Write your positioning statement

Before you touch a single field on LinkedIn or a single line on your resume, you need one thing that does not exist yet: a positioning statement. It is one or two plain sentences that say who you help, what result you produce, and how. Everything you build in this course is downstream of it. Your headline is a compressed version of it. Your About section is an expanded version of it. Your resume summary is a formatted version of it. If you skip this and start editing fields, you end up with a profile that is technically updated and still says nothing, which is the exact profile that got you no callbacks last time. This is the recruiter-facing version of your one-liner: keyword-loaded and tuned to what a recruiter types and an ATS scores, which is what separates it from the public-facing tagline you build in Personal Brand.

Getting fired or laid off tempts you to define yourself by what just happened to you, or by the title you no longer have. Positioning does the opposite. It is not about your last job, it is about the market you serve and the problem you solve for it. A title describes a seat you sat in. A position describes value someone would pay for again. So write forward, toward the role you want next, not backward toward the one you lost. If you are targeting a step up or a slight pivot, position for that target, as long as you have real evidence you can do it.

Three comeback situations need their own handling, because generic positioning advice ignores them. If your last title lasted only a few months, do not build your identity around it: position for the target role and let the short stint sit quietly in the timeline. If you were terminated for cause, your positioning is identical to anyone else's, because a position is about the value you produce, not the reason you left; the exit is handled in the interview, never on the profile. If your function was eliminated and you are forced to pivot, position for the new target and anchor it to your most transferable, evidence-backed strength, not to the job that no longer exists. Three worked statements for exactly these cases. Short last tenure, laid off in a cut, lead with the proof and not the stint: "I help B2B fintech teams shorten sales cycles by rebuilding the demo-to-close handoff; in one quarter I cut time-to-close from 60 to 41 days." Terminated for cause, same field, all value and no reference to the exit: "I help mid-market retailers keep fulfillment on time at peak by redesigning warehouse staffing and carrier rules; I ran peak season across four distribution centers at 99 percent on-time." Function eliminated, forced pivot from operations to analytics, anchored to the transferable strength: "I help operations teams turn messy operational data into decisions by building the dashboards and models they run on; I built the fulfillment-cost model a 200-person company still uses."

Use this spine: I help [specific audience or company type] [achieve a specific outcome] by [your method or specialty], with [one concrete proof point]. Force specificity into every slot. "I help companies with marketing" is filler. "I help early-stage B2B SaaS teams turn cold traffic into pipeline by building lifecycle email and paid-search systems, most recently taking one product from 40 to 220 demo requests a month" is a position. The proof point is not optional. It is what separates a claim from a case, and it becomes a bullet, a headline stat, and a case study later.

Then pressure-test it out loud on a real person. Say it to a friend who does not work in your field and ask them two questions: what do I do, and who would want to hire me. If they can answer both in their own words, it holds. If they pause or repeat your job title back to you, a slot is still too vague. Write three variants, because the same position reads differently as a title-forward line, an outcome-forward line, and an industry-forward line, and you will reuse different variants in different places over the next seven lessons.

• Pull the exact target role you are aiming for next and name it in one line before you write anything else.
• Fill the spine: I help [audience] [achieve outcome] by [method], with [one proof point]. Force a number or named specific into every bracket.
• List five proof points from your last two roles: real numbers, scope, named wins. These feed your headline, bullets, and case studies later, so bank them now.
• Write three variants of the statement: title-forward, outcome-forward, and industry-forward.
• Say the strongest variant out loud to someone outside your field and confirm they can answer 'what do you do' and 'who would hire you' without you explaining.

Take a marketing operations lead whose whole function was outsourced in a reorg. Her instinct is 'Experienced marketing operations professional, recently impacted by a restructuring, open to work.' It names no audience, no outcome, and it leads with the layoff. She writes forward instead. Target role: Revenue Operations Manager. Filled spine: 'I help B2B SaaS revenue teams turn a messy funnel into forecastable pipeline by rebuilding lead routing, attribution, and the marketing-to-sales handoff, most recently cutting speed-to-lead from 26 hours to under 3 across two segments.' The layoff never appears; the transferable RevOps proof does. She reads it to a friend who is a nurse, who says 'you make the sales pipeline predictable.' Both test questions pass, and the line already carries the exact terms a recruiter types: revenue operations, lead routing, attribution, speed-to-lead.

• Writing the statement backward, about the title you just lost, instead of forward toward the role you want next. Write the exact target title at the top of the page first, then fill every slot of the spine to serve that target, not your last job description.
• Leaving the proof slot as a vague claim like 'proven track record of driving results.' Bank your five proof points before finishing the statement, then drop the single strongest number or named win into the proof slot. A claim without a number is filler.
• Hedging across three possible careers in one statement to keep options open, which makes you the right answer to no search. Pick one target role per statement. If you are genuinely pursuing two paths, write two separate statements and never blend them.
• Building your headline and identity around a last title you held for only a few months, so a short, unhappy stint becomes the first thing a recruiter reads. Position for the target role and let the short tenure sit quietly in the timeline. Your positioning statement is about the value you produce next, not the seat you just left.