Decide what your experience argues before you write it

Ask somebody to improve their resume and they will start editing sentences. It is the obvious move and it is almost always premature, because the sentences are downstream of a decision nobody has made yet: what is this document arguing?

A resume without a stated position is a chronological list, and a chronological list gets assessed against where you have been. A resume with a position is an argument, and an argument gets assessed against where you say you are going.

What positioning actually means

Positioning is a single claim your document exists to support. Not a slogan and not a summary — a claim, of the kind somebody could agree or disagree with. For example:

• "I am the person you bring in when a finance function has outgrown its systems."
• "I run large distributed engineering organisations without losing delivery speed."
• "I take regulated businesses through their first serious audit."
• "I move commercial teams from founder-led selling to a repeatable process."

Each of those makes a set of subsequent decisions obvious. If the claim is about scaling engineering organisations, then headcount, org design and delivery metrics lead — and the two years you spent hands-on with a particular framework get compressed to a line, however much you enjoyed them.

How to find yours

1. 01List what you have actually been asked to doNot your job titles — the reasons people brought you in. Across several roles there is usually a repeated pattern: you are the person who is handed the messy thing, or the fast-growing thing, or the thing that has to satisfy a regulator.
2. 02Find the through-lineLook for what is consistent across the pattern rather than what is impressive in isolation. Your best individual achievement is not necessarily your position; your repeated one usually is.
3. 03Test it against your targetRead the last five job descriptions you would genuinely accept. If your claim is not something those employers are buying, it is a true statement about you and the wrong position for this search.
4. 04Write it down in one sentenceIf it takes a paragraph, it is not a position yet. Keep cutting until somebody could repeat it back to you accurately after hearing it once.

What positioning gives you

Once the claim exists, the hard editorial questions get easy. What goes at the top? Whatever most directly supports the claim. What gets cut? Whatever supports a different claim. How much space does an old role get? As much as it contributes to this argument, and no more.

It also settles a question people agonise over: whether to include something. A twelve-year-old role that established the pattern your position depends on belongs on the page. A recent role that has nothing to do with it gets a line, not a paragraph.

The uncomfortable part

Positioning requires leaving things out, and the things you leave out are often the ones you are proudest of. That is the cost, and it is the reason most people skip this step and go straight to editing sentences. A document that says everything about you says nothing in particular, and nothing in particular is what gets filed.