#45 "I can handle anything" isn't a pitch

Someone I talked to last week keeps reaching the final round and losing. Every loop, the same feedback: they loved him, they went with someone else. He's clearly capable — that's not the problem. The problem is he's spent a whole career being capable at everything.

For years he was the person you handed the messy, cross-functional, no-clear-owner thing to. He'd take it and land it. A mentor once told him a jack of all trades beats a master of one, and he built his career on exactly that.

It worked — right up until he was on the outside trying to explain what he does.

Here's why: when you say "I can handle anything," hiring managers get suspicious. They're wary of generalists — not because range isn't valuable, but because they're hiring for a specific thing, and someone who does a bit of everything reads as someone who isn't solid at the one thing they need.

So, he loses, every time, to a candidate who's done less but owns one thing cleanly.

The reframe that landed for him: he's not actually a generalist. He's a specialist with range. There's a particular kind of problem he's genuinely deep in and loves — and it got buried under a decade of saying yes to everything around it.

That distinction is the whole game. "I can do all of it" is not a position. "Here's the specific thing I'm the obvious call for, and I happen to have unusual range around it" is. Same person. One of them gets hired.

What makes it hard to sort for yourself is that when people know you, they'll find you a home — "he's good, we'll figure out where he fits." Nobody does that from the outside. Nobody spends more than a few seconds deciding where you slot, so if you don't name the thing you own, the market won't do it for you. It just moves to the person who already did.

The work isn’t writing a sharper summary of everything you’ve done, it’s letting go of the identity that took pride in handling anything.

One thing to try this week: look at the last several things you took on and stop asking "was that impressive." Ask instead — do these point at one problem I want to be known for, or do they just prove I'll deliver? If it's the second, that's the work, and it comes before the resume, not after.

Chat soon,

Mel

P.S. The tell that you're in this trap: someone asks what you do, and your most honest answer is "whatever needs doing." Useful inside a company that already trusts you. Invisible to one that doesn't.