#TBCResults: From overworked corporate lawyer to 60% salary increase in 91 days
#TBCResults - 044 - Dane: From overworked corporate lawyer to 60% salary increase in 91 days
Dane’s Problem:
“When is the best time to resign”
“Land a job with 40% salary increase; at least 70K”
Dane had messaged me 1 year before we officially started working together about potentially working on landing her first job, but ultimately we didn’t work on it. Now a year later, she wanted us to work together ASAP.
Her situation? She was already being overworked when the team was fully staffed. But then everyone slowly started quitting and the company wasn't hiring people to replace them. Which ended up with her doing all of the work for the exact same pay. That salary wasn't worth all the headache coming her way and she wanted to get out.
So she called me up for help.
“The true problem I quickly saw was that she didn’t have the time or energy to put a lot of effort into her job hunt.
She wanted to leave quickly, but she had limited free time. She was overworked, tired, and being pulled in a million directions. Whatever job hunting strategy we’d build for her had to be low effort but high impact. ”
We just had 2 small problems to work around. Namely that she:
Had a very specific type of corporate law background and was wondering if she should make a career shift now or stick with this specific type
Had ~1 year of full-time corporate experience
These weren’t difficult for me to coach her through, but I made sure to share my perspective to Dane early on.
If she wanted to make a career shift, that would take more time than if she continued on this specific track.
I outlined the work involved to make that shift in our 1st call, and also pointed out that she didn't seem to have the headspace to even think through about making this shift in the first place from how much her job was overworking her. Our priority was a better situation for her quickly after all.
It was her choice. I'll support her plan, but she needed to know the realistic timelines, salary offers, and effort involved for either staying in her current specialty or shifting to another.
Ultimately she said let’s explore both, with primary effort being on her current specialty.
So where did we start?
With Dane documenting all of her experiences from the past year. And I mean all of it. From the big projects she handled as her primary responsibility to the small problems she suddenly had to solve as one of the last remaining members of her team.
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 leaving her job 1 year into working there. We’d talk about what she was looking for in the next job environment and also how she’d probe into the current team setup.
The last thing we wanted was for her to enter another overwork scenario.
The Bumpy Career’s Proposed Solution:
Dane'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 Dane.
Once we had her resume set up and aligned on her interview answers, especially about why she’s leaving (we can’t actually talk about what’s going on in her present company after all), it was just a matter of figuring out the right approach for applying so that it wouldn't be a huge burden on her.
We started with parallel approach of cold applying and networking for both tracks. Since we didn’t know whether she could make the shift successfully in a short amount of time, I decided it was best to try both at the same time and let her make the call depending on where she saw quicker progress.
Timeline and Deliverables:
Across 34 days, we had 3 1-hour calls where we:
✅ Built a strong resume, highlighting the level of end-to-end competence she built in the past year, and how that equated to her being a senior already.
✅ Built out her ideal offer checklist, where we made it clear the minimum standards she was looking for. This meant what was the salary, what was the workload, benefits, and boundaries she wanted from this job.
✅ Built out her job hunting tracker for 2 parallel tracks: first to see the market opportunities for her current specialty and second to figured out the gaps between her and her career shift 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 team setup and workload was currently like.
✅ !! Most important !! Worked on her mindset and approach to the job hunt, that she needed to manage her expectations on herself from both the job hunt and from her energy levels. She was handling a whole team’s workload and job hunting on top of it. She needed to balance the work to avoid burning out and being stuck in a terrible situation.
Outcome:
Dane 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 have the time and energy to apply? The updates I got from Dane were about her work situation escalating in difficulty and so I worried about how she’d manage it all.
Thankfully, she did great!
Dane signed a job offer in her current specialty with one of her top choice companies in 91 days after we signed on to working together, paying her 60% more.
Some words from Dane herself:
I knew that Dane would land a job quickly if we stuck to her current specialty. Our end goal was always to bring her into a better situation, not for her to pursue something new. Besides, she’s early in her career. There would be plenty of time in the future if she wanted to make a career shift.
But for her (and anyone else looking to make a career shift) to get there, she’d need a good environment that gives her the time, energy, and mental headspace needed to make these moves in.
My greatest wish is for her to thrive in her new company and that her workload boundaries are respected. That’s something I think we all deserve in our careers.
***
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~