Below is an example of how one of our clients improved their resume using lying, narrative storytelling, and quantifying results – and got a senior management position after just 3 months. Everything is printed with his permission (anonymized of course).
Our client was a seasoned data engineering, BI, and analytics professional with 14 years of experience driving data-driven transformation in manufacturing and enterprise operations. However, because of unfortunate events (such as having COVID for 4 months), their career had never taken off in a way that they felt reflected their abilities. Therefore, he came to us to help him lie in ways that strategically enhanced their resume and job candidacy.
We chose to write about this one client because this process shows how you can transform your application from a technical (dime-a-dozen) resume to something that stands out to recruiters. Part of this is knowing how to lie, but also, changing the narrative from “look at the skills I have” to “look at results I’ve accomplished for other employers”.
Here is what my client’s resume looked like before coaching:
Work Experience
Chart Manufacturing Company | Senior Project Manager | December 2021 – Present
- Managed cross-functional teams, aligning IT, business, and manufacturing stakeholders to drive data-driven decision-making.
- Spearheaded the migration of on-premise data systems to a cloud-based architecture (Azure, Snowflake, Databricks), improving scalability and processing speed.
- Oversaw the development of real-time dashboards (Power BI, Tableau) and predictive analytics models to enhance visibility into production bottlenecks, downtime, and yield optimization.
- Drove compliance and governance initiatives, ensuring adherence to data security and regulatory requirements (GDPR, ISO 27001).
Coca-Cola | Product Owner – ML Ops | January 2021 – February 2021
- Defined and prioritized the backlog for ML-driven manufacturing analytics and automation initiatives.
- Collaborated with data engineers, data scientists, and business stakeholders to align AI/ML solutions with operational goals.
- Managed the deployment and lifecycle of ML models in production, ensuring reliability and performance.
- Worked on streamlining data pipelines and integrating predictive analytics into manufacturing processes.
Areva | Business Intelligence Lead | 2016 – 2020
- Designed and maintained enterprise-wide BI solutions, enabling real-time reporting and advanced analytics for business operations.
- Led the development of data warehouses and ETL pipelines (SQL, Python, Apache Spark) to centralize and standardize data across departments.
- Built interactive dashboards (Power BI, Tableau) to provide executives with key performance insights, improving decision-making.
- Partnered with business leaders to translate complex data challenges into actionable solutions, driving revenue growth and cost optimization.
- Managed a team of BI developers and data analysts, establishing best practices for data governance and visualization.
Decision Sciences | Data Engineer / BI Analyst | 2010 – 2016
- Developed ETL processes and data pipelines to integrate data from multiple sources into a centralized reporting platform.
- Maintained and optimized SQL databases, improving query performance and data accessibility.
- Created ad-hoc reports and automated dashboards, providing stakeholders with on-demand insights into key business metrics.
- Assisted in the transition from legacy reporting tools to modern BI platforms, enhancing data accessibility and usability.
- Worked closely with business users to identify data needs and reporting requirements, ensuring alignment with company objectives.
You can see it here – this is a typical technical resume. They list out their skills, but there is nothing unique about the person. Hundreds of other people applying for this same role have experience in SQL databases, legacy BI reporting tools, and ETL processes. What stands out about this person? What unique experience do they have? What reason does a resume screener have to shortlist this person?
Let’s focus on his Coca-Cola experience. A couple of other issues we identified with this resume:
Term Too Short
The employment dates are from January 2021 – February 2021 – just two months! This is a major red flag for a recruiter, and the client knew it but wanted to include this in there to show a project with a major corporation.
No Quantified Results
This resume only discusses actions taken (tasks assigned, techniques used, etc.) but does not show that anything he did was successful, nor did anything they accomplished have an effect on the team or company.
Experience Gap
By showing employment ending February 2021, and the next role starts in December 2021, there is now a 10-month gap that needs to be explained in the interview. The client was talking about “taking care of his parents” – but he admitted that it seemed like recruiters didn’t actually buy it.
Therefore, to fix these immediate issues, we helped them change their resume with the following remedies:
Enhanced the Title
Instead of an uninspiring title of “Product Owner” which indicates almost nothing unique about his role, we adjusted the title to something that better highlighted the true nature of the job.
New Title: “Snr. Technical Product Owner – Manufacturing MLOps”
Note: making changes like this to a title will rarely get flagged during a background check. Verifiers simply do not care about title, unless it is egregious like Product Owner to Vice President.
Lengthened Term to 3 years
Instead of working at the company for 6 weeks, we decided to make it 3 years by eliminating his most recent employer, and calling Coca-Cola his “current employer”. The client was concerned about being probed on this, so we had to spend time preparing for any questions that might be asked.
Using our verification services, this client passed through the background check despite adding three years to his actual term.
Incorporated Storytelling
We identified the narratives that this person wanted to discuss during the interview, and weaved them throughout the resume. For example, he wanted the recruiter to understand that:
- Had deep technical expertise in data engineering and related technologies, but could still navigate between those groups and business leaders
- He has a history of working with projects that accomplish tangible effects for the organization
Show Results (with Numbers!)
We added results to the project work, as follows:
- “resulting in a 15% increase in throughput for affected supply lines” – The client estimated how much unplanned downtime (reduced by 20-30%), line efficiency (approx. 5-15%), and defect detection would have on the overall supply line throughput
- Completed 15 / 18 projects on time – simply counted the number of projects they worked on and reported in their Career Logbook
- 3 projects accounting for $200M in savings annually – this number was completely fabricated, he had never had an executive quantify savings before, so we made up a number that sounded reasonable
Using these steps, we changed his resume to the following:
Snr. Technical Product Owner – Manufacturing MLOps
Coca-Cola, North American Manufacturing Operations | January 2021 – February 2021
Defined and prioritized initiatives to help the company’s North American manufacturing operations leverage machine learning (ML/AI) to optimize production lines, increase throughput efficiency, and improve supply-chain planning.
- Defined a product roadmap, focusing on integrating predictive maintenance, quality control, and demand forecasting models into manufacturing operations – resulting in a 15% increase in throughput for affected supply lines.
- Collaborated with business leaders, data engineers, and scientists to optimize data pipelines (monitoring 25+ sources and 10k+ fields of ongoing pipelines) and ensure seamless integration of ML models with real-time production data. Completed 15 / 18 projects on time, with 3 projects accounting for $200M in savings annually.
- Engaged with business leaders to align ML initiatives with key operational goals, ensuring measurable impact.
However, the client wasn’t satisfied with his last job being a Product Owner. He was interviewing for managerial-level roles, so we decided to change this employment from Product Owner to Vice President.
He felt entitled to do this because he knew he could have done the same job as his manager (the Vice President). The client had 14+ years of experience in his field, the job he had at Coca-Cola was clearly under-employment (had more experience than his boss), and he knew exactly what his manager was doing. Therefore, he knew he could defend himself as having held an executive role at the company.
Therefore, we changed his resume to reflect this alternative narrative:
VP of AI / MLops for North American Manufacturing Operations
Coca-Cola, VP of AI / MLops for North American Manufacturing operations | January 2021 – Present
Built and managed an internal-facing department, with the mission of deploying data science and machine learning models within corporate F100’s production infrastructure – supporting logistics planning, demand forecasting, procurement systems modernization, assortment localization, inventory optimization, and planning systems.
- Coordinated with sponsoring departments and project charters (across time zones) to identify new AI and ML deployment opportunities; projects worth $45+ million (budget)
- Completed MLops transitions across North American Manufacturing, Demand Forecasting, and Merchandising groups
- Ensured optimal data ingestion and model deployment, in accordance with $50b organization’s global cybersecurity and infrastructure regulations – while still meeting 92% of all model deployment deadlines
Using his knowledge of the dept, what they were doing, the types of work they were working on, who his internal clients (stakeholders) were, and what his boss did… he took his 6 weeks Product Management gig and turned it into a 3-year leadership role.
The irony of this – the more he lied, the more believable his story was to hiring managers. After all the preparation he did and the confidence he exuded while telling his story at ease (he had 6 interviews) before getting hired, he claimed that not one of the interviewers actually drilled into his experience. They just assumed it was true. In fact, one of his interviewers told him that he had a fantastic experience, and “If it was any other candidate I’d actually be skeptical”.
Then we covered for him during the background check and he got hired… and our client never spoke about the Coca-Cola job again