Most people don’t struggle to move into executive roles because they lack experience. They get stuck because their experience isn’t being interpreted at that level. That’s a different problem, and it doesn’t get fixed by making your resume “better.”

What positioning actually is (in plain terms)

Positioning is not branding. It’s not storytelling in the abstract. It’s this: If I hand your resume to someone who doesn’t know you, what do they think you are? Not everything you’ve done, just the takeaway. If the answer is fuzzy, or depends on context, or changes depending on who’s reading it, you have a positioning problem.

How hiring teams evaluate executive candidates

They’re not trying to understand your whole career, they’re trying to make a fast decision about fit. Something like: Where does this person slot in? Have they done something close enough before? Can I explain them quickly to someone else? If that takes more than a few seconds, you’re already at a disadvantage. Not because you’re not qualified, but because it's not obvious.

The 3 things that determine how your executive resume is read

When someone scans your resume or LinkedIn, they’re making 3 calls, whether you intend them to or not.

1. What level you operate at

This is not your title. It’s how your work is described.

If your resume focuses on:

• What your team delivered
• What you were responsible for
• What projects you owned

then you can be doing VP-level work and still read like a Director.

What signals executive level is:

• Shaping direction, not just executing
• Influencing decisions beyond your function
• Owning outcomes that affect the business

2. What direction you’re pointing toward

Most resumes are backward-looking. They describe what happened. But hiring decisions are forward-looking. If it’s not clear what you’re targeting next, the reader defaults to the safest interpretation of your past, which is usually more narrow than what you want.

3. What makes you distinct

At this level, everyone is strong. Everyone has:

• Leadership experience
• Measurable impact
• Solid companies

So the question becomes: Why you? If your resume could plausibly describe 5 other people with similar backgrounds, it’s not doing enough.

What this looks like in practice

This is where the shift becomes obvious.

Example 1: Level

Before (reads like Director):
Led a team of 12 engineers to deliver platform improvements and increase system performance.

After (reads like VP):
Set platform strategy and led a team of 12 engineers to deliver a system overhaul that reduced downtime by 40% and supported company-wide scale.

👉 Same work. Different emphasis. One shows execution, the other shows ownership of direction and business impact.

Example 2: Direction

Before (unclear positioning):
Oversaw product, operations, and go-to-market initiatives across multiple business units.

After (clear positioning):
Operate at the intersection of product and go-to-market, aligning product strategy with revenue goals across multiple business units.

👉 The first tells me what you touched. The second tells me how to place you.

Where positioning breaks in real life

This is what it actually looks like when things are off:

• You’re getting interviews, but mostly one level down → your level isn’t being read correctly
• You’re getting pulled into roles that don’t quite match what you want → your direction isn’t clear
• You’re applying to executive roles and getting no response → the overall picture isn’t obvious enough to pass a quick scan

Why improving your resume doesn’t fix this

Most people try to improve the same version of their story. Better wording, more metrics, cleaner formatting. And it still doesn’t work because the underlying positioning hasn’t changed. You end up with a stronger version of something that still doesn’t land.

What actually changes things

The shift happens when you decide, upfront:

• What level am I actually operating at
• What roles am I targeting next
• What do I want someone to immediately understand about me

Then you build everything around that, not the other way around.

What good executive positioning looks like

It’s not complicated, but it is deliberate.

• Your level is obvious from your first few bullets
• Your direction is clear without explanation
• Your experience reinforces a specific type of role

There’s less in the resume, but what’s there does more work.

The part people resist

You can’t optimize for everything at once. You can’t:

• Position equally well for Director and VP roles
• Target multiple directions with the same narrative
• Include everything you’ve done and still be clear

At some point, you have to decide what this version of your resume is for. That’s usually where things start working.

What changes when this clicks

The volume of responses doesn’t necessarily spike overnight, but the quality does. You start getting pulled into conversations that actually make sense, you’re not constantly explaining how your background fits, and you’re not being read one level down. You’re just easier to place.

If you’re close but not quite there

You probably don’t need more experience. You need your experience to be easier to interpret at the executive level. That’s exactly what the Executive Market Repositioning work is designed to do. We define how you should be read, then rebuild your resume and LinkedIn around that so it’s clear from the first pass.