My Resume Sucks

Get an awesome job without an impressive resume, by adding value first

Last week I read an article about how a recent college grad, Austin Geidt, became the 4th employee at Uber. One of my main takeaways was the concept of adding value before you seek anything in return. This is not a new concept and for the most part it is common sense, however I feel most people do not apply it to their job hunt. Adding value first is exactly what Austin did to land a job at Uber. She bugged the founders until they brought her on as an intern, helping out however she could. She came in with the mindset of having to prove her value to the company on a daily basis. Now of course she has worked her way up to a top level position at Uber.

In one of my favorite episodes of This Week in Startups, Chris Sacca talks about adding value to the companies he invests in. Jason asks Sacca how he has got into such awesome deals over years (Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Kickstarter). Sacca says his secret is that he always tries to add value upfront before he writes a check and asks for equity.

About 2 months ago my co-founder and I decided to pull the plug on our dying startup. Since then I have been working on my next move. One of my daily routines is researching companies I am interested in and sending out resumes. This effort has been unsuccessful for the most part, most likely because my resume is not all that impressive and I am not a developer. After, several weeks of this practice I have decided my time can be better spent taking a different approach. That approach of course is figuring out ways to add value first to these companies I want to join.

I can’t understand why I was even attempting the “cold” emailed resume approach. I mean after all, the way I landed my first job out of college was not by emailing my resume. I interned (unpaid) for the summer in the finance department for a small city in southern California. At the time I did not realize I was adding value first, I just did it to say I had done a summer internship. Luckily for me, by adding value first I had set myself up on the inside track to a paid position with the city. Sure enough in January of the following year the finance director called me and told me they had a part-time position available and it was mine if I wanted it. I took the position and after six months of part-time work they brought me on full-time. I did not have to go through an interview process where I would have competed against more qualified candidates, instead I had added value first so I was already ahead of the pack.

I believe interning (unpaid) for a company is a great way to add value first. Of course not everyone has the luxury of doing so. I am lucky enough to have some savings to support me for a few months while I give it a shot. My plan is to find a part time job that can supplement my expenses while I work unpaid for a company I feel passionate about joining. My goal is to move into a paid role with that company within 3-4 months and it’s a goal that will need to be reached if I want to continue paying rent.

When looking to land a job at a killer company there are certainly other ways to add value first. My co-founder from my last company and I re-designed a page from a startups website. We will be sending this re-design to the company in the next couple days. We did this because we are hoping to show the startup we can add value to what they are doing and hopefully this will land us a meeting. This may not work out, but either way it was good design and front end coding practice for us.

Adding value first will hopefully give me the edge I need to land a job with a company I am passionate about, however in general I believe it is a great mantra to live by when approaching any relationship.