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My 2024 Startup Job Search Tech Stack
Use these 6 tools to win your startup job search
Kyle Thomas
March 09, 2024
JOB SEARCH STRATEGY
My 2024 Startup Job Search Tech Stack.
Over the last two years, I’ve compiled a list of over 100 job search tools.
The 6 tools I share below are my top recommendations for identifying the job you want and standing out from the crowd in your outreach and application.
There’s no single tool that can guarantee you the job you want.
But stacking these tools will give you the best shot to get your butt in the seat of the next startup rocketship as quickly as possible.
*I’m not sponsored by any of these companies nor do I receive any affiliate payouts. I’m just trying to surface the best tools out there. However, if any of these companies want to sponsor the newsletter… holler at me!
Job Board
Prospect.
What it is: Prospect is a job board that uses the same data VCs use to give you an independent third-party projection of your equity's likely worth. They allow you to filter companies based on…
Department with open roles
Projected equity value increase
Role location
Number of employees
Notable markers (Repeat founder, early stage, female founder, large market cap, ex-FAANG team, recent fundraise)
Type of company (B2B, B2C)
Industry
Investors (11 of the top VC firms)
Risk
Why I like it: The majority of startups fail. That’s why when looking for your next startup job, you want to “de-risk” your company choice as much as possible. The best way to do that is to think like an investor. Prospect does a great job of doing the sorting for you. They have built a predictive model factoring in inputs like fundraising and valuation data, investor quality, growth metrics, founder and employee backgrounds, and more so you can join the next Stripe, Airbnb, Uber, or Coinbase and as they put it, “avoid the buzzy unicorn that doesn’t have the traction to back up its valuation.”
How to use it:
Determine the specific characteristics of your ideal job description (I shared how to do this in a previous newsletter)
Filter by industry, number of employees, and function
If you’re targeting a specific stage (I would), here’s a rule of thumb that will help you use the Prospect employees filter…
0-50 employees = Seed to Series A
50-100 employees = Series A to Series B
100 - 250 employees = Series B to Series C
250+ employees = Series C+
Click on the company career pages and add all relevant roles of interest into your job tracker (you should have a job search tracker and can create one in Google Sheets, Notion, or use another tool)
Use LinkedIn to create a sample org chart for the department, including the hiring manager, skip-level manager, recruiter, team members, and cross-functional stakeholders.
Send e-mail outreach, including an immersive resume (I mention these below).
Send it to all relevant employees at the company, then move on to the next company and opening.
Additional Features:
Search jobs with AI - Upload your resume and let the AI system pick which roles it thinks you would be the best fit for.
Equity Calculator - Enter the details of your offer into the calculator
Blog - Their blog is great and I would say should be required reading for anyone looking for their next startup role. That’s not shocking since one of the founders, Billy Gallagher, used to write for TechCrunch.
Downsides: The tool pulls US-based companies and US-based roles, so it’s not a tool for you if you’re non-US.
Cost: Free
Email Finder
Apollo.
What it is: Apollo is a sales tool that helps businesses find and confirm leads. As a job seeker, you can use it to find and confirm the email addresses of current employees. It's a great way to connect with someone who can introduce you to the company.
Why I like it: Everyone can find people at their target companies on LinkedIn and send them a connection request with a personalized message. But not everyone checks their LinkedIn every day. Everyone does check their email every day. That’s why finding the emails for relevant people in the company and sending them highly tailored personalized messages can be a game changer. The startup job search is all about standing out and I have seen these personalized emails drive fantastic results.
How to use it:
Create a sample org chart for the company/team I want to join.
In your job search tracker, add their LinkedIn, and then search their name and company in Apollo.
You just need to find one or two emails to know the syntax they use (eg: is it first letter then last name k.thomas@xyzcorp or just first name kyle@xyzcorp)
Add those emails to your tracker, create personalized messages, and fire away!
Potential Alternatives: If Apollo’s interface is too much for you or you run out of email search credits, you can hop over to Hunter.io. Their site works similarly. Just enter the company’s domain, and they’ll share the emails of a handful of people. They may not be the exact people you’re looking for, but you’ll be able to understand the syntax they use and use the same structure to email your targets.
Cost: Free
Email Outreach
Lavender.
What it is: Lavender is an AI email tool that helps sellers write better emails faster and get more replies in less time with AI. You can use it to write better cold networking messages.
Why I like it: Job searching is a sales process. You are selling the hiring manager on your ability to impact the company. So use tools like Lavender that empower today’s salespeople. It helps to do things like…
Verify recipient’s emails are valid (a great double-check after pulling emails from Apollo.io or Hunter.io).
Write a subject line that will get the highest open rate.
Write an email using ChatGPT that is personalized, doesn’t ramble, and drives a high click-through rate.
Grade your subject line and email to help you improve its performance.
Track if your recipient opened your email so you can track open rates and adjust your messaging accordingly.
How to use it:
Lavender has a great blog post walking you through downloading the extension and setting it up with your email provider (read it here).
Once installed, take an email you pulled from Apollo, enter it into the “To:” bar, and check if it is verified.
Then, either use ChatGPT inside the plugin to write your email or try writing it yourself.
Once you’ve written your email, click on the Email Coach button to learn different ways to improve your messaging. You can also click on “Apply All Fixes” to have it rewrite your email to give it the highest chance of being opened and responded to.
Remember, a simple, short, personalized, and to-the-point email beats rambling any day. The person you’re emailing is busy, so getting your message across as quickly as possible is important.
Cost: Free
All The Videos
Loom.
What it is: Loom is a free online screen recording tool that allows you to edit and store videos in your browser.
Why I like it: Written words only go so far as to convey your excitement about a company, a mission, and the role. That’s why I have been encouraging members of the UpEmployment Accelerator to use video in multiple phases of their job search.
To record videos, Loom is definitely the easiest way to go. I love it because you can use it to record your screen as you walk through a slide deck or deliverable or you can just record yourself speaking directly into the camera. Once you’ve created the video, you can edit it in the browser (if you want to remove your “um’s”) and copy a clickable link to include in your outreach messaging.
You can also track how often your video is watched to understand if people are clicking on the link in your messages and if they watched it.
How to use it: There are multiple ways to use video in your job search effectively…
Intro videos: Record a <2 min video introducing yourself and sharing why you think the person you’re sending the message to is awesome and why the company and role would be a great fit. Bonus points for including visual aids to stand out. Link these videos in your cold email outreach saying something like, “I recorded a quick video about why I think I would be a great fit here.” I am seeing these drive a significant increase in response rate and interviews.
Value deliverable walkthroughs: Create a value deliverable for the company and record yourself describing the document and how your experience can help the company solve a problem or harness an opportunity. Share those with interviewers via email before or after your conversation.
Thank you videos: I wrote a prior newsletter about this subject but cannot overstate how impactful these videos are. Everyone who sent them has received glowing feedback from the recruiters and hiring team. This is the final thing you can do to stand out in the interview process and prove you’re the right person for the role.
Cost: Free
Immersive Resume
Notion.
What it is: Notion is an all-in-one workspace that combines the functionality of documents, landing pages, tables, trackers, and everything else you need to keep organized.
Why I like it: Many companies use Notion as their company knowledgebase or wiki, and demonstrating that you know how to use this software will show that you’re keeping up to date on new technologies. Google Drive is great for document storage, but I prefer the Notion interface. Plus, members of the Early Accelerator have been seeing increased response rates and glowing feedback from linking to immersive Notion resumes in their cold outreach messages. You can use it to create your own job search tracker, networking tracker, immersive resume, and much more.
How to use it: Here are a few ways you can use Notion to accelerate your job search…
Create an immersive resume: Instead of trying to jam all of the information about yourself into your outreach email, link to a page that has more details about why you want to work at the company, details about you, links to deliverables you have created, and links to things like your resume, LinkedIn, and Calendly. Sending these led one accelerator member to have a 25% outreach-to-interview ratio. That’s VERY good.
Create a job search/networking tracker: Use the Board View to create a Kanban board and move target jobs from identified, applied, email sent, email responded to, and interview. It’s important to keep everything in one place to ensure proper follow-up.
Cost: Free
All The Things
ChatGPT.
What it is: If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT, you’ve probably been living in a cave for the last year. But, for all you cave dwellers, ChatGPT is an AI model that can chat with you, answer your questions, and help with various tasks.
Why I like it: ChatGPT is like having a team of on-call experts at your fingertips.
How to use it: You can use ChatGPT to…
Update and optimize your resume and cover letter - Upload a copy of your resume, copy and paste the job description, and ask it to update your resume using keywords from the job description.
Help you practice for interviews - Upload a copy of your resume, copy and paste the job description, and ask it to come up with interview questions and ideal answers to those questions using examples from your resume.
Write effective outreach messages - Give it context around who the person is, what you’re trying to say, and your desired outcome and it can write messages to that person for you.
Come up with ideas for value deliverables - Upload a copy of your resume, copy and paste the job description, and ask it to come up with a list of value deliverables you could create for the company using your existing skills and experience.
And much much more
Cost: Free
There is no single tool that will guarantee you land the job you’re looking for.
However, if you combine these tools, they create a winning combination of automation, visualization, and organization that will make you stand out from the crowd.
It has never been more competitive in the startup job search so use these tools to level up your game and get your butt in the seat at the next startup rocketship as quickly as possible.
Let’s become career champions together 🏆
Kyle
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