#TBCResults: From quitting her startup job with no plan to operations lead at an ecommerce giant 120 days later
#TBCResults - 011 - Laureen: From quitting her startup job with no plan to operations lead at an ecommerce giant 120 days later
Laureen’s Problem:
“I'm not sure what I want to do for work. I've always taken jobs based on salary. How can I land a job that I'm passionate about?”
“land a fulfilling job that pays well”
“I have no idea. I'm lost.”
Laureen and I first called while I was in a train hurtling between Interlaken and Zermatt (aka the Swiss mountains lol), so the signal occasionally cut as we were talking.
Even though we both missed a few words of every other sentence, it became clear that I was right to take this call even though I was supposed to be on an unplugged vacation. There was something in her initial form answers that told my gut that the sooner we had our call, the better for her. And I was right.
Her situation? She had just quit her role at a startup, leading and scaling their daily operations there. She did it all. Literally. From compliance to operations to HR, she did everything herself. Because of that, she didn’t know what to apply for and where to start.
Specifically, she had set up their first-ever massive warehouse and the all the logistical processes involved with it. She was burnt out and overworked from the nonstop pace at the startup, that had her doing all sorts of projects and tasks at all hours just to get that warehouse operational. Now she wanted to find a new role but didn’t know where to start.
So she called me up for help.
“The true problem I quickly saw was the same that she identified: Laureen’s experience was so varied that she didn’t have an idea of what her valuable skill sets were.
She wanted to find a job quickly, but she didn’t even know what type of work she was drawn to. She was doing a million projects a week, tired, and always unsure whether she wanted to keep doing this kind of work. That’s why she quit. ”
We just had 2 small problems to work around. Namely that she:
Had also worked in R&D for < 1 year before this startup.
Which means her resume had ~2 years of experience doing this all-around startup job + < 1 year of R&D experience. Another potential path for her to go down on.Was very conscious of actually finding a career, rather than another job.
This is an idea I often talk through with my students, especially when they’ve been working for a while. Are you working to build a career that goes beyond this job or are you working to sustain your life outside of this job?
These aren’t difficult points for me to coach her through, but I made sure to share my perspective to Laureen early on.
If she wanted to find a career rather than a job, that would take more reflection and work on her end.
I outlined the questions she had to ask herself and all the work involved in our 1st call, and also pointed out that she needed to think of her financial situation too. I am not a fan of prolonged unemployment unless you’re sure your family can support you indefinitely.
Our initial plan was to land a role that set her up for a career, and gave her the tools so she could thrive under guidance instead of her just doing things without a plan.
So where did we start?
With Laureen documenting all of her experiences from the past years. And I mean all of it. From the big projects she handled as the manager of the team to the small problems she had to solve as the only one with the end-to-end knowledge for the operations.
I reviewed it all and started dividing them up by what she wanted to keep doing at her next roles and what she wanted to stop doing forever.
Once we got a clear idea of what skills she wanted to highlight and what were needed for the ideal roles she listed, we built out her career story. This is how she’d explain her career decisions, especially for moving from R&D to an operations role to what she wanted to do next.
We also talked about what she was looking for in the next job environment, how she’d probe into the current team setup, and how she’d be trained by the next workplace she would join.
The last thing we wanted was for her to enter another scenario of her doing all the work and getting zero guidance or growth from it all.
The Bumpy Career’s Proposed Solution:
Laureen’s situation is one a lot of students come to me with. “How do I land a job that hits my ideal checklist (great salary, great work environment, benefits I want, good boss, etc.) in the shortest amount of time?”
And I call my answer, The Bumpy Career’s Status Shift Method which comprises of 4 steps.
1️⃣ Audit & Align (Get Clear and Set the Goal)
You tell me what you want — no matter how vague, ambitious, or uncertain it feels right now. I’ll assess whether it’s feasible based on your background, goals, and current situation during our scoping call.
You’ll also gather your career map, which includes:
A Masterfile resume with everything you’ve done so far
An Ideal Job List divided into Dream Companies, Great Companies, and Safety Nets
An Ideal Offer Checklist broken down into Must-Haves, Nice-to-Haves, and Red Flags
Together, we’ll identify the gaps and misalignments between where you are and where you want to go.
2️⃣ Optimize & Strategize (Build the Roadmap)
Next, we rework your “career map” into something sharper and more strategic:
A targeted resume, an optimized LinkedIn, and a weekly job hunt system
Addressing skill gaps or possible portfolio pieces
Aligning your positioning with what your ideal employers actually want to see
Every move from here on is intentional.
3️⃣ Sharpen & Showcase (Boost Visibility and Make Your Case)
Here’s where we make you visible to the right people:
A LinkedIn networking plan with clear scripts and targets
Custom portfolios or case studies (if applicable)
Interview prep that tells the right story: how you got here and why you’re the right fit
A tight elevator pitch that makes you sound like the obvious candidate
We only get one shot to make the best impression. We’re not wasting it.
4️⃣ Execute & Secure (Apply, Interview, Win)
You’ll apply strategically, focusing only on high-impact roles.
Then we prep for interviews, negotiate offers, and secure a role that fits the vision we clarified in Step 1.
We also course-correct as needed — your strategy evolves based on market feedback, and we’ll adjust through optional catch-up calls.
And we do all of this in < 4 hours of live coaching.
💡 Why The Bumpy Career’s Status Shift Method™ Works
✅ You get clear on the right job. No more random applications and hoping for the best.
✅ You stay strategic, not reactive. Every step is mapped, not improvised.
✅ You move fast and efficiently. No overthinking or second-guessing.
✅ You land offers with confidence. Because you know you’re showing up as your sharpest self.
Back to Laureen.
Once we had her resume set up and aligned on her interview answers, especially about her career story and what was she looking for in this next workplace, it was just a matter of figuring out the right approach for applying. Specifically we wanted her next role to be aligned with her current skillset and ideal work environment.
Laureen had done a ton of different operations projects in her previous workplace. She also had worked at every level possible, from doing it herself to managing a multi-person team. These had to be aligned, because you can’t showcase all of this in one resume.
We started with parallel approach of applying to both individual contributor and manager level roles. Since we didn’t know what type of level would resonate with her, I decided it was best to try both at the same time and let her make the call depending on where she saw more progress.
Timeline and Deliverables
Across 106 days, we had 3 1-hour calls where we:
✅ Built a strong resume, highlighting the strong operations skills she built in the past years and then split them into specific resumes per function. We also highlighted how she was both a strong individual contributor and manager already.
✅ Built out her ideal offer checklist, where we made it clear the minimum standards she was looking for, specifically what was the long-term growth in this role.
✅ Built out her job hunting tracker for 2 parallel tracks: first for specific individual contributor roles and second for more senior roles.
✅ Built up her LinkedIn.
✅ Interview practiced, especially on getting her career story right and more importantly, how she’d interview them back about what the role could become.
✅ !! Most important !! Worked on her mindset and approach to the job hunt, that she needed to understand first what was she looking for from this next role. She couldn’t and shouldn’t be randomly applying and letting whatever role plus manager accepted her be what guides her career’s next steps. She had to take on active management from here on out.
Outcome:
Laureen came out of our calls with a strong resume, a sharpened interview skillset, and the best understanding possible on what her options were timeline-wise and effort-wise. She was ready to get a new job.
The real issue was, would she like what she heard while interviewing for her next role? Again, it was all dependent on the reflection Laureen did and what the market responded to her with, especially as she was a few months into unemployment at this point. The updates I got from her were about her many interviews and I had no doubt that she’d land a role with a higher salary and a better prepared career path. I felt confident she’d share something positive with me soon.
And she did!
Laureen signed a job offer to become Operations Lead for one of the top ecommerce companies 120 days after we signed on to working together, paying her 40+% more after a 5 month break.
Some words from Laureen herself:
I knew that Laureen would land a job quickly but I also knew that our biggest delay would come from her overthinking the next steps of it all.
Would this work out, would this be her next few roles, would she stay here for a while? Our end goal was always to bring her into a better situation, both financially and for the long-term. So I wanted her to get used to the discomfort of thinking through these decisions and what her next steps would be, because this was going to become a recurring topic for the rest of her career.
To get used to this type of thinking, she needed to start from solid career foundation that I helped her build. Growing in a good environment easily gives her the time, energy, and mental headspace needed to plan and execute her future career moves after all.
My greatest wish is for her to thrive in her new company and that she starts actively planning what comes next with them. And if she ever gets stuck, at least she already knows how to find me.
***
The Bumpy Career is the career coach for the confused high achiever.
Meaning you're the type of person that if you know where to go and what you had to do, you'd be number 1 in an instant. But you're a bit confused today on exactly that: where to go and what to do.
That's where I come in.
We'll work together to give you a actionable roadmap to make your career live up to your expectations. If that sounds great to you, then learn more about how we can make it happen here and let's talk soon~