This is mainly written for college-aged kids into startups & tech that don’t want to be a full-time founder yet but do want to learn a ton while building a great network and working for cool people.
At the beginning of my last semester of college, I had no job lined up or immediate leads for post-grad plans.
Fast forward 2 months, I earned myself a dream job working under someone that I had admired from afar for 3 years (Julian Shapiro) and another gig working at a high-growth tech startup (Matter). I also built genuine relationships with a handful of people who were incredibly similar to me, just 5-15 yrs older.
The catch? I never sent my resume. Never got a warm intro. Never interviewed. Hell, Julian even told me “it’s more of a burden than help at this point because I have enough people.”
Yet here I am.
Why?
2 reasons.
1: I Did Permissionless Projects
I acted as a permissionless apprentice. I helped them without waiting for permission. I did it with a massive bias for action and no expectation of anything in return.
For Matter, I sent a cold email with a few suggestions to help one of their product.
That led to a response from their CEO, whom I followed up with a few times. Those follow ups led to a call which led to a job. I was also able to build a lot of trust through my personal website.
For Julian, I worked for a few hours every day on growing his new project — DeepChecks. Each day, I’d send updates on what I had done. Within a week, I was in the team’s Slack and leading growth for DeepChecks.
Along the way, I did 2 other permissionless projects (Acquired Podcast, Growth Unhinged Newsletter) and cold emailed 6 more people I wanted to work for. Everyone responded.
So, that’s unconventional recruiting tactic #1: Be a permissionless apprentice.
- Find a person or company you admire and start helping them with no expectation of anything in return. Spend at least 10 quality hours before quitting.
- If you’re a designer, re-design their product. If you’re an investor, analyze companies. If you’re an engineer, build a feature. If you’re in growth / sales, get more customers. If you’re a PM, create a roadmap for a new product. You get the idea. Do the job before you get the job.
- Worst comes to worst, you did a project that forced you to develop a skillset you already wanted to develop.
- Pro tip: to de-risk wasting time, you can cold email them some thoughtful ideas and let them pick what would be most useful.
For more explanation and examples, do yourself a favor and get Jack Butchers’ permissionless apprentice course. It’s $1, very short, and was my guiding doc for the whole process. Sort of a no brainer.
2: I Befriended “Future Me’s”
Now, onto the second recruiting tactic.
When recruiting, you deal with a lot of uncertainty. You take (educated) guesses on your career path and method of execution.
You’ll know if you’re executing the right way a few months later based on how many interviews or offers you receive. And you’ll know if you’re on the right career path a few years later based on your energy levels for the job.
That is a pretty damn long feedback cycle! But, I think you can speed it up.
How?
By building genuine relationships with future versions of yourself. People who are a few steps ahead of you are the best teachers and advice-givers. They deeply understand what you need to do to get where you want to go. Because they just did it themselves!
Even more than that, it’s fun to become friends with people just like you! It’s this strange, but beautiful mix of friend / mentor / stranger / sibling. This is the main reason I do it.
To give you better idea, here’s some numbers. I reached out to 2 people each day, and after 2 months I…
- Sent 35 emails and 25 linkedin messages
- Got 30 responses and hopped on 22 calls (4 of which went well over an hour)
- Left with 6-7 genuine friendships and 5-6 other genuine relationships I still stay in contact with
As a bonus, I built the muscle that made outreach feel easy. I still reach out to people up my alley as I come across them. More serendipity to come!
So, that’s unconventional recruiting tactic #2: Befriend future version’s of yourself.
- Source people on linkedin / twitter via keywords or ask a friend for an intro up your alley
- Do your homework and send a thoughtful message
- Prep for the call and know why you’re talking to them.
- Follow up and be helpful. The call / email exchange is just the start of (hopefully) a decades-long relationships.
Hope this helps. To learn more about my personal career approach, check out this page.
To stay in touch & keep learning about what I learn, throw your email in here:
Also, scroll for more goodies :)
- Luke
More stuff that formed my approach
⭐ third door mentality book — this broke my frame for learning what it looks like to “hustle”
⭐️ How to be More Agentic — great essay about agency, the most under-talked-about-but-super-helpful trait to know about yourself
More resources for cold emailing
General resources
Tools for sourcing
- Apollo (to source emails),
- Email Permutator (for guessing), [first name]@[website domain] is usually it
- Email Verification Checker
- YAMM for email tracking
General Principles
- Be helpful. Give, give, give. Don’t wait for a response to give.
- Figure out what they want. What will make them look good.
- Make it ridiculously easy for someone to respond
- Do all possible intellectual work for them first. Be specific.
- Have a low commitment ask.
- Keep it short. Full length should fit on a smart phone.
- Introduce yourself, but only relevant points
- If in tech, you can be casual.
- Show your momentum / traction
- Say you’re a student (if you’re recruiting). It’s about momentum & stories.
- 10 unique cold emails > 100 copy & pasted emails
- Build the muscle. Message 2-5 ppl a day.
- Know why you’re reaching out. What do you really want? Why?
- Make it easy for people to help you too. Be specific