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Ask HN: How to properly show my skills for startup roles?

7 points arabello | 1 comments | 17 Oct 25 07:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.201s | source

I've got ~5 YoE as a Full Stack Engineer in a small software consultancy/house. We build products for external clients, covering everything from requirements gathering to production, with a focus on GenAI for the last two years.

Goal: Land an international role at a startup, preferably in the AI/GenAI field, ideally Founding or Full Stack Eng positions.

Problem: I'm not getting opportunities. I've been looking on and off for 2/3 years but only had 1 offer. My guess is my consultancy background isn't translating well on paper for the startup landscape.

We don't operate like a traditional consulting agency. I function as a Product Engineer (Full Stack and GenAI) including client-facing responsibilities, talking with stakeholders, challenging designers' UX/UI deliverables, partial team management, ownership of the internal AI tooling and some public-facing marketing stuff. I think all of this doesn't show up properly on resume's experiences.

I'm confident in my tech and soft skills. The main thing I lack is ownership of an ongoing production product with a massive user base, as we typically focus on project bootstrapping.

How do I properly showcase my product-oriented skills? I'm usually screened out or rejected after the first interview, suggesting the issue is primarily with my experience presentation or content.

If the issue is actually in my skill set, how can I effectively evolve in that direction while staying in my current position?

1. JustExAWS ◴[18 Oct 25 01:28 UTC] No.45624059[source]▶
I work in consulting too - customer facing staff consultant and leading implementations. I did a 3.5 year stint at AWs Professional Services.

I had no trouble getting full time job offers from 3rd party consulting companies within 2 weeks after being Amazoned and again last year.

But, I seem to be toxic to product companies - more so than before I got into consulting. I’ve gotten more rejections the two times I was looking as an architect (it was a plan B) than I got before joining AWS and I was a developer.

I honestly can’t blame them, now I parachute into a company, lead an implementation and I’m gone in 3-9 months. Why would I hire me to be responsible for long term strategic vision who they need to be around for 2-3 years?

But to answer your question, you need to get on larger long term projects. There are some projects at my company where the tech lead has been leading an implementation for over a year with a team.