A tough job market rewards the people who can say, in one sentence, why they, and not the other thousand applicants, should get the role.

This episode turns into a live coaching session. Dr. Kyle Elliott, a tech career and executive coach, walks Ben through the exercise he uses with senior leaders across Silicon Valley: gathering feedback from people who knew you as a child and people who know you now, then finding the overlap. That overlap, in Kyle's language, is your fabulousness, the specific and provable things that set you apart from everyone else with a similar background.

The episode moves from theory into practice quickly. Kyle coaches Ben live, drawing out how Ben's own friends describe him, then pressing for the proof behind each trait: not just positive, but the specific week a deal fell through and Ben kept going anyway. That gap between a personality trait and a concrete story is where resumes and LinkedIn profiles usually fall flat, a problem Sales Engineers, Technical Consultants, and Customer Success leaders run into constantly once a market tightens.

The conversation also covers the part of hiring nobody agrees on right now: how much AI is actually reading resumes, and how much a candidate should let AI write theirs. Kyle's answer, drawn from clients inside Google, Amazon, and other large tech companies, cuts against the assumption that bots decide everything. He also unpacks his cake and frosting framework for balancing the qualifications a role demands against the individuality that gets someone remembered, and how to talk about weaknesses in an interview without hiding them or handing the interviewer a reason to say no.

Dr. Kyle Elliott, is a tech career coach and executive coach at CaffeinatedKyle.com, working with senior managers, executives, and job seekers across Silicon Valley and the wider tech industry. He is a member of the invitation-only Forbes Coaches Council and a consultant with the Myers-Briggs Company, and his coaching has been featured in Business Insider, Fortune, and the Harvard Business Review.

Show notes footer:

Listen and subscribe:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1yU6AcoCLySqE1wGn80HOT?si=649d8f8c3d8b47a3

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/tech-world-human-skills/id1674003078

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@techworldhumanskills/podcasts

Newsletter and archive: https://www.techworldhumanskills.com

Connect with Ben: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benpthoughts

Technical Storytelling for Individuals: https://www.elevatedyou.live/individuals

Technical Storytelling for Organisations: https://www.elevatedyou.live/organisations

Dr Kyle Elliott: https://caffeinatedkyle.com/freebies/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylecromerelliott/