think that the reality is most people don't know how they apply and a lot of cultures try to avoid them in companies.

So the more that you describe it, the more it almost sends the signal that, oh, this person's kind of formal and they're going to be a little bit structured in the way that they communicate and they've been practiced. And this is going to then sort of shields up with the other person that's listening.

You know, the person that can make it more conversational talk like a normal human is the one that kind of brings that down and you start to immediately see that person in their environment or partnering with them, you know, within their company. It just makes it a lot more approachable and accessible.

But the thing that then I think you might fear Is that if you don't use those terms, then your work may small. And if your work seems small, then you kind of, you will lose from the other side. So I think that's kind of what's going on here. And you've even heard it in some of these stories some of these examples you're like, wow, I have no fricking idea what that person said, even though I know what those words are.

And those are all words are on my bingo card for what a product manager would say, or what a, you know, a business leader would say. But I don't necessarily think that that's going to teach me anything nor is it going to help me understand what you're doing. So that's the why you're sort of stuck between why people use it and maybe why people should avoid it.

So there are other ways to add weight other than these noise words. One is to describe your superpowers. You know, think through, Hey, if you have a superpower or an area of strength or perhaps an area of depth of experience, make sure that comes through.

And so then as you're talking, you're able to reference that, you know, all of these jobs and all of these responsibilities. And then people are like, Oh yeah, I can see this as a strength area. And I'm totally understand that area. And that's actually unique to you. So it's not this sort of generic business thing, you know, maybe you've got a couple of brand names.

Maybe a product that you've worked on that's a little bit recognized. Maybe it's an industry that's hot or that's recognized. Maybe obviously it's a company or maybe it's a long tenure. It's something that is substantive. That's the weight that you want to bring to the table. perhaps it's an accomplishment around a major feature milestone that perhaps the person doesn't know because they don't know the product, but perhaps it's notable enough that you can kind of drop that.

But when you're seeking to add weight, you're trying to, as much as possible, find things that resonate that is based on you. Not these sort of cheap noise words that don't really add any value. Okay. So the main takeaway is to avoid business jargon. It could be to add weight in other ways, or it could be just like talk like a normal human.

Either way, that's actually what we're trying to get to because it just makes the communication go faster. And maybe as an aside,

you know, I've been talking a lot about like make the story It's compelling, concise, makes sure it travels well, but a lot of times if you can get the person into a conversation where you're able to move quickly back and forth, they're saying something, you're responding very quickly, speed of communication is oftentimes a huge factor.

moving people along in process or just generally advocacy. I sometimes think about who are the people I can go fast with. If I can go fast with you, I know that you're someone that not only I can respect, but you're probably someone who's quite a senior.

Because this faster I can go, it means that you sort of understand where I'm going and you know, I understand where you're going. But the person that is very formal, very structured, very much like I'm trying to make sure I understand exactly the word you're using, so I don't misinterpret it.

That person's slow in communication. That slow communication, often because you're adding all of this sort of scaffolding around structure and noise words, etc. You're not talking like a normal person. Makes it feel harder to advocate. Makes it feel harder to understand and also just makes it more work.

And everyone wants to be in a relationship where it's less work and get more done. And so that's the reason why I really want us to avoid business jargon and talk like a normal, simple to understand person, even if you're trying to convey substantive things.

Okay. So this is one of my last examples. And, you know, kind of before, after. and this is one of those examples where I think it does a good job of avoiding business jargon.

Guest 5 (before): So I started, uh, in product management about 14 years ago at Blackberry. And there I got to take the lead on conceiving and launching an app from zero to one. Uh, the experience of like being able to put something into market and see people use and enjoy it. I just, I got hooked. Uh, prior to that, I'd worked in Uh, schizophrenia genetics research as a software engineer and program management.

And I think product to me really felt like the home that I had been looking for.

Nikhyl: Okay, we're 35 seconds in the thing that I liked about the story is.

I think all of you understood every single word that person said. All of you can probably repeat. Nine at a time of the things that she landed with you. And it sounded like a conversation that you would have with someone else. It did not sound like an overly structured robotic written type of formula for communication.

So the accessibility of the words, vocabulary, and the clarity. just makes me think that I want to hear more. Now, what I didn't hear is I can't in good faith say I know where she's going. I can't in good faith say, is she unusually senior, which in this case, she's exceptional and she is quite senior. but we don't know that going in.

But boy, we know that she likes the work she's done, which, ironically, is the first person that I've played of the five or six examples I've shared with you that actually talked about why she does what she does. And, you know, it sounds like such a simple thing, but it kind of matters. It's not like, Hey, this is the job that I got.

And this is what I was trained. But it's like, Hey, I just kind of fell in love. Like how human is that? how exciting is that to, to find it another person, if you're trying to engage with them. So that's the reason why I liked this. And this was version one. Let me play for you version two.

Guest 5 (after): So I got started in product about 14 years ago and really just became fascinated with learning how to know what to build and how to craft a really excellent product. So over the arc of my career, I just basically went to like smaller and smaller teams with increasing leadership positions so that I could learn what makes a great product and what makes it successful in market.

And for me, it's that intersection of. Really interesting customer problems, product crafting and product strategy is really what continues to drive me as a product leader. So let me tell you about what I worked on, and I'm going to start with the most recent stuff first and go backwards.

Nikhyl: we're really cooking now.

I mean, why I like this is A, it's a template for all of you. This example has this sort of structure that we're trying to get. It's signaling what's coming in the end, but more importantly, it's starting with how the product work fits together and why it's compelling to this person. You know, it turns out that there's a number of good examples that are coming, but I think all of you are like, you know, Hey, I'm interested in hearing the rest of this.

And, you know, I love the fact that she's talking about it, not in this structured, overly, stunted way, but as we now know kind of what we can expect around the product work and how it connects to the human and the user. And that's something that she's found consistent across those roles. She's like, let me start with the end and work your way to the beginning.

Someone could just pause and say, that's really interesting. I'm curious. Yes. you know, we have the same problem here, or someone can pause and say, you know, that's interesting is that we don't do a lot of end user and consumer work. One of the things is you talk to me about your story is I would love to make sure that, you know, you've done work where that isn't actually present because that might be applicable to me.

The reason why that's important is, can you imagine spending 15 minutes telling you about all of this great consumer stuff in this case? And the person's like, well, we don't do any of that work. Now, in this case, because she's had a 32nd, like, here's how it all fits together. She can look to see, is this person like, Oh, is there an area of a connection or is there not?

And, you know, that's where this personalization comes in to know, like, look, I've given you enough to now be able to signal what's coming so that if you want me to just, you don't feel like you're interrupting, you have some foothold and you can kind of work through it. Okay. So this was one of my better examples.

I mean, it started good and it got to better, but you can see the overview Matching with a detailed description coming for each of these role, but each of them have the same concept. Each role will be described in a relatively clear and footholdy kind of way.

In fact, if you take that further a bit, that's kind of my third tip. It's a bit more advanced and I can in good faith say that 30 seconds, but generally speaking, What you really want to do is think through the conversations that you want to have. With the person that you're telling your story with. So let's do this mathprepare.

Your greatest hits, your greatest hits are maybe one or two minutes. Soundbites around things that you've done that are really compelling. Let's say that you're early in career. Maybe it's a couple of things. Oh, you know, I did this research project when I was in school. You know, I had this internship where I was really, you know, doing some really interesting work.

You know, when I was in high school, I had this entrepreneurial venture that I worked on. And when I worked in my first job, you know, this was the kind of the key thing. Um, And I was asked to do and I felt like I have some feedback that shows that it went really well. If you're later in career, the conversation can be a lot more compelling.

It's like, I worked on this really important product. This was my role. And, you know, it went from A to B, whatever. You have these stories, okay? We're not going to put all of them in the first 30 seconds. But, you know, those are your kind of greatest hits and you kind of bring those to the table and you've exercised those and rehearse those.

And so, you know, that if someone, asks you something, you're like, boom, I know how to respond. It's kind of like a presidential debate. You walk in with 50 stories and then you're just waiting to sort of let them, you know, out, uh, you know, and so you're just essentially pre prepped for these. What you're trying to do with any of these sort of, exercises of storytelling is you're trying to connect these sort of broad questions that the person is asking you about with those greatest hits, right? So, in some ways, the art of telling this sort of career theme and not using jargon and talking like a normal human is to essentially seed those conversations.

Yeah. And so what's happening is you're essentially saying, well, here's the overview of my career. People are like, okay, I get what's coming. These are the areas of strength. And then, Hey, as I cover these, these are the things that I want to make sure that, you know, and maybe it's weighty and it's important, but it's stuff that you kind of understand.

And then, you know, you're essentially asking the person, well, where do you want to go, but then they have enough of a roadmap so they can say, well, tell me about that time that you were working in that growth environment. And you're like, oh, okay. And then boom, one of your greatest hits comes out, but you've given them enough so that they can triangulate.

So there's a very long way of saying. You know, what you're trying to do, in addition to being very clear and very, thematic, is you're trying to ensure that you're seeding enough of these stories or teasing your greatest hits, perhaps that's a better way of describing it. So that people will know how to engage with you.

And when they do, you'll be relaxed because you'll be able to pull out that greatest hit and then adjust it accordingly.

so while I know there's a lot here, what's funny is I was going through this as I was like, Oh, this is just the first 30 seconds. but I think that the points that we're sharing here actually apply all the way through, nail those first 30 seconds through highlights.

Not through detail, ensure that the weight exists without jargon. Talk like a normal person, ensure receding the conversations to nail it, to connect it to your greatest hits and do this all in real time on the spot in these somewhat amplified settings. You know, most of the time when you're telling your story, sure, if you're at a cocktail party and you're just talking to friends, it's not so big of a deal, although it's the same skill.

But oftentimes it's like, oh boy, I'm trying to get a job or, you know, maybe I'm trying to figure out if this project, you know, I describe in a way that people are excited about partnering with me on it or whatever, whatever scenario drives you to have to tell your story. Usually there's some anxiety. So practice, practice, practice is really important.

You know, as I was going through this exercise, I also realized that it would be a bit remiss on my part not to share at least my own story, not because, I think it's exceptionally good or bad. I think that it's just very illustrative of all three of these points. And Frank, I didn't have a great example of someone who had done all three.

but I thought that it would be helpful for illustration purposes.

So my 32nd version that I tend to tell people is, you know, my career is in two stages. You know, the first dozen years was working in startups with three companies, which I founded. And then act two was as a product manager where I worked at scale, Google and Meta and at growth at Credit Karma. all these companies, I've always been a hands on entrepreneur, you know, focused on product and driving products forward either for the first time in the case of my startups Or expanding existing product line, which is what I did in my last dozen years.

so this version is something that I would say to someone, you know, kind of the generic kind of off the top is probably similar version of this on my LinkedIn. You know, this is my generic kind of, you know, theme song, if you will. it hopefully comes across as a normal person talking. It has a ton of weight because I happen to be lucky enough to have worked in a bunch of settings.

It shows two big things, one that I'm trying to highlight, and one which comes across unwritten. The thing that is unwritten is that I've worked in different phases working growth. I've worked at late stage and I've worked at early stage. This is an important element that I want to always make sure that I can leverage when I'm talking to someone about a specific challenge that they may be having or an area that they're probing on.

You know, there's lots of different parts of scale and I've talked about product management changes. So this is one of my superpowers and areas of strength. I've seeded it in my story. Middle, late, early, that's one piece. Thank you very much. And then the second piece is my entrepreneurship. I've essentially said that, look, I've always acted like an entrepreneur.

Product was just a different way of being an entrepreneur. So all of this was going through my mind when I constructed my story. And now I'm kind of expecting my conversations are going to be around. Hey, how did you build this at this stage? Right. And that's the conversation that I've prepared for.

And so the seeds are there and they're very connected to my strengths and they're very connected to my background. Now, I recognize that a lot of you are not as old as I am. They haven't had as many opportunities to work in these companies. And the weight that I described. Was very much around the company names or being a founder.

They weren't that personal. I talked very kind of sterile. So it's kind of like, Hey, this is just the professional accomplishments is a very generic. I probably wouldn't use this tone. With a friend, but it gives you a general generic vanilla version of myself.

Now, maybe I'll give you the second version that I sometimes share that has a little bit more depth, but really designed to increase weight. This might be if I'm talking to someone and I need them to sort of take me more seriously, or I need them to think that, okay, what makes this guy tick? how do I connect with this human?

The first version is not really a connector thing. So when I pick versions of my story, I'm thinking a lot about the other side. Hmm. One or with this person, is looking just for the sort of give me the minimum, just the facts, ma'am type situation, or are they really trying to engage?

Nikhyl: so this is the second version is a little bit more deeper.

So my career is in two stages. You know, the first stage focuses on startups. when I joined the startup out of college, I founded a dot com that imploded. then I was the founding CEO of two companies, one which was bought by IBM and one which was bought by Google. And that's what started back to act twos when I joined Google and became a product manager for the first time there, I helped launch hangouts where I was lead product manager and then I organized a product management team.

That is today's Google Photos. left Google to try my hand at hypergrowth, and that's when I joined Credit Karma To transform them from a free credit score website to the money button on the phone. And, you know, as the company transitioned to Intuit, I left and joined Meta to lead several of the core products at Facebook, including video and groups.

you know, in my heart, I'm an entrepreneur, but I learned you can be an entrepreneur at any stage of company, whether it's expanding a product line at Google Meta Credit Karma or getting companies off the ground as I did in my startups, maybe 50 seconds, maybe a minute. curing kind of like what makes me tick.

You're hearing a lot of weight, you know, a lot of brand names that I've been lucky to work on a lot of products that people have known. I mean, you worked in a bunch of very well known distributed consumer products, which is a bit of an edge in these scenarios because. Most people know the consumer products, many people don't know all the really successful enterprise products.

So I'm leveraging that in my story, and then I'm just trying to give people a sense of like where it all goes. In less than a minute, they've heard seven different jobs. And at this stage, I'm trying to kind of get people to sort of realize, it isn't really that valuable for us to go through depth on any specific one.

We've got to stay at a little bit of a high level. I'm almost like forced to conversation. To remain at a slightly higher altitude. Because there's just too much that people can go into, but there's a lot of credibility. And so now I'm going to get, Hey, here's kind of what we're really, really needing help with.

I don't get a lot of like, well, you know, in that third job, what was the metric of sick? I'm not going to get that, but I'll tell you that if you listen to some of these other stories, it's eight minutes to get to the same place. It's a lot of information that people aren't retaining and you're almost volunteering that you want to go into this level of depth and minutiae and you're almost like making the person think back and do a lot of work to figure out how to connect all of that detail into what's really meaningful.

So you can see staying at the right altitude and getting the right things across at the right time is so crucial in that first 30 seconds a minute.

this is a little bit of a trickier episode. It was a revisit on a previous framework. I invite you to listen to that, prior episode, and now that you've had this example set because those lessons still apply.

hopefully with the examples we've heard, You're in a position to sort of sit down and build your 32nd and 62nd story. If you're so bold, send them to me, Nickel, N I K H Y L at skip. community. I find this stuff super interesting. If you record them in Loom, I'll try to get to them and give you feedback. If not myself, maybe a few other folks that I've been working with. if I don't get to you, it'll be an incredibly valuable exercise for you to have in your back pocket.

I think that for the more bold folks out there that have courage, if you share them out on LinkedIn with hashtag skip story, I think that we can get number of folks working with you on your story and giving you feedback. that may be a horrible idea, from a social media perspective, but you know, Hey, I think this is that important that people should take risk.

If nothing else, if you've gotten to the end of this episode, please, please practice and nail your stories. It is essential. For your career, it is essential that all of your hard work is articulated well enough that people understand and can advocate for you with the work you've actually done. That's why this is so important.

I'm going to keep at it. I'm going to keep working with you on this. Because I think it is so important and perhaps as an exponent on what kind of role you can get. And the saddest part is when people work so hard and they don't explain it in a way that resonates, they don't get those opportunities and that ultimately holds them back.

So hopefully this, episode works. Obviously love to hear your feedback. But most importantly, best of luck on your story. I can't wait to hear them.

Thanks for listening today to the skip. Today's episode resonated with you. Please consider leaving a review, sharing with people, you know, who want more out of their career. You can subscribe to me on Apple and Spotify from the podcast and obviously on YouTube as well, wherever you currently listen. You can also follow me on my newsletter at Substack, and if you have questions or feedback, email me at nickell at skip.

community, leave a comment, LinkedIn or Threads or Twitter. I try to answer each one directly. As always, I'm Nikhyl, and this has been The Skip.