What about that example do people find to be high-potential? I'm a bit confused because to me 3-month "CMO" of 1-month-old company as a college sophomore sounds at best like a slightly positive signal, and at worst a strongly negative signal, since it could mean anything from "they had enough ambition to work and study at the same time for 3 months and learn stuff on the job" to "they couldn't focus on classes and/or wanted to do something that quickly would put a big-sounding title on their resume".
Honestly any "big-sounding title" within 3-5 years after undergrad is a big red flag and takes a lot to overcome that resume going in the trash. I think best case scenario it means they have connections and got a legitimate job somewhere using those connections, in which case it's extremely unlikely I'm reviewing their resume since I barely graduated with a social science degree from a college nobody's ever heard of. The more likely case is that they aren't actually doing the job of a "Chief Technology Officer" but are instead just a programmer. Which, at 22 years old, is good and what they should be doing. At 22 it's very unlikely you have the technical chops to lead large teams doing big projects, and even less likely you have the emotional maturity to do so.
It shows immaturity to try to shoehorn a C-level job into your resume where it doesn't make sense and where 99% of people will rightfully raise an eyebrow at it. I say this as someone who had "Assistant Director" on my resume as my second job out of college, and I was assisting in the direction of a department of two people. Myself, and my boss. In my actual day-to-day I wrote bad PHP and read HN. It was a joke, and looking back I'm sure there are some jobs I applied to that tossed my resume after seeing that, and rightfully so.
C-level positions from anything less than a Fortune 500 are a joke and an immediate disqualifier. Anyone exaggerating that much upfront makes me not trust anything that will follow.
So much of life these days feels like Freddy Got Fingered. Fondling someone else's horse on their farm does not make you a Farmer.
