Why Finding that Opportunity at a Startup is Becoming Difficult Than Ever —

Hey what do you do? I work at a Startup — WOW thats Awesome! We’ve all (at least some of us in the space ) have heard that coming and the next few hours of the evening that will follow will be about how Investor ‘x’ funded founder ‘y’ and how awesome is your new Macbook Air and all the Uber credits you’ve been entitled to + the unlimited coffee and yeah I forgot to add on the unlimited food abilities at your pantry.

For a moment let’s just absorb all of this and give it a thought. I’m sure there are thousands of us who simply want to work at a Startup because you have the awesomeness entitlement. But lets not forget that these entitlements come with some heavy sacrifices in place. If you are heading to some startup job board and submitting applications like hundreds and thousands of people — you are doing it wrong. Please stop following the bunch.

Here’s what I think could work and how the entire process of recruitment at Startups has evolved over the past few years. Here are the some of the pre-requisites you should go through before even submitting an application.

Before we begin — that application button or “Apply Now” is gone for a toss. Let’s skip that for some time. interesting roles are not easy to come by. Over the last 4–5 years I have personally not come across individuals securing a role by using the Application — Call To Action.

1. Have a strong reference point in place. Try looking out for a friend / colleague / acquaintance who knows the Startup’s founders or a co-worker.

You don’t just hurry over into writing a cover letter & all that passion of yours will flow over for their awesome product and the next call will be for a meet-up. It does not work that way. You first learn how to connect with their vision, their product & the culture. Before even you get introduced to the founders / member in their team — do some homework and get your questions ready about just three things that matter the most ( vision, their product & the culture ). You need not mention that you are looking out for a role.

2. Your online presence matters — period! Either you work on it or don’t leave a trace.

I don’t require your CV anymore to understand what you do or might have accomplished in the past. I can run a few searches and find out based on your email ID, LinkedIN profile or a twitter handle and sum up your persona. Hence you need to be super careful with you email ID / forum and social handles — where and how you use it across hundreds of online portals floating around.

The problem arises when I’m not able to find something relevant about you. I tried using some tools to discover your user handle but it directed me to a protected LinkedIN profile where I cant even see who you are or what have you done. I tried your Facebook & Twitter and they are protected as well. If you are concerned about Privacy — don’t surf the internet. These are some of the major spoilers esp. when you are actively looking at finding your very own place to work amongst a hundred others.

3. Directly get in touch with the CEO / CTO / Co-founder / VP — Show them the Value Add

This is vital. Either you will hear from them or you might be just put on hold. But there are ways to get through this. Founders are so called “busy” people or rather the ones who will scan through you secretly even before visiting your LinkedIN page or wasting their time to look at what you have to offer.

But on the other end — there are those who look for Value Add. If I am spending 15 minutes over a Skype call — it better help me learn something new or help me improve at what I plan on accomplishing — ( hiring, find the new next dev guy, on-boarding a sales developer )

If you are able to bring some Value Add to the table head on — please follow Step 2 confidently. But if you are hesitant and are simply exploring please tread on this carefully.

4. The rise of Unpublished Roles

Multiple opportunities across Startups are not let out to the general public or the job boards. The reason is simple — you want to get the best people around to work with you & they are not scouting the job-boards for the change. For all you know — they aren’t even actively looking out for a change and for them it might be a passive search.

How can you make use of this untapped opportunity — shoot a direct email or follow step #3. Once again do remember to keep it simple and crisp + the value add.

5. Find a possible problem with their Business — be fanatical about their growth.

Every business has their own set of problems to solve, be it Sales, Ops, Marketing, Growth, Engineering etc. It would be pretty awesome if you knew where their problems were. For eg : you are a growth hacker and you have discovered that their organic traffic has been dwindling or it’s a new found business and they might need help with digital marketing for user acquisition. Simply bring up the areas you could help them with and send in some metrics to showcase where they stand and how can you help them move forward.

It’s a good warm start rather than first scheduling a call, getting to know them, then come down for a discussion and before you know it’s already 3–4 weeks gone by. When they see you that you know their problem & are showing the signs of solving it right away — a discussion will unfold.

6. Make it a habit to reach out / cold connect with someone over LinkedIn —you do not need to know them personally or via a reference through your colleagues of friend.You need not mean business but would like to simply explore synergies.

Stick to at least 1 connection / week to start with and it will add up a lot of value. Be careful how you grow your network.

But please do not press the “Send Invitation” tab without adding some relevant content.

Personally it’s very difficult to connect with someone whom I don’t know about in such a huge space over LinkedIn. I would definitely be comfortable connecting with / helping / someone who has provided me with a heads upon as to why he/she is requesting for me to connect with them.

If you would like to improve your chances of connecting with the person whom you need to, instead just add a short relevant description. Keep it short and simple. But don’t forget to add it in.