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On Today’s Menu

Two mini-stories from past clients of mine:

• An engineering leader that went beyond his normal scope of work

• A senior content writer that had to learn to code

At face value, you might think “Okay, so what?”

But in these mini-stories are lessons that I guarantee will apply to your career.

Learning from other people’s experiences

As a business owner and resume writer, I interact with dozens of people every single week.

Whether it’s prospects looking for information about my services, clients telling me their stories, or strangers on Reddit asking for advice, the stream of people on my radar is endless.

But while every person is unique, there are lessons that can be gained from their experiences—lessons that can apply to you.

So today, I’m going to talk about two conversations I had recently with real clients, and what you might learn from them…

1—An engineering leader’s mission to make himself indispensable

I spoke with Mike (not his real name), who’s been a software engineer since 2010, and in management since 2019.

Over the course of our 90-minute interview, a common theme emerged.

Mike was somebody that constantly went above and beyond his scope of work. In almost every role he held, whether as an individual contributor or a manager, he did more than was expected of him.

At his most recent company, he told me how as director of customer support, his department had to hire an extra 30 agents during peak season to manage really high call volumes.

So what did he do?

He created a better way for his existing team to manage call loads by hiring only 4 extra people, and then assigning them to the administration of the technology infrastructure (ie., phone systems, ticket management software) that powered his department’s operations.

Doing this saved the company over $350K a year in personnel costs.

Now did he have to do it? Probably not.

He could’ve just stuck to business as usual, hiring those extra seasonal staff every year.

But the fact that he identified the bottleneck and did something about it made him an indispensable asset to the company.

So how can this apply to you?

Look at your own role and ask: "What problems exist that nobody’s fixed yet?"

Every company has inefficiencies, bottlenecks, or pain points that people have just accepted as "the way things are."

Being the person who tackles these issues—especially when they're outside your job description—transforms you from replaceable to invaluable.

Next time you catch yourself thinking "someone should fix that…" remember that "someone" could be you.

And that initiative might be what separates you from the pack during promotions, layoffs, or when looking for new opportunities.

On your resume, these are the achievements that make recruiters stop scrolling. They show leadership, initiative, and business impact way beyond "managed a team of 10" or "increased sales by 15%."

2—A very experienced writer’s bout with learning SQL

I spoke with Susan, a writer and author who was looking for her next gig.

She was in between jobs during our convo, but had a fairly successful track record writing newsletters for major cosmetic brands, blogs for biotech companies, and web copy for global tech companies.

During one multi-year stint as an account manager with a large database company, she was asked to learn SQL because the company didn’t want to hire the extra staff for managing content related tasks.

Despite the fact that she wasn’t fond of it, she admitted that knowing how to use SQL to pull data served her well at other points of her career.

So how can this apply to you?

The skills that feel most uncomfortable to learn often become your ace in the hole. Susan didn't sign up to be a SQL expert—she's a writer by trade and passion.

But that technical skill she reluctantly acquired opened doors that might have remained closed to other writers.

In today's job market, these "bridging skills" that connect your core expertise to adjacent fields are massively valuable.

They make you adaptable when industries shift and versatile when employers need to do more with fewer people.

What's your equivalent of SQL?

Maybe it's data visualization for marketers, financial literacy for operations professionals, or project management for engineers.

The skill doesn't need to become your primary identity—it just needs to complement your core strengths.

When we work on resumes together, I sometimes find these secondary skills can be what help my clients stand out from equally qualified competitors.

And that’s a wrap for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have questions you’d like me to answer, be sure to connect with me at [email protected].