Ok, friends. Rohan here. I’m back with the next issue of Coached — your personal coaching email that’s a 2-minute read, but speeds up your career by years.
In today's Mentor's Corner, let's talk about first impressions. I'm sharing one simple trick that might just change every introduction you make from now on. Later in the issue, there’s some resume advice for people on their job search.
To regular readers: I set aside a big part of my week to write these emails and to make sure they’re high quality. Similar advice from a personal coach would cost you a lot. But, I don't ask for $. Instead, my ask is simple:
If you know someone who’s job searching, tell them about Resume Worded. They can get a free resume review here. It’ll make their search quicker.
If you learn something new from any of my emails, tell someone about them.
Estimated read time: 2 minutes 15 seconds
How good is your resume?
Use Resume Worded to find out. In 2 minutes.
📈 Mentor's Corner
Insights put together by me. One practical lesson a week that will make a measurable impact on your career, delivered right to you — for $0.
How to become more interesting to every person you meet
When you meet new people and tell them about your story, you probably feel you should hide the messy parts.
The career gap. The stuff that makes you seem not ‘perfect’. The weird background or inexperience.
But THAT’s what makes you interesting.
Think about your favorite podcaster or personality. Why do you tune in to them? They’re different.
They LEAN INTO what makes them unusual instead of trying to sound perfect.
You should do the same.
If you're a stay-at-home mom returning to work, don't try to hide it. Lean in. It's what makes you even more interesting:
"I took a few years off to focus on raising my kids, and it was incredibly rewarding. But as they grew, I missed the challenge of my career. So I pivoted into marketing, blending my creativity with newfound strategic skills. It's been an exciting journey of rediscovery."
WAY more memorable.
Maybe you’ve had an unconventional career path:
"I was a barista for five years. You learn fast how to handle pressure when people are angry and haven't had their coffee yet. Those skills transferred surprisingly well to client management. Now, I’m…"
Much better.
Some interesting tidbits you could weave into your story:
Your weird side-project: "My day job’s at a startup but lately I’ve been OBSESSED with building this random app..."
A personal challenge you've overcome: "I was sidelined for over a year because of [e.g. major injury], but I’ve got a whole new take on life and I’ve been trying to make a name of myself as an [agent]..."
Countries or cities you've lived in: "About me, well, I've called three continents home which is why I think I’m always obsessed with new experiences and trying so many different industries..."
Non-linear jump: “I actually walked away from [the safe path] to run a scrappy [thing]; the paycut was whatever but GOD I love it!”
An unusual hobby: "When I'm not crunching numbers, I'm usually rock climbing..."
A volunteer experience: "I spend my weekends doing..."
An unexpected skill: "My theater background surprisingly comes in handy in board meetings..."
Everyone has a story. The key is finding the parts that make yours stand out.
🫵 Your exercise today
To help you craft the perfect micro-story, write down a few of the most interesting or unusual things about your career journey so far. Think…what’s weird about me?
And when you have them:
Send me one or two of them by replying to this email. I’d love to learn a little bit more about our readers plus you’ll get elements of your intro story ready for the next time you meet someone new. Win-win!
By the way, speaking of figuring out your story:
One thing that actually helps is understanding your patterns - what drives you, how you work, the beliefs you carry around without realizing.
Two months ago, we built a 20-minute assessment with PhDs and career coaches that reveals this stuff. Your actual work patterns, what motivates you, the hidden beliefs shaping your decisions.
It's like a personality test, but not the horoscope bullsh*t where every result could apply to anyone. This is specific to how you actually operate at work.
People who've taken it keep saying things like "this explained everything" and "I wish I had this years ago."
If you haven’t tried it yet, you really should. Right now it's free, but not for much longer. We've been eating the costs while it's in beta. Tests like this normally run $100+.
Takes less time than your commute (unless you work from home). Try the Coached Impact Assessment now - if the link doesn’t open, go to coached.com/quiz.
🔎 Speed Up Your Job Search
One actionable piece of advice to help you hack your job search.
The word that makes you sound lazy on your resume (even when you’re not)
Your resume isn't getting you interviews. Not because you're unqualified - but because hiring managers can't tell if you're qualified.
Look at these bullets:
❌ Supported the marketing team with various initiatives
❌ Assisted in data analysis projects
A hiring manager reads these and thinks: "Can this person actually do marketing? Can they lead our new social media marketing project? Do they know Excel? I have no idea."
So they don't put you through to the next stage. Why risk it when there are 50 other resumes from people who clearly show they can do the job?
That's the problem with words like "supported" or "assisted." I call them weasel words - they let you hide what you actually did. "Supported" could mean anything from running entire campaigns to getting coffee.
Compare to:
✅ Created social media content calendar and posted 3x weekly, growing followers by 40% in 6 months
✅ Cleaned and organized customer data in Excel for 3 analysis projects, reducing prep time from 2 days to 4 hours
Much better. A hiring manager is like “Great - this person could run our socials plus could probably put together some reports for leadership…”
If your resume is full of weasel words, that's one reason why you're not getting callbacks. Upload your resume here - the AI catches these and fixes them for you.
P.S. Feel free to steal the good examples and tweak them for your own resume. BUT, an even better idea would be to use our Resume Rewriter features in the tool. Takes about 30 seconds. Might actually get you interviews.
Stop applying to jobs with a bad resume!
Optimize it once for free.
🤭 In all unseriousness
🤣 BTW: you shouldn’t be writing your cover letter from scratch anymore. Instead, for a real, actually good cover letter, use this AI cover letter tool. It’ll write cover letters that actually have personality and don’t sound like AI — unlike ChatGPT.
Try it just once for a job you actually want — see how good it is for yourself.
🫵 Before we wrap up
What'd you think of today's edition?
🤢 You didn't bring enough value.
Here’s a review of my last email. Leave one here. You’ll be in good company :-)
I hope today’s issue gets starred too :)
post it! thank you so much Bill
appreciate it :)
so glad that resonated!
If you missed it last week, see it here.
And if you’re new here, join at Coached.com to get the next one
Until next time,
Rohan
Founder at Coached & Resume Worded
