Everyday I advise clients on how to carefully craft their digital presence, so when someone wants to find them, they can, and they know your story - your version. After much delay, I’ve begun my journey to craft a place for me on the internet, to tell my story.

A common observation is that most times website creation process starts with "what should I put on the homepage?" or “what is the primary call-to-action”. The better question to begin with is "who's reading this website, and what are they trying to figure out?"

I’ve spent a lot of my professional life applying jobs-to-be-done thinking to client products - what is the user actually anticipating from this experience, what is the success criteria, what's the alternative they'd consider. And while these resonate better when launching commerce sites, when I started building my own professional site, it seemed like a logical way to demonstrate it. Here's what happened when I ran it on myself.

The mistake most personal sites make

The default move for a personal brand site is to write about who you are, what you do, the site literally becomes your CV. This feels productive because it's easy to fill in, but it confuses output with outcome.

A site’s use if defined by the visitors, not by you. And there are at least three very different visitors with very different jobs to be done who are probably consumers of your personal brand site. While one may be more important than the other, there is no “one-size-fits-all” content; you have to tailor the content and the journeys for each one. These jobs-to-be-done each reflect a persona, and I that’s exactly what I did. I sketched out who actually shows up on a site like mine, and what they're trying to figure out, why they’re here and what would they like to get done.

The three jobs

Job 1: Recruiters and prospective employers want to scan-check if I qualify

Visitor Persona: Someone evaluating me for role. They have a stack of LinkedIn profiles / CVs to get through.

The job: "Help me decide in a minute whether this person deserves a 30-minute call."

Success Criteria: A clear self-positioning (not beyond a couple of lines), credibility demonstrated by few metrics, and proof of work (demonstrable).

Pitfalls: walls of text, vague language (that I call fluff), and scrolling three times, or scanning 3 pages to find what I actually do.

Job 2: Thought leaders and potential collaborators who’d want to know if I'm worth following

Visitor Persona: Another senior digital practitioner with a keen eye for detail. High curiosity, but not enough attention span for a long read.

The job: "Tell me whether this person has a real point of view, or simply a jacked-up CV"

Success Criteria: At least one piece of writing that makes them think, “this is genuine” or “maybe I should’ve thought along these lines”. A specific methodology. A take they can disagree with. What kills them

Pitfalls: Well written but generic content, lack of novelty, or lines that don’t evoke a reaction or emotion, or design that causes confusion instead of delight.

Job 3: Community members or colleagues who want keep in touch

Visitor Persona: Like-minded professionals, looking to learn and grow together. Early career professionals (mentees) open to network and get in touch.

The job: "Show me whether this person is generous, would be willing to share their knowledge or just demonstrating seniority."

Success Criteria: easy ways to engage that do not require asking for time. Generous content. Evidence of past mentorship. A tone that reads as human.

Pitfalls: Credentials with no warmth, words that are not grounded in reality or authenticity. Contact forms designed to filter people out, make it hard to reach and no auto-responses.

The Key Takeaway

You don't need a fancy framework to think about a personal site well. You just need to take the visitor seriously enough to ask what they came for, and honest enough to admit when your content isn't serving them well.

If you're building anything that lives in public, try this exercise on it. Three personas, three jobs, three success criteria. Then look at what you've built and ask which job it's actually serving.

If it says that the site was built for yourself, then re-think, every site has a purpose and the purpose is for some to get the job done, and done right .