Your Real Job When Job Hunting Isn't What You Think - Part 2

(Read time 6 min 26 sec)

During your job hunt, your job isn’t actually to find a job.

Your job is to eliminate all doubt from the hiring manager’s mind that you’re the right person for the role you want.

This is a big deal for the hiring manager.

The reason they’re hiring someone is because they:

• Don’t have the skills or expertise to solve the problems

• Don’t have the time or bandwidth to solve the problems

• Or the business has untapped potential that can’t be realized without someone in that role

Making the wrong hire is an expensive mistake.

Expensive because bad hires cost time and money.

And in a startup or a fast-moving tech company, time and money are precious.

So it’s up to the hiring manager to do everything in their power to verify the candidate can do what needs to be done and will be a culture fit in the team.

Last week I covered three of the six ways you can eliminate doubt in a hiring manager’s mind.

You can read about those here.

Let’s pick up where we left off last week with…

• The final three areas to eliminate hiring manager doubt

• Why the hiring manager cares about these areas

• Ways to eliminate doubts in each

4) Intangible Value

Sure, you can do the job, but what else can you do?

As the saying goes…

The beauty and the curse of tech companies, particularly in the early or growth stages is there’s never a lack of things to do.

Landing pages to be created, new products to launch, experiments to test, people to hire, communications to write, organizations to structure, and customers to serve.

The list is never-ending.

As long as you can crush the main job, the more you can help in those additional areas, the more compelling a candidate you become.

Here are some areas that will make you more attractive to hiring managers:

• A-Player Network - The lifeblood of any successful organization is its people. The more great people a company can hire, the more likely it is to succeed. Demonstrating you know highly skilled people that you can poach to come to work for your new company is something that could create massive value for the company in the future. This is one of the reasons why people hire from organizations known for having top talent.

• Industry Connections & Expertise - Relationships matter in business. The more connected you are in the industry where you work, the more valuable you are. I saw this firsthand at Uber when one of the earliest NYC employees knew all the limo fleet owners and deeply knew the NYC taxi regulations. I honestly don’t know what we would have done without her. She allowed us to move faster and educated every team member with everything she knew instead of us having to piece things together ourselves. That’s crazy valuable! So if you can share the names of connections and relationships you have in the industry and how they might be able to help the company, you’ll make a more compelling case.

• Technical Abilities - You may be a social media marketing manager but know all about Zapier automation setups, a data analyst who’s a videographer in your spare time, or a Senior Manager of FP&A who knows Python and SQL. The more technical abilities you can leverage to serve the company, the better. I’m not saying you should go out and get certified in these things if you have no use for them, but if you have used them before and you can demonstrate your ability and how it would help the company, you just scored more points.

• Entrepreneurial or Scrappy Attitude - Hiring managers want someone to hand an ambiguous problem to and say, “Here’s the goal. Go figure out how we can hit it.” That’s why they look for entrepreneurship in someone’s background. A hiring manager's dream is a candidate who can demonstrate they know how to be scrappy (aka how you can make more with less if you are resource constrained) and can create solutions to problems without immediately obvious answers. Show them they won’t need to babysit you by giving them cases studies of problems you solved within tight timeframes, without obvious answers, and limited resources.

• Scaling Experience - The problems of a startup at Seed is different from Series A, Series B, Series C, and on and on. That’s why people who have been through the stages yet to come for a company are incredibly valuable. You can become a fortune teller for the hiring manager and founding team by informing them of problems that can and will arise before they ever do. To earn even more hiring manager points, call out the problems at each stage, the necessary solutions, and what kind of company infrastructure is appropriate to prepare for the future without going over the top.

If you have additional skills, abilities, relationships, and experience that you can leverage to help the company, make sure you’re sharing that with the hiring manager.

If it’s between one person who can do the job and another person who can do the job AND brings lots of intangible value, guess who ends up landing the job?

5) Emotional Stability

Teddy Roosevelt said…

Building a company is hard.

Building a company and constantly managing your employee’s emotions is even harder.

The hiring manager knows this.

They want to prevent any unnecessary work so they can put their entire focus on building the business.

And I can tell you from personal experience having an employee that isn’t emotionally stable, someone you have to walk off the ledge every week, in good times and in bad, is taxing on the hiring manager and the business.

They want to know you can roll with the punches because, in any business, there are ups and downs, and the more consistent the team can be, the easier the life of the hiring manager and the more successful the company.

This is why many job postings include language like, “Experience in a startup or high-growth environment a plus.”

That’s code for, can you remain calm in an environment where things move fast, there’s change every day, the problem you’re solving doesn’t have an immediate answer, emergencies arise out of nowhere, and everything seems like it could end the company?

To remove all doubt that you’re an emotionally stable person, you can reference times when things went wrong, and people were crumbling around you, but you were able to keep your cool and get the job done.

6) Buy In

Legendary college football coach Lou Holtz famously said…

If a hiring manager hires on ability alone, they’re missing out on someone who is going to be motivated to find solutions proactively and has the attitude to make sure their work is the best possible product.

This is why you see articles like this one from the Harvard Business Review saying it’s good business practice to hire for attitude and train for skills.

This is why, in the early days at Uber, I woke up at 7 am to be the first one to the office, stayed until 11 pm many days, and answered customer emails on weekends.

I wasn’t being paid more to do it and for the most part, no one was telling me to do it.

I just loved the company, our mission, our product, the people I worked with, and I believed in the massive payoff that could result if we put in the work.

I was bought in from day one.

The hiring manager doesn’t want to worry you’ll tap out when it’s an all-hand-on-deck scenario.

They want a ride or die.

You can show your buy-in by…

• Going the extra mile to provide the team with value deliverables based on existing problems or opportunities

• Building relationships with the team

• Having a positive and energetic attitude

• Showing that your values align with the values of the company

• Demonstrating you’re a user of the product

• Sharing how and why the company’s mission resonates with you

Be prepared to show your buy-in when asked questions like, “You could go work for any company. Why our company? Why this role?”

And for the love of god, don’t say, “It seems like a great opportunity at a growing company.”

So as you’re thinking about what to do in your job hunt, put yourself in the hiring manager's shoes.

If I were looking at my background, experiences, resume, and story, where would I have some doubts?

Focus on identifying those areas and eliminating those doubts before they arise.

Execute the strategy well, and you may hear the magic phrase…

📈55 Companies Who Raised & Are Hiring Now

Click here to access the data for 107 companies that raised $2.3 billion this month. 55 are actively hiring people just like YOU!

***A REMINDER OF HOW TO USE THIS DOCUMENT***

Just because there aren’t jobs posted yet doesn’t mean the company isn’t looking to hire soon. After a company raises money is a perfect opportunity to reach out to team members, congratulate them, start building relationships, and offer value you can provide.

There you have it, all six areas you can focus on to eliminate any doubts in the mind of hiring managers at target companies and 55 startups that recently raised money and are actively hiring.

Let’s become career champions together 🏆

Kyle

P.S. Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:

#1: Free Job Hunt Strategy Call: Request a free job hunt strategy call with me to get closer to landing your next career-accelerating tech role. Schedule a free call today!

#2: Follow me on LinkedIn for more job hunt systems, productivity tools, companies hiring, and networking templates.

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