#TBCResults: From startup layoff to marketing officer in just 35 days
#TBCResults - 046 - Cale: From startup layoff to marketing officer in just 35 days (with a 150% salary increase + a ton of new benefits!!)
Cale’s Problem:
“I want to become confident in verbalizing my achievements and putting it into writing and land into a job that I want yet pays better. I think I lowballed myself on my current job with things I can offer. I know for a fact that I had a lot of achievements, but the limitation is somehow making me confused.”
“[I want to work in] Creative Marketing (not an associate role probably)”
Cale knew he was good at marketing. He could just feel it.
But when I asked him to explain which aspect was he good at (how was he at analytics, strategy, branding, social media, etc), he couldn’t give me a straight answer. He was confident, but in what, he wasn’t sure.
He just knew he was good at marketing, that he wanted to do it, and that he felt he should be paid more for it.
A snapshot of how blunt I am when reviewing the work
I was confused and let him know that. How could you be good at something but not know how exactly or where exactly where you good at it? But I felt his confidence came from a good place, and that when I gave some sharp words of advice, he took it well.
So that's why we started working together.
I can’t explain it but I also felt that Cale was right, he’d be a great marketer once he had a grasp of what that meant. My job was to help him find those words.
Cale wanted to work with me to figure out how he could communicate how good he is at marketing in interviews with employers. He wanted a job that gave him the space to use all those skills and to grow into the marketer he wanted to be.
To him, this sounded like a confusing problem to untangle.
To me, I knew we could solve it in < 90 days as long as he did exactly what I recommended.
“The problem was that Cale needed to clearly communicate what his skillset and value was. But first he (and I) needed to know what that was.
So what we had to do was document all of his strengths and experiences, then figure out how we’d explain how helpful those were to his next job. ”
There were just 2 small problems we also had to overcome:
Cale was newly laid off from the startup he had been working for shortly after our first call. So time was of the essence to get him into a new role.
His first job and most of his experience came from HR, but Cale had made the shift to marketing as he was interested in making it his career.
So where did we start?
With Cale auditing and documenting all of his experiences. And I mean all of it. Then I reviewed it all and started finding the key skills we’d highlight in his applications.
He told me in the call that he was involved with community events for his favorite Kpop group and Thai BL pairing, and that he felt his strong marketing skills came from there. So I asked him to start pulling together a portfolio based on that work.
But Cale undersold me on how involved he was.
He was actually handling the logistics and social media for all major events involving his idols.
For context: his portfolio’s Table of Contents
Once we got a grasp of all the work he could list in his resume and portfolio, everything became infinitely smoother. We had figured out what his marketing specialty was.
The Bumpy Career’s Proposed Solution:
Cale’s situation sounds complicated at first, what with moving from HR to marketing and wanting to go from startup to corporate, but in reality it was simple to solve when using my standard framework.
The core question is “How do you land a job that hits your ideal checklist and 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 Cale.
Once we had his resume and more importantly, his portfolio set up, it was just a matter of perfecting the interview.
We worked on his career story, explaining how his course (Psychology), his first job (HR), his second job (marketing for a startup), and his passion project (his community management for his idols) all worked together to make him a top candidate for marketing roles.
We also developed the questions he’d ask to ensure it was the right environment for him to be in.
Timeline and Deliverables:
Across 16 days, we had 2 1-hour calls where we:
✅ Built a strong marketing resume, highlighting his skills from his most recent role so he could apply to any marketing role with just 1 version of his resume. As a backup, we also made a HR version of his resume, but we both agreed early on that this was a backup test.
✅ Built a strong portfolio that showcased his creative skills and marketing skills hand-in-hand. When I saw the final output, I went “Wow” and immediately asked Cale if I could keep a copy to show as best practice to future students. That’s how amazing it is; it is the best version of a portfolio in the shortest amount of time I have ever seen in my 7+ years of career coaching.
✅ Built out his ideal offer checklist, where we made it clear how his next workplace had to support his advocacies as well
✅ Built out his job hunting tracker and split it across his ideal roles in marketing and his backup roles in HR and other fields just in case
✅ Built up his LinkedIn
✅ Interview practiced, especially on getting his career story right
✅ Salary negotiation practice especially if he would receive a low offer given his few months of professional marketing experience
✅ !! Most important !! Worked on Cale’s mindset and approach to the job hunt, that he was a competent and high-value candidate as long as he could communicate that across to the employers. Now we had established where his confidence could come from, it was his job to promote it out there.
This is a random page from his 43-page portfolio. The other pages are so good, like you can’t imagine how amazed I was when I saw the final work pulled together.
Outcome:
Cale came out of our calls with a strong resume and interview skill set, and an amazing portfolio. He was ready to go out and interview.
The real issue was, would his cold applications get him through to the initial interviews? I knew that if he could just pass this initial stage, he’d do great in the interviews. I just worried if what we built was strong enough to get past all the initial filters.
Thankfully, they did!
35 days after signing on to work together, Cale signed a job offer bringing his marketing skills into a global company that also hit his ideal starting salary.
Even better, his advocacy work would be integrated into his scope, meaning he would be paid to work on what he was passionate about.
We hit his goals and more in record time. And Cale really developed new skills and perspectives quickly from our short time together, which I’m quite proud of him for. I know that he’s going to go far, and am excited to see what happens next for him.
Some words from Cale himself:
I knew that Cale would land a job quickly once we got the foundations right. Once I gave him advice, I could see him put it into practice immediately, leading to his success in hitting the goals we aligned on when we started working together.
My greatest wish is that his new company treats him right because if not, he’s an in-demand marketing talent that any company would be lucky to have~
***
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~