Become the human who makes someone a marquee candidate.
You are the named strategist on a member's front stage — real, accountable, theirs. Your strategist craft drives ~95% of the keystrokes behind the scenes: sourcing roles, drafting résumés, mapping recruiters and referrals. You set the strategy, review the work, decide, and send every consequential action. This track is the SOP for doing that well.
Intake & targeting
Turn a first conversation into a sharp, written target: titles, levels, comp band, geos, must-haves, and the deal-breakers. A vague target wastes the whole search — this is where the strategist earns their seat.
- Run a structured intake that produces a written, member-approved Target Brief
- Translate fuzzy goals ("something more senior, less burnout") into searchable criteria
- Have your strategist draft the role/title map, then pressure-test it against the member's reality
- Set explicit deal-breakers and a comp floor so you never waste a submit
The 45-minute intake call
Intake is a conversation you lead, not a form they fill out. You're listening for three things: where they are, where they want to be, and what they will and won't accept to get there. Record (with consent) so your strategist can draft the summary — but you own the read between the lines.
- Story & arc (10m). Walk their last two roles. What energized them, what drained them, why they're leaving. This is the raw material for positioning later.
- Target shape (15m). Titles they'd say yes to, the level (IC vs. lead vs. manager), company stage/size, industry, remote/hybrid/on-site, locations.
- Constraints (10m). Comp floor, notice period, visa/work-auth, no-go companies, confidentiality (are they searching quietly?).
- Bar & cadence (10m). What "a great week" looks like, how much they want to be looped in, and their realistic time for calls/interviews.
Writing the Target Brief
Every member has one living Target Brief. Your strategist drafts it from the intake notes; you correct and tighten it; the member signs off in writing before any sourcing begins. Treat it as the contract for the search.
- Titles & synonyms: 3–6 target titles plus the variants ATS systems actually use (e.g. "Staff PM" ≈ "Principal Product Manager").
- Level & scope: the seniority band, and what scope they need to feel it's a step forward — not sideways.
- Comp floor & target: a hard floor (below which you don't submit) and a realistic target.
- Geo & work mode: exact locations, time-zone limits for remote, relocation appetite.
- Deal-breakers: named companies, industries, or conditions that are an automatic pass.
Building the role/title map with your strategist
Have your strategist expand the target into a title map and a first list of 25–40 companies that fit the stage, size, and mission criteria. Then do the part a draft can't: sanity-check it. A first draft will happily list a company that just did layoffs or that the member already rejected last year. You catch that.
Prompt with the full Target Brief, not a one-liner. Then run a three-pass review: (1) relevance — does each role actually match level + scope? (2) freshness — drop anything with recent layoffs, hiring freezes, or a known bad culture signal; (3) fit-with-member — cross out anything they've already named as a no. Anything you keep, you can defend.
Positioning angle
Before any material is written, decide the one-line story: how this member should be read by a hiring team. "Operator who scaled support from 5 to 50" beats "experienced manager." This angle drives every résumé, every outreach note, every referral ask downstream. Write it into the Target Brief and get the member to recognize themselves in it.
Per-role materials
Generic materials get filtered out. For each role, your strategist tailors the résumé and cover letter to the posting; you review for truth, fit, and voice before anything is attached. We tailor per role — never one résumé blasted everywhere.
- Direct your strategist to tailor a résumé to a specific posting without inventing anything
- Run the truth pass: every claim traceable to the member's real history
- Keep the member's voice in cover letters — warm, specific, not template-generic
- Pass ATS-readability without keyword-stuffing or gaming the system
Tailoring vs. fabricating — the bright line
Tailoring means reordering, reframing, and emphasizing what's true for this role. Fabricating means adding a skill, title, date, or result the member doesn't have. A draft will sometimes drift across that line to "help." Your single most important job in this module is catching it. If you can't trace a claim to the member's real history, it comes out — no exceptions.
- Invented metrics ("grew revenue 40%") with no source the member can stand behind
- Titles or scope the member never held
- Tools/skills listed because the JD wanted them, not because they're real
- Do: reframe a real win in the JD's language; surface a true result that was buried
The per-role tailoring workflow
- Feed your strategist the posting + the member's master résumé + the Target Brief positioning angle.
- Your strategist returns a tailored draft with a change-log of what was emphasized and why.
- You run the truth pass (2.1) and the voice pass (2.4), editing inline.
- Borderline claims → you ask the member to confirm before they ship, never guess.
- Save the final as the role's artifact so the member can see exactly what was sent.
ATS-readability, honestly
We make résumés machine-readable — clean structure, real section headings, the role's genuine keywords where they truly apply. We do not stuff hidden keywords, fake skill ratings, or otherwise game the parser. A human submits the application (see Module 03), which is exactly why our applications don't get penalized like bot-blasted ones.
- Do: standard headings, parseable dates, the JD's true terms used in real bullets.
- Don't: white-text keywords, tables that break parsers, inflated proficiency scales.
Keeping the member's voice in cover letters
A boilerplate cover letter reads like every other boilerplate cover letter — and recruiters can smell it. Your edit pass turns the draft back into something the member would actually say: one concrete reason this company, one real proof point, no "I am writing to express my keen interest." Read it aloud against how the member talked in intake.
The materials artifact & transparency
Everything sent on a member's behalf is visible to them in their account — the tailored résumé, the cover letter, and the change-log. Transparency is a feature, not a risk: it's how the member trusts that a real person reviewed their materials, and it's part of how we disclose the strategist's hand honestly.
The approval & consent model
The heart of Marqee. Your strategist prepares, decides, and sends every consequential action — submit, outreach, the ask. This module is the operating contract for how, and from whose account, those actions happen.
- Name the four actions a human must always own — and why
- Run the Assisted (member-approves) and Authorized (strategist-sends) modes correctly
- Always act from the member's account / with their consent, never around it
- Recognize and honor a member's data, control, and confidentiality boundaries
The four human-owned actions
Your strategist's craft can prepare almost everything up to the moment of consequence. These four cross that line and are never hands-off:
- Submitting an application (or authorizing the send) — human-submitted is what keeps us inside job-board terms and out of ATS penalty boxes.
- Sending recruiter outreach — a human sending is precisely why it lands instead of getting spam-flagged.
- Making the referral ask — the relationship and the ask are human.
- Strategy, advocacy & escalations — anything sensitive (confidential search, disputes, distress).
Assisted vs. Authorized modes
At onboarding the member chooses how hands-on they want to be. Honor their choice exactly — it's recorded in their settings.
- Assisted (member approves each send): you queue the reviewed material; the member taps approve from their account; then it goes. Default for most members.
- Authorized (strategist sends within agreed rules): the member has granted you standing authority to submit within the Target Brief's bounds. You still review every item; anything outside the bounds (below comp floor, a deal-breaker company, off-target) bounces back to the member.
Authorized mode is a trust grant, not a blank check. If an action is borderline against the brief, treat it as Assisted for that one item and get an explicit yes. The cost of asking is a small delay; the cost of a wrong send is the member's trust.
From the member's account, with their data
Applications and outreach originate from the member's identity and accounts, with their consent. Their data stays theirs — we don't repurpose it, sell it, or feed it into the recruiter network without consent. When we disclose the strategist's hand, we do it honestly: the member knows their strategist drafted, reviewed, and sent.
Confidential searches
Many members are employed and searching quietly. For a confidential search: no outreach to their current employer's network, no public-profile changes that signal "looking," extra care on which recruiters see their materials. If a referral path risks exposure, surface it to the member as a decision — never make it for them.
Running the search
The week-in, week-out machine: sourcing and triage, submitting, recruiter outreach, referral discovery and the ask, and tracking it all so nothing slips and the member always sees proof of work.
- Run daily sourcing triage so only on-target roles reach the queue
- Sequence outreach so a human send always lands well-timed, never blasted
- Turn strategist-mapped referral paths into warm, member-consented asks
- Keep proof-of-work current so the member can see exactly what's happening
Sourcing triage
Your strategist pulls fresh matches daily against the Target Brief. You triage in three buckets: queue (on-target, tailor & submit), park (interesting but needs a member decision — comp, location, stretch), and pass (off-target; note why so the targeting sharpens). Aim to clear the daily pull in one focused pass; don't let a backlog rot the freshness.
Submitting applications
For each queued role: confirm tailored materials passed Module 02's truth + voice passes, then submit per the member's mode (Assisted = they approve; Authorized = you send within bounds). Log the submit with a timestamp and the artifact. Never mass-blast — every submit is a reviewed, strategist-authorized action.
- No mass-apply scripts, no submitting unreviewed draft material
- No applying to deal-breaker companies, even if "strong"
- Do: a human submits each one, from the member's identity, on a sane cadence
Recruiter outreach & referral asks
Your strategist maps the side-door paths — recruiters working relevant reqs, and warm referral routes into target companies. Your strategist drafts the note; you edit it into something human and time the send. The referral ask is the most relationship-heavy action in the job: it goes out with the member's consent, personalized, never as a template blast.
- Recruiter outreach: one specific reason you're reaching them, the member's one-line positioning, a clear ask. Human-sent — that's why it lands.
- Referral discovery: map the connection, confirm the member is comfortable being introduced, then make the ask warm and low-friction for the referrer.
Tracking & proof of work
Every action lands on the member's dashboard: roles queued, applications submitted, outreach sent, referrals in motion, replies. Proof of work is how a member at $29–99/week sees their money working — and it's how you never lose a thread. Update statuses the day they change, not at week's end.
Weekly cadence
A search lives or dies on rhythm. This is the standard week: the member check-in, the strategist sync, how you communicate momentum (and how you communicate a slow week honestly), and how you manage expectations without ever guaranteeing an outcome.
- Run the standard weekly cycle: plan → execute → update → check in
- Deliver a useful weekly member update — momentum, blockers, decisions needed
- Communicate a slow week honestly without spin or false reassurance
- Set expectations using FTC-safe language — never guarantee interviews or offers
The standard week
- Mon — plan: review the Target Brief, set the week's submit/outreach targets, flag any member decisions needed.
- Tue–Thu — execute: daily sourcing triage, tailoring, submits, outreach sends, referral asks.
- Fri — update: reconcile the tracker, write the member's weekly update, prep next week's plan.
- Member check-in: a standing weekly touch (call or written, their preference) — momentum, what's next, what you need from them.
The weekly member update
Your strategist can draft the update from the tracker; you make it real and human. A good update has four parts: what moved (submits, outreach, replies), what's in flight, what I need from you (decisions, availability), and the plan for next week. Lead with truth, not vanity metrics — 12 submits with no replies is not "great momentum."
Honest communication on a slow week
Some weeks the market is quiet or the target is too narrow. Don't paper over it. Name it, explain why, and bring a proposed adjustment: widen titles, revisit comp, add a geo, lean harder on referrals. Members trust a strategist who tells them the truth and has a next move — not one who performs optimism.
- "You'll have interviews lined up by next month" — a guarantee. Never say it.
- "This résumé is guaranteed to beat the ATS" — false & off-brand.
- Do: "Here's what we're doing to improve your odds, and here's the honest read on the market."
Expectation-setting, FTC-safe
We sell effort, craft, and access — not outcomes. Frame everything as improving the member's odds and shortening the path, never as a promised result. If a member pushes for a guarantee, be warm and clear: "I can't promise an offer — no honest service can — but here's exactly how I'll move the needle for you."
The quality bar
As the strategist craft sharpens, each strategist oversees more members — that's the margin flywheel. But the bar never moves. This module defines the members-per-strategist quality expectations and how we protect quality as the ratio climbs.
- State the members-per-strategist expectations and the quality KPIs that gate them
- Hold the per-member quality bar even as your roster grows
- Know which signals trigger a roster pause before quality slips
The flywheel — and the line it can't cross
You get most of the hands-off economics without removing your strategist or lying: your strategist's craft drives ~95% of the keystrokes, so one strategist can carry more members each quarter. Margin grows through the ratio, not by removing the human. The instant a higher ratio starts eroding per-member quality, the ratio is too high — quality is the constraint, not the variable.
Proof-of-work & the per-member feel
Every member should feel singularly attended to, even when you carry 40. The tells of a slipping bar: generic-feeling updates, slow replies, materials that read like an unedited first draft, a referral ask that's clearly a template. We track members-per-strategist alongside quality scores precisely so the ratio never outruns the craft.
- Green: personalized updates, <24h replies, every send reviewed, rating ≥ 4.7.
- Watch: rating dipping, reply times creeping, update quality flattening.
- Pause roster: any member-facing quality miss that sheer volume can't excuse.
When to raise your hand
If your roster is outpacing your ability to hold the bar, that's not a failure — it's the signal the system needs. Flag it before quality drops. We'd rather pause new assignments and protect every existing member than let the ratio quietly degrade the product. The strategist's hand is the product; protecting it is everyone's job.
- However sharp the craft gets, a real, accountable strategist reviews and sends every consequential action
- Never present a draft as a person · never guarantee an outcome · disclose the strategist's hand honestly
- The member is the client — always, including across the recruiter network