🐿️ Platitudinous - The Insanely Profitable Tech Newsletter

Originally published 8th April 2024

If you came across any of these sentences in CVs submitted for a tech leadership role, what would you think?

• Established development processes to coordinate work of ML scientists, software engineers and domain experts to implement solutions using cutting-edge LaMDA and OpenAI technology.

• Reorganised the entire tech estate, creating security and project capability and pivoting the engineering function to become a true business partner ensuring demonstrable value.

• Guided executives through the behavioural changes for scaled Agile ways of working, including planning, obstacle handling, org design and managing demand.

These are all real examples, drawn from a client’s recruitment inbox and gently edited to protect the guilty. Let me tell you what came to mind when I read each of them: motherhood and apple pie.

You might have noticed that Americans are holding an election this year, which means they’ll be enduring a steady stream of baby-kissing and glad-handing from candidates eager to serve. Politicians love to hear themselves talk, but they’re also loath to alienate even a single voter—so they have to get good at standing in front of an adoring crowd and solemnly saying absolutely nothing, with hand on heart and an inspiring tone. A key technique is to passionately and eloquently endorse an entirely uncontroversial position; if you come out strongly in favour of human rights, hard work, and equality while decrying crime and corruption, you’ll make headlines and the evening news for sure, and with luck your listeners won’t notice that you haven’t said a thing about the hard choices you’d actually make in office.

The trite and the banal may make good content for office-seekers, but we should be holding candidates for jobs to a much higher standard. The writers of the sentences above, like most of the others in my client’s résumé pile, have told us what they did but not why. What “solutions” did they implement, and what did they solve for real live customers? What “demonstrable value” did they demonstrate and for whom? And for pity’s sake, please tell me why “scaled Agile ways of working” have any purpose other than padding CVs?

When you’re scouring LinkedIn for outstanding tech executives like I’m doing with my client, look for the rare job-seekers who actually describe their business impact: the ones who “doubled inbound qualified leads” or “slashed hosting costs” or “reduced subscriber churn” and tell credible stories to prove it. I find this filter alone cuts out 80% of the inbound submissions and leads to much better conversations at the next stage, with candidates who are ready to make controversial decisions and be accountable for real, customer-relevant results. If I can’t even tell from your CV how your employer makes money, it’s going straight into the bin.

This first appeared in my weekly Insanely Profitable Tech Newsletter which is received as part of the Squirrel Squadron every Monday, and was originally posted on 8th April 2024. To get my provocative thoughts and tips direct to your inbox first, sign up here: https://squirrelsquadron.com/