Case Study: Rebuilding Alexa’s career story

If you asked Alexa how her career story was going when we first met, she’d tell you quite cheerfully that it was a low point.

Based in the northeastern U.S., Alexa’s roles were all in content writing. She’d worked for organizations focused on SEO, partnerships, and digital marketing. Layoffs came and went, but she survived. Often, that meant carrying more work and responsibility in the aftermath. 

Then she was caught in another layoff.

When you keep hearing ‘no’ after a strong job interview

Alexa’s savvy. Like many strong writers, she hears what’s not said beneath your words, whether written or spoken. 

When she interviewed after that layoff, she could sense that something was missing from her portfolio. She got interviews and advanced through several hiring processes but received no formal offers. 

“I had strong content marketing skills but guessed I needed more for email funnels and landing pages,” she told me. “I applied to Growclass with that upskilling in mind.”

Growclass is an online education company that helps students learn growth marketing and (more recently) AI integration with marketing workflows. Built by Sarah Stockdale for and by educators, entrepreneurs, founders, and marketers, it’s often billed as the most supportive, inclusive, and kind corner of the Internet.  

Through the career coaching sessions available to Growclass students at the time, Alexa booked a meeting with me to explore her career strategy options. We talked about the feedback she’d received and reviewed her current portfolio.

“The problem wasn’t my knowledge,” she says. “I knew how to manage email funnels and landing pages and combine those assets with customer activation language to drive strong conversion rates. What I hadn’t done was document that work.” 

In interviews, marketers are often asked to show and tell their previous projects so that companies can see what we bring to the table. 

“In prior roles, I’d been too busy and focused on other things,” she says. “I didn’t have any hope of going back to get the data I was missing. I felt stuck with subpar work.” 

Backfilling gaps: A career narrative pivot strategy that works

Alexa acted to fill the gap. We devised an outreach strategy to the Growclass community. She posted a message explaining where she’d landed, the dilemma she was facing, and the skills she needed to backfill her portfolio with new projects. 

Then she asked the community to hire her, either part-time or pro-bono, so that she could fix those gaps with short-term projects. Within 72 hours, her availability was booked up.

Why were folks quick to help? Alexa had been an active participant in the community’s Slack channel for months, demonstrated her insight and understanding, and helped others out.

That effort made her a known, reputable quality. 

Several of the projects were a fit, such as:

• Working with a mission-driven financial organization to rework a landing page.
• Helping an email marketer with a case study where the raw data was 90% of the story and they needed help with storytelling and presentation. 
• Delivering a nation-wide market study for an e-commerce website to look at customer trends. 

“Having these pieces to talk about and refer to, with before and after stats, completely changed the conversations I was having. The key was to make sure the work was in scope, the timeline reasonable, and the deliverables achievable. I was more confident about my portfolio, and it showed.” 

Within six months of our first meeting, Alexa landed a role writing content across digital channels for the federal government. Today, she’s the Head of Communications and Marketing for the Democratizing Innovation Institute. 

“We’ve never met in person, but Elizabeth’s support literally changed my life. She is the voice of reason and care, and her insistence that I would be okay helped me to believe that it was true.” 

To celebrate her success, Alexa bought her first car. It’s the white Kia Forte you see behind her in the photo.

The car’s name? Hope.

~

I’ve used Alexa’s Growclass post to demonstrate how to ask for this type of help dozens of times. Her strategy can translate to anyone wanting to close a work gap in their resume.

If you’d like to chat about how her approach could work for you, book a 15-minute intro call and let’s see if we’re a fit.