The Mirror
Understand where you stand before deciding what comes next.
"The first tool in the cascade. Without a grounded read of where you are, everything that follows is guesswork."
What It Does
The Mirror is the first tool in the cascade. It works through a structured intake, then a Mirror conversation that calibrates against sector benchmarks, and produces a Position Score with context. The output is a clear, grounded read of your current position, so every subsequent decision has a foundation instead of a guess.
The Three Stages
1. Intake and calibration
A five-step intake captures the shape of your career so far. Step 1 is factual: first name, country, sector, role, and years of experience. Step 2 is the situation picker: what is prompting you to be here now. Steps 3 to 5 are calibration questions that surface assumptions you might not have named, so the Position Score reflects reality rather than self-report.
You can also upload documents during intake: CV, LinkedIn export, professional certificates. The Mirror reads them to build a richer picture before the conversation begins.
CV extraction
When you upload a CV, The Mirror extracts a structured profile from it: your role history, sector experience, seniority signals, key achievements, and any qualifications or certifications. This extraction runs automatically after upload and takes a few seconds. You will see a confirmation when the profile has been extracted successfully.
The extracted profile is not a summary of your CV. It is a structured read that the AI uses throughout the cascade. Specific achievements, named projects, and quantified results are pulled out and used to ground the conversation and every downstream output. A detailed CV produces a richer extraction; a sparse one produces a thinner starting point.
Check CV readout
After extraction, The Mirror generates a readout that shows you how your CV reads right now. This is a visible trust signal: you can see what the AI has picked up before the conversation begins, so there are no surprises. The readout covers four areas:
- How you read right now: your seniority signal, sector identity, and professional framing as the CV presents them
- What is well documented: specific achievements, metrics, and named projects that give the AI concrete material to work with
- What is thin: gaps, generic phrasing, or unexplained transitions where the CV does not give enough detail
- What the Mirror will explore: the calibration threads the conversation will pull at, based on what the CV does not resolve
The readout also produces a seed question: a specific observation drawn from the CV that opens the Mirror conversation. Instead of a generic opener, the first question the AI asks will reference something concrete from your document, so the conversation starts grounded in your specifics from the first exchange.
Tip: Read the "What is thin" section before the conversation starts. It tells you where the AI will need you to fill in the picture, so you can prepare specific examples rather than answering on the spot.
The readout is cached: if you reload the page, it restores without re-running the analysis. Uploading a different CV regenerates the readout automatically. If you choose not to upload a CV, no readout appears and the conversation opens with a standard question. The feature is purely additive.
Tip: Be specific about what you actually do day to day, not what your job description says. "I spend sixty percent of my time reviewing contracts for standard compliance" gives The Mirror far more to work with than "I'm a lawyer".
2. Mirror conversation and Position Score
A guided conversation reflects what the intake revealed, pressure-tests framing, and produces a Position Score with plain-language context. This is not a grade, it is a read: where your current position is strong, where it is exposed, and why. The conversation typically runs three to four exchanges. Once the AI has enough signal, it produces your results.
3. Sector benchmark and insight
Your position is placed against live sector benchmarks, with commentary on where your sector is moving and what that means for you specifically. Three metrics are surfaced: how crowded the candidate pool is, how active hiring is, and how fast AI is changing the sector. Each metric comes with a plain-language note. The output is a grounded read, ready to feed into The Map.
Live Market Intelligence
The sector benchmark uses live market intelligence, refreshed regularly. The pill at the top right of the app shows the current status of the intelligence layer: green for operational, amber for degraded, red for unavailable. You can open the pill to see what has been checked and when.
How It Connects
The Mirror is the entry point. Your Position Score, sector benchmark, and calibration results carry forward automatically into The Map and everything downstream. If you upload documents, the extracted context also carries forward, so you do not need to re-supply it in later tools.
Best Practices
- Complete all five intake steps in one sitting if you can. The calibration questions build on each other
- Answer the conversational prompts specifically. Generic answers produce a generic Position Score
- Upload your current CV if you have one. It gives the Mirror specific examples to calibrate against
- Read the sector commentary, not just the score. The context is where the decision signal lives
Common Questions
- Can I run The Mirror more than once? Yes. You can run a new assessment whenever your situation changes. Each run is saved separately and you can compare them
- Does my Position Score change over time? It can. The sector data is refreshed regularly, and if you rerun The Mirror with updated context, the score will recalibrate
- What if the conversation ends before I feel heard? The Mirror asks until it has enough signal. If the output does not feel right, run it again with more specific responses
- Is my Mirror data used to train AI? No. Your career data is yours. See the Privacy and Data page for the detail