You find an interesting startup job.

You update the resume, write a polite cover letter and press Apply.

The company receives another resume from someone it has never heard of.

A Guy from X published a different approach in his post, Psycho Level Job Hunting.

The method is simple: choose a few startups, obsessively learn how they work, become useful to the team and wait for the right opening.

It takes longer than sending fifty applications.

But one founder recognising your name can matter more than fifty automated confirmation emails.

I am Alex. Welcome to ShortCu8 by Innov8.

Lets Dive Deep🐰🐰.

Build a company watchlist instead of beginning with a job board.

For every startup, track:

Your job search becomes a small research project.

Create a page in Notion, Obsidian or a spreadsheet.

Add the startups you would be excited to join even when they are not hiring. Keep adding companies as you discover them, but do not let the list become another database you never use.

Ajeet's version uses X activity as a hard filter. If the founders and team are absent there, he removes the company.

I would treat that as a filter for this method. The company may still be excellent, but public interaction becomes harder when its people are not publicly accessible.

Learn what the company builds, who uses it and what the team is currently trying to solve.

For technical roles, an open-source repository is the best case. Read the issues, improve documentation, reproduce a bug or contribute a small fix. Do not begin by rewriting the entire project to prove you are clever.

For marketing, community, design or operations roles, watch for a visible problem. Prepare a useful campaign idea, onboarding improvement, community plan or research note, then send it to the relevant person.

The contribution should solve something real. A generic twenty-page audit creates homework for the founder.

Follow the founders and team members. Read enough to hold a proper conversation about their company.

Reply when you have a useful observation. Ask questions that show you understood the work. Share an idea when it fits the discussion.

Ajeet recommends starting with team members who have smaller audiences because they are more likely to notice and reply.

The aim is familiarity, not manufactured friendship. Do not comment under every post or force a conversation where none exists.

Keep checking whether the companies on your list are hiring.

When a suitable role appears, the research is already finished. Contact the founder, CTO or team member who has seen your work and explain why the role fits.

Your message can point to an actual contribution, conversation or idea instead of repeating the resume.

The original post recommends:

Use these to discover companies before their jobs are copied across every recruitment site.

This method fits small startups where founders and team members are publicly accessible and individual contributions can be noticed.

It is less useful for government recruitment, mass hiring or large companies with rigid application systems.

Now go and find a job 🫡

We read every reply - just reply to this email and let us know how we can improve !

#AD1

Leadership is asking: are we getting value from AI? Which tools are worth the spend? Where are we exposed? Right now, most teams have no idea.

Harmonic Security Usage Explorer changes that.

You get a complete picture of how your organization uses AI, automatically categorized into custom tasks and use cases.

You’ll see the projects being worked on, who’s using what tools, where AI investments are driving value, and where employees are engaging in risky behavior.

CIOs can rationalize spending and cut wasted licenses. CISOs can pinpoint where risk exists and neutralize it. AI committees can show exactly how their efforts are paying off.

See it in action

#AD2

Creators lock in holiday content calendars 90 days out, before brands figure out commissions. Waiting too long to launch an affiliate program means less runway to build demand and a missed shot at the best partnerships.

The 90-Day Holiday Sprint covers commissions, recruiting, and scaling a program at Day 30, 60, and 90.

Download the Free Guide