Resume One
As I listened to the AI tell his career story, I wondered how it would do with mine. His career seemed linear. He climbed up the professional ladder, even as he moved companies. There was always growth and a clear focus, at least according to the AI-created podcast. It seemed very happy to tell his story and he seemed happy to receive it. Everything seemed to jive.
My career has been anything but linear. I have bounced from defense contract to defense contract. I’ve taken time off to go back to school as well as complete a hacker bootcamp, started my own company, worked overseas because I couldn’t find work stateside, wrote a few novels, and dealt with more layoffs and job endings than anyone I know. I’ve taken jobs because money was short, not because it was good for my career.
I consider myself a career survivor, not a career thriver.
How would AI tell my story? Would it understand the difficulties? Or is it programmed to paint a positive picture of growth no matter what data it receives?
Before I continue, I need to admit this is my first ever foray into using AI. I don’t trust it because I don’t know what bias or data is baked into its programming. It’s like making a cake where you don’t know the ingredients. You may want strawberry cake, so you add strawberries, but do you know the type of milk, eggs, or flour used? What if the milk is rotten? The cake will taste horrible, despite your strawberries.
With that caution in mind, I plugged my standard resume into NotebookLM’s podcast feature. It was not crafted for any specific job, but is the basic resume I use for a career as a Cyber Focused Business Continuity professional with an Intelligence and Operational Military background. That sounds like a lot, because it is. I told you my career is a bit of a mess.
Resume Two
The AI podcast made something out of that mess. First of all, it recognized that I input a resume and couched the podcast around that. The voices called my resume “a literal blueprint for building a modern multidisciplinary career in an era where the threats we face are incredibly complex.”
Very early in the podcast, the AI hosts say the following:
“We’re generally told to pick a lane and stay in it. You’re a tech person or you’re a business person, or you’re a humanities person. But Lortz represents something else entirely. He represents the hybrid analyst.”
Where did it get the term Hybrid Analyst? The term Hybrid Analyst isn’t used often. There is a (possibly AI-generated) LinkedIn post from December 2025 that details a career in data science and storytelling. I don’t think the AI used that source as 1) it was supposed to only use my resume and 2) my career doesn’t have any data science.
Looking at my resume, I found where the AI found the term Hybrid Analyst. At the end of my resume, I post several links to articles I wrote on Medium.com. My Medium page is called Hybrid Analyst. I also posted a link to an article detailing how we can train analysts to understand hybrid warfare. I called that article “Training Hybrid Analysts”. The AI interpreting my resume extrapolated that term for my career. I don’t disagree and I have at times done the same, but I find it interesting how the AI slotted everything under that term.
Basically, the AI made up a career based on my experiences.
However, the AI didn’t seem very confident in its conclusion. One of the AI-podcast hosts asks the other,
“I hear hybrid analysts and I, you know, I like the sound of it, but isn’t there a danger there? We’re usually told, jack of all trades, master of none. How does someone without a hyper Focused traditional computer science or IT background actually survive in a highly technical cyber warfare unit?”
The other voice couldn’t answer because the AI doesn’t know what to think. The voices are only as smart as the information given. Instead of answering if my career path is dangerous, it reverted to discussing my experience and education, diving into the details instead of the overall theme.
(And who said anything about a cyber warfare unit? That was weird.)
Continuing, I enjoyed this comment:
“Because non linear career paths often build the strongest, most adaptable critical thinking skills.”
At several points in the discussion, the AI pauses to inform the listener that just because I taught about Cyber Threats from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, the podcast is non-biased and is not making judgement that these countries are enemies of the podcast, just that I taught courses on them. I thought that was interesting.
Another good sentence from the AI podcast:
“Everything he has done, the military intelligence, the threat analysis, the process, documentation, it all culminates in this ability to guarantee that an entity can keep operating on its worst day.”
A few minutes later:
“He takes the threat intelligence, the process documentation, and the teaching, and applies it practically. He designs and orchestrates tabletop training exercises to test the cyber incident response plans for his clients.”
The AI-generated hosts conclude with:
Speaker 1:
“Ultimately, Michael Lortz perfectly embodies the modern hybrid analyst. He combines the communication and narrative skills of an English major, the geopolitical insight of an international affairs master’s, the structural, stabilizing mindset of a process manager, and the technical arsenal of a cyber operations expert.”
Speaker 2:
“That combination is the future. The most valuable professionals moving forward won’t just be the people who know how to deploy a piece of code. The most valuable people will be those who know how to clearly document the process for the rest of the team who understand the psychological motivations of the adversary and who know exactly how to keep the core business running when disaster strikes.”
Speaker 1:
“It is a fascinating blueprint for a career and honestly a great reminder to stop siloing ourselves into just one area of expertise.”
According to the AI, the story I was putting out is that I am a Hybrid Analyst who has done a little bit in a lot of fields and strung it together somehow, either through career decisions or my own resume storytelling (probably the latter).
But although it makes for an interesting story, being a Hybrid Analyst doesn’t get me a job. The modern economy is looking for specialization. People who have been in one field for five years, a decade, or more typically have a better chance of finding a job in their career than someone who has built a multi-faceted career.
If there was a job for a Hybrid Analyst with my background, I would have found it. But there isn’t. Organizations want expertise. That’s what they pay big money for.
Resume Three
With the Hybrid Analyst results in mind, I decided to have a professional re-write my resume with a Business Continuity focus, as that is the career path I think I am best fit for in the private sector. I found Cheyene Marling of Resilience360Advisory through a professional colleague and I worked with her to re-write my resume. After a short interview and the completion of a few forms, Cheyene provided me a new format and a re-writing and re-focusing of my skills that put emphasis on my achievements in the fields of resiliency, continuity, and risk mitigation. Same person, same background, but heavier on the private sector terms.
What would AI say about this resume? Would it create a similar podcast and come to the same conclusion as before? Would it say I was a jack of all trades, master of none, and a hybrid analyst? I decided to put the new resume into a refreshed AI dashboard, one hopefully untainted by the previous resume analysis.
The new podcast featured the same two voices, but from the opening the story was far different.
Early in the podcast, one of the voices says,
“And we are doing this by pulling apart an incredibly unique source document. It’s the 2026 professional resume of Michael Lortz, a global cyber resilience and enterprise risk management advisor. And the mission of this Deep dive isn’t just to look at one person’s career. We want to deconstruct this profile to understand what true business resilience actually looks like and how you, the listener, can apply that mindset to your own work or even your own digital life.”
The podcast wasn’t about me. It was about organizational resiliency as a concept and how I personified it. I am not sure if that if the AI did that randomly or because it thought this perspective was best. But I am not the main focus of this audio analysis, my skill set is.
That’s an important difference. One that might be more attractive to someone looking to hire me.
The AI continues:
“We are dissecting a career built at a very specific, high stakes intersection. We’re talking threat intelligence, regulatory preparedness, and cross functional problem solving. This document reveals the blueprints for keeping an organization breathing when its digital oxygen is suddenly cut off.”
As the AI podcast hosts dive into my background and bullet points, there is a lot of jumping from item to item until it got to a bullet point it had the brainpower to analyze. For example,
Speaker 1:
“You do not walk into a room of 30 senior military leaders with a messy PowerPoint.”
Speaker 2:
“No, you do not.
You have to be incredibly precise.
The resume mentions he developed and validated an organizational continuity plan for military headquarters to ensure essential missions could continue during disruptive events.”
Speaker 1:
“Right, but the most critical function listed is that he coordinated the tracking and deconfliction of hundreds of cyber operations globally.”
I was surprised it spent no time on the organizational continuity plan. Perhaps because the AI doesn’t know the functions and missions of a military headquarters. Or what events would disrupt these missions. The AI jumped to the next bullet on tracking and deconfliction, comparing it to an air traffic control, a more widely understood profession.
There is also a lot more rambling in this podcast. When the hosts discuss my experience with table top exercises, they debate whether or not they are effective, taking me out of the discussion. Same with the term “capability gap” and “MITRE ATT&CK”. These are important to define, but don’t need to derail the conversation.
The AI even contradicts itself towards the end of the audio analysis when it says:
“And that transition from thinking about foreign intelligence to thinking about local physical impact is honestly the most crucial theme in this document.”
I thought continuity and resilience was the most crucial theme.
Towards the end of the podcast, the AI makes an interesting connection. It mentions my article “From Hurricanes to Hacks Developing a Unified Cyber Disaster Response” that I wrote about the State of Florida, connects it to my experience helping the State of Florida with emergency response, and claims my resume “suggests we should treat a cyber attack with the exact same emergency management framework as a Category 5 hurricane”.
Then like the other podcast, it uses the term “Hybrid Analyst”.
“If we connect this to the bigger picture, that is the exact definition of the hybrid analyst.”
But it never uses that term again. Only for that one sentence. After that line, the AI spends a few minutes talking about different disasters large organizations can face, again concluding,
“Lortz’s specific blend of skills is essentially the blueprint for modern resilience.”
Then it uses my background to sum up the problem of resiliency for organizations.
“We started this deep dive looking at a single 2026 resume, trying to figure out what business resilience actually looks like at the highest levels of military and corporate defense. It turns out it’s not just buying more firewalls or installing better antivirus software. True resilience is a mix of historical context and communication. It’s meticulous process documentation, literally writing down exactly how you do your job so that if you vanish tomorrow, someone else can pick up the manual, understand it immediately, and keep the lights on without missing a beat.
It’s rigorous, highly technical tabletop practice where you actively try to break your own company using the same tools nation states use, just to find your capability gaps before the enemy does.
And ultimately, it’s viewing digital and physical threats not as separate categories, but as a unified disaster landscape requiring a unified hybrid response.”
The inference is that I can do all that. But the focus of this broadcast was not to sell me, but to use me as an inspiration for a conversation on continuity. There is no conclusion about me, which I am not sure is a good thing or not.
These three resumes tell three totally different stories. My colleague’s resume told a story of linear career progression, of moving up and taking more responsibility, and becoming a leader in his field. My first resume told a story of someone with a lot of varied skills that can put them together to help organizations. The final resume told a story of organization continuity through the prism of my experiences.
Perhaps another prompt could have geared the story more about me, but hiring managers don’t want to hire me the person. They want to hire someone who can help them solve a problem. If their problem is how to develop organizational resilience through documentation and exercises with an emphasis on cyber security, I am their guy.
When it comes to resumes, there is no right answer. There is no right format and no right bullet points. It’s a game of chance, but in the words of Louis Pastor, “chance favors the prepared mind”. You help your chances of getting hired immensely when you write your resume and address your skills to fit an organization’s problems. I highly recommend using NotebookLM to hear what story your resume tells and if that is the message your want to give your audience.
As a final exercise, I plugged the two resumes into NotebookLM and asked AI two questions.
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“What is the biggest difference between the story of the first source (Resume 3) and the story of the second source (Resume 2)?”
NotebookLM: The biggest difference between the two sources lies in the scope and variety of Michael’s professional identity. While both sources detail his expertise in cyber resilience and risk management, the second source provides a much broader narrative that includes his early military career, social science research, and creative pursuits.
The specific differences include:
Historical Depth (Military Service): The second source includes a decade of experience (1995–2005) as an Intelligence Analyst and Supervisor for the US Army and Florida Army National Guard
This entire chapter of his career is absent from the first source, which begins its professional timeline in 2006
Diverse Professional Roles: The second source highlights Michael’s versatility by detailing specialized roles at SOCOM that are not explicitly named in the first source. These include his work as a Senior Social Scientist performing marketing analysis and an Irregular Warfare Researcher focusing on social movements
The first source frames his SOCOM experience almost exclusively through the lens of “Resilience Specialist” and “Cyber Mission Planning”
Creative and Entrepreneurial Pursuits: The second source explicitly mentions Michael’s background as a creator and author. It notes that he has built a network to market and sell his self-published novels and highlights his Bachelor’s degree in English/Creative Writing.
The first source focuses purely on his technical and strategic business credentials
Targeted Branding: The first source is a highly focused document intended for Global Cyber Resilience and Enterprise Risk Management roles, using specific “Signature Achievements” to highlight his impact in those areas.
The second source is a more holistic professional history, presenting him as a “Strategist” and “Creator” who is “passionate about helping organizations continue to operate” across a wider array of risks.
In summary, the first source tells a specialized story of a cyber security expert, while the second source tells a more expansive story of an intelligence professional, social scientist, and creative writer.
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“Which of these sources is a better resume for finding a job in Business Continuity and Resilience?”
NotebookLM: The first source (“Lortz-Michael Resume BC 2026.docx”) is the superior resume for securing a job specifically in Business Continuity (BC) and Resilience. While both sources describe the same candidate, the first source is intentionally optimized with targeted branding, industry-specific terminology, and a focused narrative structure that aligns directly with BC and Resilience roles.
The primary reasons the first source is more effective include:
Targeted Branding and Keywords: The first source immediately identifies Michael as a “Global Cyber Resilience & Enterprise Risk Management Advisor” and explicitly lists “Business Continuity Plan Development” and “Crisis & Readiness Strategic Planning” in the core competencies section.
In contrast, the second source uses a more general heading and includes creative roles like “Creator” and “Author,” which may distract a BC hiring manager.
Strategic Framing of Experience: The first source reframes Michael’s historical roles to emphasize resilience. For his time at SOCOM, it uses the title “Resilience Specialist” and focuses on “integrating cyber preparedness and continuity planning”.
The second source uses titles like “Senior Social Scientist” and “Irregular Warfare Researcher” for the same period, which are less relevant to a standard Business Continuity career path.
Signature Achievements: The first source includes a dedicated “Signature Achievements” section that highlights a specific high-impact BC accomplishment: developing and validating an organizational continuity plan for a military headquarters to ensure essential missions continued during disruptions.
This provides immediate proof of his capability in the field.
Focus on Process and Continuity: In the CENTCOM section, the first source emphasizes “Enterprise Process Documentation & Continuity Support,” noting that he authored over 100 process documents specifically to strengthen “continuity of operations”.
The second source lists this as “Intelligence Process Analyst,” focusing more on organizational structure than the specific resilience outcome.
Exclusion of Irrelevant Data: The first source removes details that do not support a BC career, such as marketing self-published novels or performing social science marketing analysis.
By focusing exclusively on technical and strategic resilience, it presents a more cohesive and professional image for this specific industry.
While both resumes correctly highlight his Certified Business Continuity Professional (CBCP) designation and his MBA in Process Management, the first source is far more effective at translating his diverse military and intelligence background into the specific language used by corporate and government resilience departments.
