The Reverse Résumé
A new way to attract opportunities
I’ve sent two résumés in my life: student ambassador for my university and a summer tech promoter. I got the first one, rejected for the other, and learned nothing useful from either.
November 7th, 2021.
I joined a Twitter space about writing and business. Dakota, a phenomenal writer whose threads I’d been reading for months was amongst the speakers. After shaking off my nerves, I built up the courage to speak up, ask him a couple of questions. Soon after the space, I reached out and told him about my goals on Twitter.
His response:
“Love your ambition. I can definitely see you hitting those goals. Looking forward to seeing you progress. If you start nailing threads consistently we might look to hire you as we scale our biz.”
I couldn’t believe it.
I’d been posting for three months thinking nobody noticed. But he’d read my work and was already considering me for his team.
I grabbed my phone, showed the message to my girlfriend, and we sat at the kitchen table trying to figure out what just happened.
A couple of weeks later, a tech startup reached out. The same pattern followed. They found my threads and asked me to write for their blog.
Both times, they came looking, and both times, the résumé never came up.
Three Months Earlier
On August 2nd, I created my Twitter account.
The account, despite having no posts or followers, felt like standing at the edge of a cliff. The second I posted something, it would exist. Anyone could find it, screenshot it, share it with people who’d wonder what gave me the right to have opinions about things outside medicine.
Three weeks later, I published my first thread: COVID’s impact on resistance training. I’d been obsessing over exercise and strength training at the time and had a few scrappy notes. So instead of waiting for something better, I turned it into a thread.
The second I hit publish, I immediately wanted to take it back.
The results: three likes, zero retweets, zero replies.
The judgment I’d expected never came. Most people scrolled past and the world continued exactly as it had before.
So I kept going.
One thread a week, then eventually two. I simply documented what I was building and learning at the time: ideas from books, productivity tips, thoughts on creative work. Some got seven likes. Some got a hundred. A few landed with strangers who reached out saying the timing was perfect.
I thought I was building an audience at the time, but in reality I was building proof. Soon enough, even though I had the same fears I’d felt before my first post, it became clear that it was far better to publish something rather than nothing.
The work finally existed.
And three months later, I’d written twenty-four threads, and got up to 700 followers.
Dakota was one of them.
The Cost of Staying Invisible
I have folders packed with unpublished essays and writing ideas. I’d worked on them for many for hours, got them 95% done, and just as I reached the final stretch, I decided they weren’t good enough to share.
Nobody could ever find them.
The threads I published, as imperfect as they were, were real. They could be judged, criticised. But they could also be found.
When Dakota and the tech startup needed a writer, they searched, found my writing, and reached out.
Imperfect work gets the opportunity the perfect private work never will.
No matter how good your work is, if it’s private, nobody can find you. They’ll find someone else whose work exists and where they can see it.
What Stops You
You can do the work. You’re just waiting to feel ready.
Waiting until it’s better, more credible, and the fear that comes with it goes away.
But that timeline doesn’t exist.
Ready is a moving target and credibility is subjective.
A lot of my writing has died in my graveyard of drafts. I told myself, I needed a better hook or needed just one more edit before it was ready for the world.
But it never did. It just needed to exist so that it could eventually be found.
Staying invisible is usually a choice. We have the work we’re excited to share. We have the capability. But we keep it private to protect ourselves from judgement.
You might have something ready to share right now. Not perfect or polished. But ready enough that if someone found it, they’d know you can do what they need.
The question is whether you’ll share it for it to be discovered.
Your Move
Pick something you know: maybe it’s a pattern you’ve noticed, a problem you’ve solved, a skill you’ve learned, or a story you’ve been waiting to share.
Write it all down and distill it into five hundred words or less. Make it clear. Make it useful. Don’t wait to make it perfect.
Then, share it somewhere public. Medium. LinkedIn. Twitter. Your website. Anywhere the person you’re writing to can find it.
Your challenge: publish it this week.
This is the first step to creating your own reverse résumé. Proof that you and your ideas exist somewhere other than your drafts folder. Then once you’re ready to take it a step further, do it again next week. And the week after.
Your timeline might be different. Faster, slower, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is your work exists where people can find it.
Trust me when I say this, someone out there needs exactly what you know, and they’re searching for it right now.
Make it happen.
Make it yours.
Talk soon,
— Pranav
P.S. If you make something visible this week, hit reply and send me the link. I’d love to see what you build.