28-Day Action Plan to Find a Startup Job: Week 4

Day 22: Direct Reach Out

Directly reach out to Founders, CEOs, CTOs, Head of Marketing/Sales/HR or any person that might have decision authority within the company.

A growing start-up is looking for new employees that are good. Your only task here is to let them know you are a decent candidate for their open roles. Do not try to oversell, or convince that you are good. Play it cool, and let them know you are available for X role. Be specific in which roles you think you are a fit for. Support your messages with some research about the company. Most importantly, make sure your message is personal and does not have a canned feel.

Day 23: Break Day

Congratulations! You have done most of the work! You have sawn seeds; you WILL see results. Now take a break and feel good about what you have accomplished. 

The rest is about two words Persistence and Patience.

Day 24: Respond & Schedule Interviews

Take this day to make sure you have responded to every message and set a good schedule for your upcoming interviews. Try to show flexibility to set interviews at the earliest date possible. Usually, earlier candidates have a better chance to get the role. If you are all done with scheduling use this time to follow up or directly reach out.

Day 25: Acing the screening (phone) interviews

To pass the phone interview, make sure you satisfy the know-how requirements of the role and show enthusiasm. This level during the interview process is about eliminating candidates who are obviously not a good fit for the role. Recruiters are looking for people who fit the brief, they are not going into an assessment of your personality or full competencies. So, if they are looking for a marketing specialist who needs have done A, B and C, they are checking to see if you have done A, B and C. A mistake at this stage would be to try to impress, don’t. Rather focus on understanding what type of a person they are looking for by getting control of the conversation, before you start positioning yourself in their eyes.

Job interview questions

Day 26: Acing the video (2nd/3rd stage) interviews

The 2nd, 3rd and later stage interviews are companies’ effort to assess your fit to their culture, your skills, your competencies and your know-how. Tick all of these 4 boxes during the interviews. These interviews will go into more detail about your know-how, technical and soft skills. Once the recruiters or hiring managers are satisfied with the picture they have about you, they will move on to understanding your soft skills & competencies and if you fit their culture (their way of doing work). 

1) Satisfy the know-how and technical skills criteria by exemplifying through specific cases that represent you well.

2) Observe (or directly ask) what the top key competencies for this role are, and focus on proving you have them.

3) People are not objective decision-makers when it comes to other people. You will create a great impression simply by exuding positivity, and energy.  If you and the interviewer are smiling and having a generally good chat, your odds to get a positive response increase radically.

4) Create a positive impression. Use the interview and the time after the interview for this. Following a day of the interview, send a follow-up message to remind yourself again, and share how much you liked the role and how enthusiastic you are.

Day 27: Follow-up Day Follow up on applications & conversations.

1) For the roles you have applied, but not received a response, seek out the job poster, recruiter or contact from the company and very kindly, ask for an update.

2) For roles you have received a positive reply, follow-up to schedule next round of interviews or kindly ask if there is anything else they need from you.

Be persistent, kind, and organized. Feel free to follow up for up to three times.

Day 28: Discretionary Day

You got this!

Make sure your application pipeline is always up to date. Focus on follow-ups. Do additional application sprints if necessary. Good luck!