Make Your (Job) Application Impossible to Ignore

Want to save your application from the abyss of job boards or company listings? Learn how to help your application find the light of day (and land on someone’s desk) from serial startup founder, Jack Smith.

Jack Smith, co-founder of Vungle and Shyp, which collectively raised ~$90 million before he was 25, is an expert at making applications literally impossible to ignore.

By using a clever hack he found on LinkedIn, Jack bypassed hundreds of other applicants to an incubator and got $120,000 in funding for his company.  

This article incorporates the insights and tips he shared in our interview.  

 

Be strategically lazy – focus on what matters

The first piece of advice Jack shared was to be strategically lazy. Becoming results driven and reverse engineering problems is the first step to thinking differently.

            “Study the criteria, and then backwards engineer from what they’re judging you against… You can make something amazing, but if your work doesn’t fit within their criteria, it won’t benefit you” – Jack Smith

After ensuring his application checked all the boxes to not get rejected, he spent more time figuring out how to get his message directly to the founder of the incubator. This completely changed the basis on which he was competing.

Before you can stand out you need to know what leads to results. What does the company focus on, what do they care about?

If a company places all of its emphasis on cultural fit, know its culture inside out by learning about it from other employees. Showcase examples of how you embody its culture.

Know the minimum you need to not get disqualified, but find out what matters and put all of your focus there – especially when it’s something that others overlook.

Another way to be lazy: think about what would make you pick an application out of a pile of hundreds or thousands and go do that.

Fun fact- Jack’s ‘strategic laziness’ of reading the news procrastinating was how he first came across this application that made him famous.

Create your narrative

Jack emphasized creating a narrative and a story that’s easy to follow and get attached to.

By building a narrative around doing things differently and standing out, he became known for creative problem solving. By linking his experiences to his personal narrative, he kept people intrigued and gained a following.

When you’re applying, convey how the company/role fits into your narrative. Qualifications and prerequisites equal, the most compelling narrative has the edge.

Seamlessly tie what you’re currently working on to your past and create a continuous story for people to follow. Highlight what makes you different and unique. More detail on this here.

 

Explore (exploit) new opportunities

Jack recommends tinkering with systems to learn how things work. Explore their constraints and find creative loopholes. While playing with LinkedIn Ads, which had only recently launched, he discovered you could target extremely small audiences. Later this became how he directly reached the founder of the Incubator.

“Opportunities often exist when things are quite new and people don’t know about them.” 

Thankfully, you don’t need to find loopholes in trending software like Jack did to stand out. You just need to do something a bit different. If there were a silver bullet I could share with you, it wouldn’t be a silver bullet because everyone would do it and it’d lose its effectiveness.

That said, there are two key things across all fields to make your application stand out:

  • Ensure your application is seen
  • Demonstrate your abilities well enough to make them want to learn more

Large companies get more applications than they can read and use software to pre-filter resumes. Often, companies rarely look at online submissions and hire internally or from referrals.

 

To make your application impossible to ignore make sure it’s seen.

 

Try reaching out to people at the company and asking to learn more about the position. Set up a meeting or call with the team you’d be joining. If the call goes well, ask if they would be willing to make sure the recruiter gets your application as you’d love to share why you’re a great fit. Any type of referral you can get without others thinking that’s all you’re looking for will be helpful. Start doing this well before you apply to get to know about the team, company, and work.

The more people you talk to and learn from, the better your chances. Why? You’ve shown initiative and are clearly interested in the role. You’ll also know more about the role and be able to use that information in the interview to better answer questions about your relevant experience. Most importantly, you’ll have put a face (or voice) to the name and won’t be just another application in the system.

I’ll be writing an article on how to get responses from cold emails soon but be smart and don’t spam everyone in the company trying to get referrals.

 

Go above and beyond the normal application to more completely demonstrate your skills.

 

Add to the application itself and do your own project for them. Think about the type of work you’d be doing on the job, and start doing the job! Hearing that someone can do the work in an interview is much less memorable than seeing how good someone’s work is through a project.

One of my friends built a wooden record player and showed it to the design school he was applying to saying “I want to study here to learn how to build more cool things like this”. They loved it. I once pulled up a financial model I had made in an interview and also got the job.

Your imagination and willingness to do something different are your only limitations to getting your application seen and noticed.

If you want more unique examples for inspiration, check out the applications of other cool people I also spoke with:

I’ll cover specifics of more traditional ways to strengthen and demonstrate your abilities in your application in the future, but adding to your application itself as described is the best way to showcase your skills and stand out.

 

Don't be afraid

Finally, when asked what holds most people back, Jack described fears and risk calculation.

“They think they might mess up or that the worst-case scenario is worse than it actually is…but it’s often so irrational”

Yes, these techniques all involve extra work and will take time. And yes, there’s no guarantee they’ll work and get you the job. That said, you’ll still always learn more from trying and be able to use it to your advantage in the future.

So don’t be afraid to do something totally different. Remember, you want your application to be impossible to ignore.

Huge shout out to Jack Smith for taking the time to talk to me. I learned a ton from you and really enjoyed hearing your perspectives on life.

Luke WalquistComment