Exec Job Search

Executive Job Search Positioning

When to Use

When a senior product/exec leader (especially Mehdi) is running an active Director/VP Product search and needs positioning help — target-profile clarity, LinkedIn headline/About, CV alignment, folio, prospection, or interview prep. Trigger words: "job search", "positionnement", "LinkedIn", "CV", "recherche d'emploi", "VP Product".

Help a senior product leader (default user: Mehdi, a Director/VP Product leader) position themselves for an active Director/VP Product search. This is an ongoing multi-session project — artifacts live in ~/jobhunt/ (cible.md target brief, cv.md, plus a Google Doc "CV - v2 Hermes").

Workflow (order matters)

1. Target clarity FIRST — before any positioning or prospection. Extract in conversation: energy source, company type/operating model, domain, role, compensation, constraints. Save to a cible.md brief (see references/mehdi-target-profile.md). The "clarity first" rule avoids prospecting before knowing what/who we're selling.
2. Skills discovery — check the community skills ecosystem before hand-crafting (npx skills find "job search" etc., verify on skills.sh incl. the Trust Hub security audit, install via hermes skills install with quarantine + skills-guard-v2 scan). See references/job-search-skills-ecosystem.md.
3. LinkedIn positioning — headline then About, iteratively, with sepia (architecture) + humanizer (surface).
4. CV alignment — mirror the LinkedIn positioning; ADD people/management content for VP roles.
5. Folio / portfolio — he wants a simple personal landing page first (v1 = who he is + talks links + CV download + LinkedIn), NOT case studies yet (deferred). Chosen direction: 003-mono-twist (monochrome + orange accent + mono labels + hand-drawn "human" underline), with his photo (color, 4:5 portrait) and subtle "human" animations. Domain mehdisoliman.me, deployment later (Netlify). Site lives in ~/jobhunt/site/. Build + crop recipes in references/design-tooling.md.
6. Prospection — VP roles are mostly off-market (recruiting firms reach out directly), not job boards.

Mehdi's hard preferences (embed these — he WILL correct you)

• Anti-AI-slop: every draft goes through sepia + humanizer. Never write "passionate about building products that matter" or clever/performative hooks ("I can show the numbers").
• Headline: no numbers, no "PLG" (he considers it passé), no "ex-PayFit" (avoids boxing him in as "the PayFit guy"). Keep "Human-first" + AI as its OWN section + "Angel investor". Title = "VP / Product Leader" (NOT "Director of Product"). Final: VP / Product Leader — Human-first · AI Product Strategy · Angel investor.
• About: narrative/positioning, NOT an achievement list — that's the Experience section's job (he will flag redundancy). Keep the "Beyond product" closer (investor at Upscalers, restaurants, father's fruit-and-veg shop). "coach first, manager second" is a STRENGTH (SVPG/Cagan), not a soft signal.
• Numbers: never invent. Verify — public estimates (GetLatka etc.) can be WRONG; trust his insider numbers.
• Career facts: PayFit Oct 2018 → shown as "Jan 2026" (his choice, to shorten the unemployment gap); employee ~#100; ARR ~$80M and profitable (he prefers leading with "profitability" over the ARR figure); Synthesio (NOT "Synthesion"), acquired by Ipsos; Primo (Feb–Jul 2026, a 20-person startup that stalled on the human side) is intentionally OMITTED from CV/LinkedIn — keep it as an interview talking point only.

Design rules (CV / site)

• No dashes — no em-dashes ("—") or en-dashes ("–") anywhere; use commas, periods, "·", "→". He hates the dash punctuation style.
• Monochrome — no blue. Near-black + grays, no color accent unless he asks.
• Airy — generous line-height, bullets indented with a gap from titles (not flush-left with them).
• Dates inline with titles, NOT a right-aligned far column (he finds that hard to read).
• Bold key metrics only ($2.1B, €15M ARR, −20% churn, "coach first") — bolding everything kills the effect.
• Max 2 pages for the CV.
• Skills section (VP): add a distinct "Product Strategy" (vision, trajectory, roadmap, positioning) separate from "AI Product Strategy"; consolidate the IC craft skills (Discovery/Prioritization/Delivery/Design) into ONE "Product craft" line — four IC lines read "PM, not VP". Avoid "portfolio" as a strategy term (collides with the folio he's building) → use "positioning".
• Tooling: designed CV = WeasyPrint HTML→PDF; mockup previews without a browser = WeasyPrint HTML→PNG (page size in px) + pymupdf. See references/design-tooling.md.

Pitfalls

• Don't re-list achievements in the About (redundant with Experience).
• Don't box him into one company/domain — he's "mission-first, domain-open", NOT "ex-PayFit".
• VP = manager: the CV MUST show people leadership (grew people, coached, hired), not just product metrics.
• "coach over manager" is a differentiator, not a demotion signal.
• VP roles are off-market — don't waste time scraping job boards; route through recruiting firms.
• When asked "how do you define the product role?" (Cagan's Rorschach test), his answer should be his thesis (human-first + people→agents + "knowing what should exist"), not generic "discover/deliver".

References

• references/mehdi-target-profile.md — full target brief (moteur, boîte, domaine, poste, rému).
• references/svpg-product-role-insights.md — Cagan/Evans: the 3 product skills, the Rorschach interview question, "most people aren't tool builders".
• references/job-search-skills-ecosystem.md — community skills for job search + how to vet them.
• references/design-tooling.md — WeasyPrint HTML→PDF/PNG recipes, CV design tokens, site mockup stances.
• scripts/google_doc_replace.py — copy/replace a Google Doc with a local markdown file (publish CVs to Drive for review).