I went back through my Google Drive and pulled up every version of my CV from when I was still a clinician through to now. And honestly it was a bit embarrassing to see how long it took me to figure out to make my CV actually convincing that I had transferrable skills.
Here's what it said for nearly four years under my Wollongong Hospital role:
"ACI Hip Fracture Clinical Advisory Group member, working party member of TWH's Hip Fracture working party. Physiotherapy Department priority resource review working party leader."
If I'm hiring for a job I'd read that and think wow congrats you joined a bunch of working parties, so what.
So I can only guess I got interviews based on what I was writing in the job applications where I described the exact same work completely differently. In my very first non-clinical application back in 2020 I wrote this:
"I have been able to increase the level of physiotherapy received by hip fracture patients in both the pre-operative and post-operative stages. This has resulted in a significant improvement in our day 1 mobilisation fidelity from 63% to 88%."
Same working party, same person, same work. But one version tells you I sat on a committee and the other one tells you what I actually did and what changed because of me.
And that second version, the one with the data, didn't make it onto my actual CV until 2024. Four years of sending out a CV that undersold the most impactful thing I'd done.
When I was applying for health adjacent roles I thought the CV just needed to list what I'd done and that the application answers should speak for themselves. I didn't recognise how important the data was until I started working in startups. It was during Earlywork Academy's Business Development Fellowship, when they went through a CV review that it was really drummed in to me, the data IS the proof of what you can do.
So here's what I want you to do
Go back to the breadcrumbs you found in Let's be real, you don't know what roles to search for (yet) and the category you landed on. Pick one. Just one for now. And write two versions of it:
How you'd describe it on your current CV (probably your job title and maybe a vague line about what you were responsible for).
What actually changed cos you did that thing. A number, a percentage, a before and after, something a hiring manager outside of health would read and go "oh OK so they can actually do this".
If you're stuck on where the data is, think about it like this, did wait times change, did patient outcomes improve, did a process get faster, did you reduce something, did a program you built get picked up by another site. The data is in there, you just might not have thought of it as data before.
Hit reply on the newsletter and tell me what you come up with, I would genuinely love to see your before and after.
Next: where to actually search.
This first went out to Post-MDT subscribers on 23 August 2026. You can read the original edition in the archive, or get the next one in your inbox.