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How to Hack Your Career in a 4.0 World

David Perry

If you keep behaving like a traditional job seeker, you’ll always be chasing.
If you behave like a Job Hacker, you flip the script.

Here’s how:

  1. Stop selling duties. Start selling impact.
    In your résumé, LinkedIn, and interviews, don’t lead with “responsible for…”.
    Lead with: “Here’s the value I created. Here’s how the team improved because I was there.”
  2. Show how you multiply others.
    Tell specific stories where:
    • You pulled people together across functions
    • You made a process better for everyone
    • You took an idea from the front line and turned it into a win for the business
  3. Signal that you’re built for non-stop change.
    Show a pattern of:
    • Learning new tools, not once, but continuously
    • Taking on messy problems with unclear answers
    • Shipping results in environments that were shifting under your feet
  4. Choose your targets like a hacker, not a victim.
    In a 4.0 world, there are only two types of organizations:
    the Quick and the Dying. Your job is not to “get any job.”
    Your job is to find the quick and attach your career to momentum.
    • The quick are experimenting, learning, iterating.
    • The dying are clinging to what worked 10 years ago.
  5. Evaluate them as hard as they evaluate you.
    Ask questions like:
    • “How does leadership make sure ideas from the front line actually get heard and used?”
    • “Can you give me an example of a change initiated by the team that really stuck?”
    • “How are managers measured — just on this year’s numbers, or also on how ready their teams are for what’s next?”

The answers tell you everything about whether this is a 4.0 employer… or a 1.0 museum piece.