Meet Fliss.
After eight years of self-employment, Fliss was ready to explore permanent roles again (or muggle work, as I affectionately call it) and the perfect advert appeared.
The problem wasn't that she didn't think she was capable - she knew she could do the role with her eyes closed - the problem was that, on paper at least, she didn't look like the right candidate. Suddenly, all the confidence she collected actually doing the job fell victim to the anxiety of having to prove she could do it in her application.
See, she'd scoured LinkedIn and Careertok - she knew all the usual advice about tailoring, considering the ATS, leading with outcomes not duties, yada yada yada. But what she actually needed help with was 'how do I make them give me a chance?', 'how do I talk about my experience in a way that lands?' or 'how do I get in that bloody room?' 'cause once I'm in it, I'll get it.
So, after weeks of circling the decision fatigue drain, navigating conflicting advice and getting even more confused in the process, Fliss decided her career deserved more than just showving sh*t at a wall and hoping something stuck and got in touch.
I taught her how to strip back adverts: get to the heart of the problem and the real pain behind the employer. Then I showed her how to connect the dots with her own experience, forming a clear and persuasive case for 'why her' over 'more obvious' candidates. We also learned to celebrate the things that made her unique, like her unconventional pathway, learning to see them as a job market superpower, not shackle.
Fliss left our sessions with so much more than proper application strategy. She left believing in herself and the value she could bring to any team: same industry or not.
No more post-submit "sh#t I shouldn't have said that…”
No more trying to contort herself to fit a 'corporate ideal'
No more treating transferable experience as second-rate
She finally had conviction in both herself and her applicaitons ability to show that. Now, the pressure was on employers to not f*ck it up and let her talented ass pass them by!
"GEE REMOVED ANY SELF-DOUBT AND IMPOSTER SYNDROME FROM MY JOB SEARCH. NOW, I KNOW I AM BLOODY BRILLIANT AND I KNOW HOW TO BACK IT UP"
Meet Mike.
After nearly two decades in the police force, Mike knew he wanted out. Something less taxing, more flexible: that prioritised his health. But every month rolled past and he didn't leave, costing his wellbeing. Why? Because the prospect of job searching scared the sh*t out of him.
What do I apply for?
Am I only good for being copper?
How do I make someone give me a chance?
How do I show my experience is relevant?
How tf do I write a CV? God forbid a cover letter.
These were all the questions bouncing around in his head, standing between him and the next chapter he knew he deserved. He wasn't scared of committing to the leap, he was scared he wouldn't be able to make it happen.
But that all changed when he got in touch with me. We spent a lot of time defining his next steps: what he was passionate about and where those roles existed. I then brought him up to speed with modern recruitment: market myth busting, employer psychology and essential, need-to-know information only. Armed with this new perspective, we built him a new CV from the ground up (the first time in nearly a decade) and gave him a clear way to approach every advert, without the endless research, uncertainty and second-guessing.
Crazily enough, Mike went from feeling sick about applying, to being excited!? Because what had felt like a mountain of an obstacle suddenly looked like a molehill.
Today, he has his dream job, working as a Culture and Sport Minister for a micronation! Because Mike didn't need convincing it was the right time to go, he needed someone to help make it feel possible in the first place.
"I HADN'T APPLIED FOR A JOB IN OVER 15 YEARS. THE WHOLE THING JUST FELT ALIEN. I WAS EMBARRASSED GOING FROM AN OFFICER TO SOMEONE WHO FELT LIKE A ROOKIE"
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Meet Kirsty.
I won't lie, working with Kirsty was a little intimidating. She was a (very) smart cookie and had climbed the internal ladder of her financial security organisation (very) fast! What possibly could I teach her that she didn't already know?
She told me her dream job had just been posted on LinkedIn and instead of feeling excited, she felt dread. "I can't be bothered to apply". And the impulsive thought stopped her in her tracks.
'How many excuses have I made to avoid applications?' or 'How many opportunities have I let pass me by just because submissions felt like too big a task?'
But see, it actually wasn't about the effort. She was used to working hard. It was about the uncertainty of if that work would pay off. Wasted labour.
The independent woman that she is, she wasn't going to let her career be defined by motivation and approached me to find a better method: a smarter way of working.
I taught her exactly what matters to employers, where her effort makes a difference and — crucially — what she can stop wasting her time on. We turned that knowledge into a simple, repeatable process - even including plug-and-play templates - she could use every time she applied. She also gained lifetime access to Geenie - our AI assistant - to reduce decision fatigue and make time consuming tasks bitesize.
Now, Kirsty writes the best applications of her life, in 45 minutes or less, without compromising on quality. She doesn't lose an entire weekend to applications. She doesn't press submit, exhausted, wondering 'is this even going to be worth it?'. And she doesn't let applications hijack her life - or career.
Sadly, she didn't get that job (their loss honestly) but the rejection stung less knowing it didn't take her 3 working days, it was the best representation of her value and she just got beaten by another strong candidate, not a sh*tty application that cost part of her soul to write.
"I JUST PRESUMED THAT BEING MISERABLE IN THE PROCESS WAS A RIGHT OF PASSAGE: A NECESSARY EVIL. I'D HAVE NEVER OF BELIEVED IT COULD BE SO EASY AND SIMPLE"
Meet me!
To be clear, I didn't build Rebel because I was good at job searching. Quite the opposite actually. It was absolutely destroying me.
Zero traction, hundreds of applications in: I was in SOS mode. Worse yet, I was approaching every application without any strategy, hundreds of unanswered questions, tit bit hacks and tricks from 30 different sources and, consequently, anxiety induced tummy ache.
I realised pretty quickly that the job search process was not super accessible or friendly for neurodivergent brains. So, like any fellow ADHDer will know, I became obsession. And I don't just mean like reading an article or two. I mean late night, red-bull fuelled research sessions that lasted for weeks like my applications were going to land me on the moon.
And before I knew it, I had revolutionised my job search. How? Because I knew the system inside out, what worked, what didn't. I had spent countless hours understanding best practice and frankensteining it into easy, repeatable, low-decision systems for nearly every aspect of the process. And applications stopped being a horror story, a bogeyman in my life. Now don't get me wrong, they are still f*cking boring but not scary, not painful, not soul destroying.
But also don't think that I expect you to do the same (because you ain't crazy). It's exactly why I built Rebel, to deliver the information into your lap so you can just focus on the important stuff. But also to make the process just that, a process, that, sure, we have to (reluctantly) engage with but shouldn't have to endure.