Here's the cycle most job seekers are stuck in: see a job, rewrite your resume, rewrite your cover letter, apply, repeat, feel exhausted, question everything. Or the other version: send the same generic materials everywhere and wonder why nothing lands.
On February 24, Nilima and I ran a workshop with Rhize about breaking that cycle. The core idea: instead of starting with the job description, start with you. Your actual stories. The specific, messy, real ones.
We walked through a framework for mining your own experience — recall the moments where you drove something meaningful, get specific about what was broken and what you did, go deeper into the things you'd never think to put on a resume, and capture it. That last part is exactly what Mirra does.
The most fun part of the session was a live exercise where we showed what happens when you run a real resume through an AI optimizer. It mirrors the job posting back at you. You end up sounding like every other applicant. We compared that to what Mirra produces — language that could only describe one person. That's the difference between a ghostwriter and a mirror.
The big takeaway: if you can swap your name out and the resume still works, it's filler. Your goal isn't twenty tailored versions. It's language you actually believe that works across your resume, cover letter, and coffee chat.
A recording of this session is available in the Rhize community's Resource Hub.
Rhize is our first community partnership, and that's not by accident. They care about the same thing we do: helping people see what they're actually capable of and making hiring human-centered again. If you've been laid off or are looking for your next role, check out what Rhize is up to at rhizetogether.com.
