People in my town usually say that “who keeps at it, gets it” and that is the case of Jugal Bhatt, who managed to get Amazon to call him. His story is incredible, but it makes clear that you do not need to have only a good CV, nor send it a thousand times, you only need to know how to move and how to make yourself visible in the world of startups. And yes, we know that the normal thing is to send a resume and wait for the bell to ring.
Well, Jugal spent 10 months without receiving a single job interview until he decided that he had to do something to change his situation.
The candidate’s mistake.
Just as we all do, Bhatt searched on the same job websites, the same CV for all companies, massively. FIRST MISTAKE! That technique no longer works. Companies automatically filter thousands of CVs before they even reach the email of a human being (surely you have also been rejected from an application 10 seconds after sending it, we know how much it hurts).
So, the first step is to stand out, because if there is no one who can recommend you or your CV does not match the company’s criteria, you will be left out of the selection process.
What did Bhatt do?
Basically, he had a turning point where he started investigating why nobody called him, and he realized that process. Of course, if no one sees you, no one calls you, it is as if you did not exist.
Bhatt treated his job search as a serious, measurable project with objectives.
Step 1: he created a list of 150 target companies
Every day he searched for people from those companies using Boolean search (keywords, quotes, operators…). That way he found recruiters, hiring managers, employees he could connect with… He started interacting with them little by little to understand how the process worked, so that they would see him… (If we were talking about dating and not work, we would be copying the script of ‘You’).
Step 2: comment before contacting
Instead of sending cold messages just like that, he began commenting on their posts on LinkedIn, natural texts, adding value. That way, when he sent a private message they already knew who he was, what he liked and that he was interested in the topic.
And yes, it worked
Within weeks, recruiters started writing to him first. The tips he recommends are:
- Turn LinkedIn and GitHub into a showcase. Visibility, in tech, is almost your exchange currency.
- Publishing content changed everything; he shared ideas, analysis, projects…
- That was enough for more recruiters to start identifying him as someone active and with criteria.
Business card
It is important not only to upload your own projects, but also to contribute to startup repositories. And thanks to those contributions, a company invited him to an interview without him even applying. A real opportunity prepared for him.
And Amazon?
It did not arrive by magic, it arrived through effort. He kept in contact with a recruiter from the company and asked about a position within the company suitable for him.
Some time later, he saw three roles at Amazon that did fit, so he wrote to the recruiter again and this time, the job was waiting for him.
Are the interviews difficult?
Imagine, a technical test, rounds with engineers… and finally in July the offer arrived. According to him, preparing for the interview was harder than the actual job inside the company.
And the truth is, we often forget that the role of the company’s recruiter is the one that really marks a candidate to give them visibility within the project.
Connect, make yourself visible, present your work well and take care of your professional relationships. Remember that how you expose yourself to companies is as important as showing what you know how to do!