When I think about careers, skills, and experience, I keep coming back to the same thing: people are usually capable of a lot more than their resume makes obvious.
I see it all the time in recruiting. Someone looks at a job description, gets halfway through the requirements, and decides they probably shouldn’t apply. Wrong title. Different industry. Missing one certification. Maybe they have six years of experience instead of the eight listed. And just like that, they talk themselves out of an opportunity before anyone else even gets the chance to consider them.
Your job title only tells part of the story
Titles are useful. We need them.
But they can also be limiting.
I’ve talked with candidates whose titles sounded fairly straightforward, then you start asking questions and realize they were doing far more than the title suggested.
Maybe someone was technically an Operations Manager, but they were also hiring people, managing budgets, working with vendors, building processes, training employees, solving customer issues, and reporting directly to ownership.
That’s not just a title. That’s a collection of skills.
And those skills can travel.
I think candidates sometimes underestimate this because we’re trained to think about our careers vertically. You were this, then you became that, and the next logical step must be the title directly above your current one.
Real careers rarely work that neatly.
Sometimes the next move is sideways before it goes up. Sometimes you change industries. Sometimes you discover that something you’ve been doing for years is actually valuable in a completely different environment.
I still remember conversations where someone has said, “I’ve never worked in that industry, though.”
Okay. Fair.
But then we start talking.
They’ve managed the same kind of team. They’ve worked with similar customers. They understand the sales cycle. They’ve owned a budget. They’ve negotiated contracts. They’ve built processes from scratch.
Suddenly, the gap doesn’t look quite as big.
Experience isn’t always measured in years
This is another one that gets people.
A job description asks for seven years of experience and you have five.
So… are you automatically unqualified?
Not necessarily.
Years matter in certain positions, of course. There are jobs where specific training, licensing, education, or technical experience is absolutely necessary. I don’t think we should pretend otherwise.
But years alone don’t tell us everything.
I’ve talked to people who packed an incredible amount of responsibility into a relatively short period of time. Maybe they joined a small company and had to wear five hats. Maybe the business grew quickly and their responsibilities grew with it. Maybe they were thrown into situations that forced them to learn fast.
Then you have someone else who has technically been in the field longer, but their responsibilities have stayed relatively narrow.
Neither situation is automatically better.
They’re just different.
That’s why I always want to know what someone actually did.
Tell me about the team you managed.
Tell me about the problem nobody knew how to solve.
Tell me about the account you won, the process you built, the project that went sideways and how you handled it.
Tell me what changed because you were there.
That’s where experience starts becoming real.
You probably have more transferable skills than you realize
Candidates sometimes hear “transferable skills” and think of the obvious ones. Communication. Organization. Leadership.
Those matter, but I think the conversation can go much deeper.
Think about everything you actually do during a normal week.
Maybe you negotiate constantly, even though “negotiation” isn’t anywhere in your title.
Maybe you’ve learned how to calm down an unhappy customer without escalating the situation.
Maybe you can look at a messy process and immediately see where things are breaking.
Maybe you’ve become the person everyone comes to when a project gets stuck.
That counts.
And if you’re considering a career change, this is where I’d spend some time.
Not just asking, “What jobs have I had?”
Ask:
- What problems do people trust me to solve?
- What responsibilities have I taken on beyond my original role?
- Where have I produced measurable results?
- What have I learned that could apply somewhere else?
- Which parts of my current job am I actually good at and want to keep doing?
Those questions usually tell you more than staring at your job title does.
Funny enough, I think we’re often bad at recognizing our own skills because they’ve become normal to us.
You’ve done something for five years, so it doesn’t feel impressive anymore.
It’s just Tuesday.
But to another company, that exact experience might solve a problem they’ve been struggling with for months.
That’s worth remembering.
Your resume needs to show the work, not just the credentials
This is where candidates can make things harder on themselves.
A resume can become a list of employment history instead of a picture of what someone can actually do.
Company. Title. Dates. Responsibilities.
Done.
But if I’m reading your resume, I want to understand the impact behind those lines.
Instead of simply telling me you managed sales, help me understand the scope. Were you managing two people or twenty? Did you inherit the team? Build it? What were you selling? Who were the customers? Did revenue change? Did you enter new markets?
Specifics help people understand your experience.
And no, you don’t need to turn every bullet into some dramatic accomplishment. Not everything needs to sound like you transformed an entire company before lunch.
That can actually feel forced.
Just give people context.
The same applies when you’re interviewing.
If you’re moving into a different industry or pursuing a position where your background isn’t an obvious match on paper, don’t spend the entire interview apologizing for what you haven’t done.
Connect the dots.
“I haven’t worked in this exact industry, but I’ve managed a similar sales process.”
“My title was different, but I was responsible for many of the same functions.”
“I haven’t used that exact platform, but I’ve worked with two comparable systems and learned both quickly.”
That’s a much different conversation.
You’re not pretending the gaps don’t exist. You’re helping the person across the table understand what does translate.
And there’s confidence in that. Not fake confidence. Just knowing your own experience well enough to explain it.
Conclusion
I think careers get a lot more interesting when we stop treating credentials as the entire story. Your degree, certifications, titles, and years of experience all matter, but they’re only pieces of what you bring to the table. Sometimes your next opportunity starts when you look past the title on your resume and recognize the skills you’ve been building all along.
