Hey friend,
I’m going to let you in on a little secret about my career journey.
Early on, I was obsessed with being the "perfect" technical candidate.
I figured if my code was flawless, the job offers would just start raining down.
But I quickly realized that having a great tech stack is really just the "buy-in" price. It’s not what actually gets you the job.
When I landed one of my favorite roles, it wasn’t because of a complex query in a live coding challenge…
It was because of the legwork I did before I even stepped into the room.
During my prep, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole.
I looked up the Head of Data’s recent LinkedIn posts and caught a podcast the CEO had done where they mentioned that reducing churn was their "North Star" for the year.
It became clear that they weren't just looking for a coder, they were looking for a solution to a problem they were already discussing publicly.
So, when they asked the standard "Tell me about yourself," I didn’t just list my tech stack. I led with:
"I heard the CEO mention that retention is your biggest focus right now. Based on the churn trends I’ve seen in SaaS lately, here is how I’d use data to tackle that..."
The shift was instant → The interview stopped being an interrogation of my skills and instead turned into a strategy session between two colleagues.
In today’s market, you can’t just rely on being technically sound.
The real "signal" that gets you noticed is showing up with at least a basic understanding of their business and the audacity to solve problems before you're even asked to.
Now you might say that I got lucky by finding that podcast.
But in reality, there are a ton of these type of strategies you can use to basically skip the queue and get yourself in front of the important decision makers in a company.
My 30 Days To More Interviews Roadmap is full of these type of unconventional strategies.
It’s the exact system my students use to bypass the automated "no's" and start high level conversations with people who can actually hire you.
-Megan