Estimated Runtime: ~10 minutes
Tone: Warm, reflective, like a mentor helping you see your own journey
clearly
Welcome to Module Three — The Brand. This is where we take everything you've
figured out about your target and start packaging YOU as the answer.
But before we touch a resume. Before we optimize a LinkedIn profile. Before we
practice any interview answers. We need to do something that ninety percent of
job seekers skip entirely. We need to build your story.
Not a list of jobs. Not a timeline. A story. A narrative that makes a hiring
manager lean forward and think, "This person's journey makes complete sense, and
their next chapter should be with us.
Here's a question I ask every client. Walk me through your career. Tell me why
you made each move.
The ones who struggle — they list positions. "I was at Company A for three
years, then I moved to Company B for two years, then Company C." That's a
timeline. It tells me what happened but not why.
The ones who succeed — they tell me a story. "I started in operations because I
loved fixing broken systems. That led me to process improvement at Company B
where I discovered I was really good at building tools that other people use.
That's what took me to product management at Company C, where I now lead the
team building internal platforms.
See the difference? Same career. But the second version has a through line —
fixing systems, building tools, empowering people. Every move connects. Every
chapter builds on the last.
When a hiring manager hears a coherent story, they feel safe. They think, "I can
predict where this person is going. They're intentional. They're strategic."
When they hear a random collection of jobs, they feel uncertain. And uncertainty
kills job offers.
Your career story follows a three-act structure. Just like any good movie.
Act One is your Foundation. How did you enter your field? What drew you in? What
early experiences shaped who you are professionally? This doesn't need to start
with your first job — it can start with what you studied, what you're passionate
about, or a defining moment.
Act Two is your Development. This is the meat of the story. How did you grow?
What challenges shaped you? What skills did you build? And critically — if you
made any career pivots, what triggered them? This is where most people lose the
narrative. They treat a pivot as a break in the story. But it's actually a plot
twist. And plot twists are the most interesting part of any story — if you set
them up correctly.
The key to a good pivot story is the bridge. What connects where you were to
where you went? Maybe you were in finance but moved to tech. The bridge might
be, "I realized the financial models I was building were limited by the tools
available, and I wanted to be the person building better tools." That's a
bridge. It makes the pivot logical instead of random.
Act Three is your Direction. Where are you going next? Why does this move make
sense given everything that came before? This is where you connect your story to
the specific role or company you're targeting.
And underneath all three acts is what I call the Through Line. This is the
single thread that runs through your entire career. It might be a problem you
love solving, a skill you keep deepening, a type of person you love working
with, or a value that drives every decision.
Finding your through line is the single most important exercise in this entire
module. Once you have it, everything else — your resume, your LinkedIn, your
interview answers — becomes ten times easier because you have a north star.
You need three versions of your story. The thirty-second version is your
elevator pitch — we'll perfect this in Lesson Five. The two-minute version is
for networking conversations — enough depth to be interesting, short enough to
invite questions. And the five-minute version is for interviews when someone
says "tell me about yourself.
All three versions use the same structure and through line. They just vary in
detail. The thirty-second version is your through line plus your current
direction. The two-minute version adds one or two key development moments. The
five-minute version tells the full arc with specific examples and results.
Your career story is the foundation of your entire professional brand. Every
resume bullet point, every LinkedIn summary, every interview answer should
connect back to this narrative.
Go do the Story Arc Workshop in your worksheet. Find your through line. Write
all three versions. And practice the two-minute version out loud — because a
story that reads well on paper doesn't always flow naturally when spoken.
In the next lesson, we're taking this story and translating it into the document
that opens doors — your resume.