Before you buy something on Amazon, book a hotel, or make a reservation at a restaurant, you probably do the same thing every time.
You read the reviews.
If the reviews suck, you probably go a different route. If the reviews are great, you move forward with a transaction.
This is how we’ve come to make purchases these days.
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Imagine what it was like before reviews were a thing. You just hired someone based on word of mouth, not knowing if they had screwed over six people before you. You went to new restaurants to test them out for the first time, not knowing if a dozen or so people had gotten food poisoning previously.
I guess we were much more adventurous back in the day because you were going into things with less information, and you were willing to be surprised in a good way.
The funny thing is that your career already has a review system. It just isn’t public. Every manager you’ve worked for, every coworker you’ve collaborated with, every customer you’ve supported, and every recruiter you’ve interacted with has quietly formed an opinion about what it was like to work with you. Those reviews don’t live on a website. They live in people’s memories.
Picture this for a second. Imagine every time you interviewed for a new role, the hiring manager could click a button and instantly read fifty anonymous reviews from people who had worked with you over the last ten years. “Showed up prepared.” “Always found a way to solve the problem.” “Made the team better.” “Created unnecessary drama.” “Missed deadlines.” “I’d hire them again tomorrow.” Would you be excited for them to open that page?
The reality is that people are already reading those reviews. They just aren’t reading them online. Recruiters call references. Hiring managers text former coworkers. Executives ask around. Investors reach out to people in their network. It only takes one message that says, “Hey, you worked with Scott before. What was he like?” before someone starts writing your review from memory.
“Your resume lists what you did. Your reputation is the story people tell when your name comes up.”
This is why your reputation is one of the few career assets that compounds over time. Every project you finish, every difficult conversation you handle, every promise you keep, and every person you help adds another review to your file. Most people spend far more time polishing their resume than earning the kinds of reviews that make the resume almost unnecessary.
A question I ask myself often is simple: if my previous company had an opening tomorrow, would they hire me again? If a former manager started a business, would they call me first? If someone I worked with five years ago had to build a team from scratch, would my name come up in the conversation? Those are the reviews that actually matter.
Your next opportunity may have less to do with the words on your resume and more to do with the stories people tell when your name comes up. Make those stories worth repeating. Build a career that earns five-star reviews long before anyone asks to read them.