Everyone is already too busy, most of the time.

This is a core idea and frustrating truth in The agile comms handbook by Giles Turnbull. If you want someone to pay attention to you and the information you are sharing, you have to make it frictionless. People don’t have time. To deal with this, Turnbull suggests presenting information in three layers, like a cake. At the top is the lure for attracting attention. The middle layer is the context that gives just enough information for the reader (or viewer or listener) to know if they know enough to stop there. At the bottom is the big detail layer, where all the nitty gritty details of the project live.

But what if I, Westley Winks, am the information that I want to share? What if I want people to know about me? I’m starting the job search soon. I need to bake my own three-tier cake and that’s exactly what I did.

My three-tier job search cake

The detail layer is my entire professional life. It’s the skills, how I treat my co-workers, long-term achievements, and credentials that shape my professional identity. If people really want the details about who I am professionally, they can look at:

• GitHub profile with all of my coding projects
• The presentation I did for my senior project in college
• Stories, projects, or achievements shared in an interview
• Website with posts going back years
• Other social media like LinkedIn or Mastodon
• Transcripts, diploma, language proficiency scores, and the like

This is the default material; it already exists and no extra work needs to be done to “create” this stuff. Of course, not all of it is relevant. I don’t think anyone, me included, is interested in my two and a half days of trying to do a 30-day coding challenge with R in 2021. On the other hand, this is the place to tell some of the important stories that can’t be reduced down to bullet points.¹

But hiring managers don’t want or need all the details right up front to know if they want to hire me or not. They don’t need to hear about that time when I was in Morocco and there was a wedding and I didn’t know what to wear and I showed up at the wrong time so I expertly leveraged my problem-solving skills and resilience to—I don’t even have the right degree that the position requires. Since, most of time, hiring managers are already too busy, they don’t have the time to hear all that when they know they’re going to hire someone else who has what they are looking for. Context layer items shouldn’t be too much of a time burden and should let the reader know if they want to know more.

A résumé is the main item but it could also be a LinkedIn Profile, cover letter, or recommendation letter. Typical items in an application package. My paper résumé is black, white, and boring and it fits onto a singular 8.5” x 11” sheet of paper. Not that it will ever be on a physical sheet of paper. It’s 2024 and résumés get sent as PDFs in an email. If they’re already being looked at on a computer, why not create a digital version that I can link to and, importantly, style how I want? So, I built a page on my website for the digital version. Both give a summary of who I am professionally in a format that people can scan with their eyes if they have ten seconds or fully read if they have a couple of minutes. Again, much of a time burden and by the end they’ll know if they want to know more.

A good functioning context layer should draw people into the detail layer if they want to. Maybe they see “Python” a few times in my résumé and they want to know just how good I am with it by looking at all my projects on GitHub. The beautiful thing about the internet is the ability to link to other things. Add links to your detail material where you can; it should be effortless to dig deeper.

Lastly, how can I capture people’s attention, how do I make going deeper into my professional cake as easy as possible? I think there are lots of opportunities here:

• Button on my website that goes to my digital résumé, colored differently and maybe moving a little bit
• Elevator pitch already prepared
• QR code that links to my digital résumé as my phone wallpaper to quickly show at a networking event
• Link in my social media bio or in a short post
• “Summary” section at the top of my résumé or LinkedIn profile
• Email sent to hiring department

Like the layer below it, a good lure automatically brings people into the context layer. The context layer will tell the reader if they want to know more. After that, hopefully I am called in for an interview where I can plate up my detail layer as much as I want.

In summary, I want to lure hiring managers into looking at my résumé and make it easy for them to go through the detail, if they want. Each layer takes more time than the previous but provides more information in the right doses.

Employers have cakes too

Similarly, I’m also sampling employer’s communication cakes when I’m job searching. I’m too busy trying to get a job to do a deep dive on the vision and culture of every company I come across. Just like how they don’t need all the detail up front, neither do I. In this case, I’m looking for:

• Lures. Job titles on job board, word of mouth, social media posts.
• Context. Job listing, “about us” page on their website.
• Detail. Interview, deep dive online research, informational interviews with employees.

Just like my job search cake, these should be distinct items. I don’t need the nitty gritty details about the entire company in the job listing. I just want to know if I can get behind the mission and if I’m qualified. Later, I will want to know about past projects and company culture but only when I am ready.

Everyone is too busy, most of the time. Most people don’t want their face pushed into a giant detail-cake and this includes both employers and job-seekers. Use items in that detail layer to make your information (i.e. you) more digestible and relevant. Add some tiers to your cake.

Created: 2024-10-05

Last modified: 2024-10-05