Job Search Starter Pack
Job searching is the least favorite thing that I've probably spent the most time doing. If you include college applications, I've spent some portion of every year applying to jobs since I was 17. That’s basically a nonstop job search! In that time, I’ve made the journey from seeing job searching as this endless drudgery of just applying to online applications (it still is, but that’s not all it is) to investing time in networking (and asking for referrals). I'm still working on getting better at storytelling and self-marketing; I believe the newest term for this is "personal branding." Definitely still working on that.
Along the way, I've consumed lots of repetitive job search advice, so I wasn't expecting to be blown away by Madeline Mann's Reverse the Search. But blown away I was, and it is the number one job search resource that I would recommend. Mann lays out truly unique suggestions, and has helpful prompts for reflecting on your existing job search approach and your current understanding of your own strengths and objectives. On the surface a lot of things seem really basic (e.g. how many times have you heard that resume bullets should start with “action verbs” or should contain “keywords” matching the roles you’re seeking?), but I found nuggets in Reverse the Search that made me stop and think about how well I was executing on some of these basic things. Above all, the core thesis of the book resonated with me because it isn’t about getting you through this one job search, but to prepare you for all the job searches you’ll do throughout your career.
Job security isn’t guaranteed, so instead, you need to build Career Security.
Career Security, as I define it, is setting yourself up to make a career move at any moment, should your employment or financial situation decline. It is having a personal brand, marketable skills, and a strong network. […] it’s good to keep in mind that this is ultimately what becoming a Job Shopper builds toward.
The best time to be a Job Shopper and build Career Security is before you need to move jobs, but the next best time is right now.
There is incredible power in knowing that even if a boss is toxic, the company runs low on money, or something in your life suddenly requires you to move, you can seamlessly start a job search where companies are competing to have you join them.
Job Shoppers have Career Security because they prepare themselves to be marketable employees with clear next steps and strategies, before they find themselves playing musical chairs with jobs.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
Don’t “Spray and Pray”
I used to have a "beggars can't be choosers" mindset when it came to jobs. (I talk more about this in my piece on job search advice for international students, but essentially, because I needed visa sponsorship, I always felt like I would just be grateful to take any job from any company that was willing to give me a chance and sponsor a visa to let me stay and work in the country.) It was really difficult to get rid of that mentality even though I knew that desperation was a bad perfume. Of course I never wanted to come across as desperate — but I really felt that way inside, and faking it outside of interviews was more emotionally taxing than I could handle.
It took a while for me to move past the "what's the harm in spraying and praying?" approach. What's spraying and praying? Spraying and praying refers to the job search technique of sending out your resume into lots and lots of job applications (”spraying” it widely), probably online blackholes, most of which you know you would never hear back from after the auto-acknowledgement, and then hoping that something would land (”praying”).
It was tough to give this up for three reasons:
First, because spraying and praying is easy. It’s soul-sucking, but easy. You get into the swing of it, type type type, click click click, and the sheer volume of auto-acknowledgements can give you a false sense of accomplishment. See, I’ve applied to 30 jobs in the last hour. I’ve been productive. What else could anyone ask for?
Second, because as a generalist, I usually am genuinely interested in a lot of different roles and can envision myself in a whole range of industries! This was definitely the case in college, and because the world of work is very large, I continue to feel this way — so much potential! I want to try everything! Maybe I’ll get lucky!
Third, because not spraying and praying requires more work. It requires you to really think about what you want, what you’re suited for, and do more homework (spoiler alert: networking) before you get to the satisfying, optimistic piece of actually applying for a job.
When I asked for recruiters at top tech companies how many of their hires come from online applications, they’ve reported hiring only 10 to 15 percent of their workforce from that source. I spoke with a recruiter from a top streaming service who said that the number of applications would get so overwhelming to sort through that she would sometimes skip applications altogether and start searching on LinkedIn for professional professionals with the right skill sets for the roles she was hiring for and simply invite those people to interview. This isn’t unique to that company; many organizations with desirable or highly specialized roles employ dedicated sourcing teams to find the right candidates themselves instead of waiting through the digital slush pile.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
One of the things Mann hammered home for me is that job searching isn't just about getting a job — it's about getting the right job. And you can't figure out what the right job is if you're throwing applications at everything that moves. (Ugh, dammit!) That realization was uncomfortable because it meant I had to actually make choices and get clear on what I wanted (or what I’m good at), which as a generalist has always been my Achilles' heel.
One of the key attributes of Job Shoppers is their focus on a low-volume job search. As a Job Shopper, you do not apply to hundreds of jobs like Nestor did at first. Instead, you focus on a small number that actually match what you are looking for (and land interviews at many of them!)
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
Okay, before we move on — if you have to spray and pray, even as a supplemental approach to a more focused job search, do yourself a favor and use something to help you automate filling out application forms. Browser extensions like Simplify Jobs may not be perfect 100% of the time, but it still takes out a significant portion of the tedium. Why increase your odds of getting carpal tunnel over throwing your resume into black holes on the internet?
What These Books Actually Do
There's plenty of advice out there about resumes, cover letters, interview prep and LinkedIn profiles. I’ve picked these two books because together they can help you move from mindlessly (and hopelessly) spraying and praying to a more structured approach to networking and applying for roles with referrals.
Pouring more hours into online applications is the equivalent of trying to pay your rent by buying even more lottery tickets. It may work once in a blue moon, but that doesn’t make it a good approach.
Getting internal referrals is simply the only predictable way to get interviews; getting them efficiently is the core challenge of the modern job search.
This book is effectively a “speedrun” approach for completing that core challenge. Speedrunning is a video-gaming hobby where players record themselves trying to finish a video games in world-record times by combining world-class reflexes and concentration with a deep knowledge of quirks and vulnerabilities in each video game’s programming.
— Steve Dalton, The 2-Hour Job Search (2020)
The 2-Hour Job Search by Steve Dalton is basically a step-by-step guide of how to find employers to target and then systematically reach out to network, including follow ups so that you increase your chances of actually having those conversations.
I recommend the following hierarchy of traits for identifying starter contacts for each of our Top 5, in order of importance:
Trait #1: Their position is functionally relevant to the one you are seeking.
Trait #2: They are fellow alumni or members of your preferred affinity group.
Trait #3: They hold a position one to two levels above where you would start.
Trait #4: They already have been promoted at that organization.
Trait #5: They have a unique name.— Steve Dalton, The 2-Hour Job Search (2020)
[A 6-Point email] is an email requesting an informational meeting, which is written using six key points as guidelines:
Point #1: Write fewer than seventy-five words.
Point #2: Ask for insight and advice, not job leads.
Point #3: State your connection first.
Point #4: Make your request in the form of a question (ending with “?”).
Point #5: Define your interest both narrowly and broadly.
Point #6: Keep over half the word count about the contact, not about you.— Steve Dalton, The 2-Hour Job Search (2020)
Dalton presents this as a complete job search strategy, and while he does have advice on how to prepare for interviews and other parts of the job search process, I think that the most valuable takeaway from The 2-Hour Job Search is the networking process broken down in a step-by-step system. You can also read more about my thoughts on networking through informational interviews and even asking for referrals; my thoughts are largely influenced by Steve Dalton's 2-Hour Job Search and my own experience from somewhat following his system.
The titular two hours refers to the amount of time it takes to lay out the groundwork for your process, not the totality of your job search. That said, once your foundation is in place, the remaining steps in your search become seamless, almost automatic.
— Steve Dalton, The 2-Hour Job Search (2020)
Madeline Mann backs up the importance of networking in her book — that’s how you know this advice is consistent and likely to be worth following!
…I am mildly begging you here: please trust me when I ask you to network! Your happiness is on the other side of relationship building. I promise you that it’s not as bad as it seems and will absolutely transform your job search.
Because the bottom line is: Applying online is a slow way. Networking is the fast way.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
If you’re looking for the secret to having constant opportunities in your life, in one way or another, it’s networking.
Networking allows you to have a better chance of getting sourced online or of someone referring you to a job.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
I prefer Reverse the Search for a holistic walkthrough of the whole job search process. Mann’s perspective is also especially illuminating in some parts because she has worked in HR and recruiting, and she offers up perspective on how an employer/hiring manager thinks and makes decisions. It’s good to be cognizant of what “the other side’s” priorities are, especially since the job search process is so isolating that very quickly “the other side” stops having a human feel to it. Mann has advice on how you can stand out from other candidates backed up by the logic of how hiring managers make decisions — seems reasonable and worth trying!
Allow me to pull back the curtain as to what’s happening when your résumé is reviewed by the hiring team, so you’ll understand how to convey your value the right way.
When reviewing résumés, recruiters and hiring managers glance over the document quickly. They start at the top, looking at your name and skimming over your summary. They then shoot down the left side of the page, taking note of your job titles and company names, and then pauses quickly to notice your education at the bottom. After this brief glance of no more than a few seconds, if you grab their attention, they will begin to read the contents of your résumé. They’ll usually look at your summary section and then the first and possibly second bullet of your past few jobs.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
Job seekers often see the job interview as something that needs to be completely driven by the interviewer. The issue with this is that it relies on the interviewer to extract all the important information from you, and if they don’t ask the right questions, they won’t get to know certain important details about your experience that would influence their decision. Additionally, this often leads to the assumption that, especially in structured interviews, you as the candidate can’t ask questions, request more time, or share information outside of what has been asked of you. Quite to the contrary, hiring managers appreciate this help, and your initiative leaves an incredible impression.
When someone interviews you, their hope is that you will be the perfect candidate.
Don’t regard the interviewer as your adversary or as the one fully controlling the exchange. Instead, be an active participant who guides the narrative.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
It is becoming more common for companies to ask job candidates to complete a project or provide a work sample as part of the hiring process. However, even if they don’t ask for this, do it anyway.
Providing work examples is your moment to vastly stand out from your competitors.
[…] In all my years of hiring, I can count on one hand how many people have implemented the strategy to land an interview or offer. One time, I even read a job description that encouraged candidates to include a project to show they were a fit for the role. When I asked the hiring manager how many people followed that tip for their application, he said zero.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
Selling Yourself
I used to think getting an interview was the tough part. If getting an interview takes a lot of work, then when you get an interview, you better be ready to ace it! Yeah…about that.
I'm really, really not good at talking about my accomplishments. Mostly because when I want to, I can't think of any accomplishments. Once something is done, all I do is look back and criticize it and think about how it could've been done better.
This, you can imagine, becomes a big problem in interviews. I have seen countless frameworks to help structure my stories: STAR, PAR, CAR, SOAR, SAO… When I was preparing for interviews with McKinsey back in business school, I was lucky enough to have a mentor who helped me develop three levels for each interview story: a 30-second newspaper headline hook, a one-minute-with-key-details version that I could use to elaborate upon that headline and ask the interviewer if this story sounded like it was the type of story they wanted to hear, and then the full version. None of these have solved the problem of my writer’s block: when I sit down by myself to think about what I've done or reflect on what I've accomplished at work, I draw a blank reliably every single time.
Sidebar: STAR is Situation, Task, Action, Result. PAR is Problem, Action, Result. CAR is Challenge, Action, Result. SOAR is Situation, Obstacle, Action, Result. SAO is Situation, Action, Outcome. See the theme yet? Guess what: because I think of everything as “could have been better” I struggle most with the result/outcome part of things…especially since everyone wants quantifiable results, but how many times have I gone into a situation knowing precisely what the measurement was before so I could measure it again after? Zero. Maybe except all my weight loss efforts?
I once had a professor tell me that he suspected his wife was not a very good interviewer, but of course he had no way to confirm this. I’ve thought about that a lot. Interviewing is very personal; it’s really difficult to get good direct feedback on your interviewing. Hiring managers aren't likely to come back and dissect the interview with you and coach you through it. You can do interview practices. You can get a coach. You could do it with friends. But it's never quite the same thing, is it? No amount of other people telling me that I'm interviewing well has ever given me the confidence that I can go into an interview and replicate it perfectly. Plus, it's really awkward to practice interviewing; if anyone offers to be your mock interviewer, you should be very grateful and say yes no matter how much you want to say HELL NO.
If there is one thing that will supercharge your interview, it’s creating a Story Toolbox. The Story Toolbox is your secret stash of carefully crafted stories of things you accomplished in your past jobs, handpicked to showcase your skills and experiences in the best light. Imagine feeling prepared for nearly every interview question a company throws at you — that’s a likely reality if you go all in on creating your Story Toolbox. These stories are your solution to connect with potential employers on a deeper level.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
The way we diminished the value of our own work is astounding. As you Observe Your Story, you’ll start to see that what you viewed as “doing what needed to be done” was also work that was highly valuable and well executed.
You may suffer from “I Just” Syndrome. This is the mentality that so many talented professionals have about their work, where, when I asked them to explain their job history, I hear comments like:
“I just did what needed to be done — I don’t know that there’s any special accomplishment there.”
“I just assisted on that project, so I can’t take credit.”
“I just volunteered there; that wasn’t real paid work.”
Yet, they “assisted” with a task that was vital to the end success of the project. And when they weren’t doing the “real paid work” they were actually utilizing real skills and adding real value. Nothing fake about that!
When you Observe Your Story it is the chocolate chip in the cookie — truly the part that makes this all worth it. This step transforms the way people think about their experience. It takes a real mindset shift. And the way you currently think about your experience probably could use a bit of transformation, if you don’t mind me saying so.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
I definitely suffer from “I Just” Syndrome. Not only do I discard everything that I've done once I've done it as not a big deal, I also then suffer from the curse of knowledge where I just can't remember that it was ever difficult, that I had to learn anything, that anything was chaotic, that other people were tearing their hair out. Once a mountain is climbed, I forget all about how terrible the climb was.
Here are the questions to ask yourself about each task:
What were things like before you did this task? How much worse were things?
What would have been the consequences of not accomplishing this?
What was the journey to get to completing this task?
How much effort did it take?
How much of it did you control and make happen? Even if you weren’t technically the leader, what aspects of it did you lead?
What were the results?
What was the impact of those results?
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
Have these questions magically solved my writer’s block? No. But I can tell that they’re the right questions to be asking myself. One thing that is helpful is to stare at (and actually ponder) these questions not just during the moments where you're trying to summarize and write up your experience for a job search, but also regularly, as things are developing and work is going along.
Other people have given me the advice to keep a win diary and track my accomplishments. Guess what? My natural tendency to dismiss everything as crap and not that big of a deal applies even to that. At the end of every day or week, I can't think of a single accomplishment to write down. So while these are the right questions to be asking myself for reflection, I still find them intimidating. The sooner you get into the habit of asking yourself these, the better it will be for you to get out of your head and tell your story more objectively and compellingly (and sell yourself).
…“Tell me about yourself” — is the most common for informational meetings and usually the first one. The recruiter’s goal here is to form rapport with you and simultaneously try to assess why your path through their organization today makes sense. The maximum duration of the story (and of all your interview answers, in fact) should be two minutes. Packing all your life story into two minutes is impossible, but it’s entirely feasible if you focus on the good stuff — the whys rather than the whats of your story, which usually means covering the transitions of your life — which are the parts of the recruiter cares about.
I created a framework that will keep you on track for either version of this question. It’s called the FIT model — Favorite part, Insight gained, and Transition made. Essentially, you describe each stage of your journey in the chronological order (since that order is intuitive and easy for listeners to follow) with its own FIT statement, devoting a separate FIT to each promotion and/or combining similar roles into a single FIT statement as necessary to ensure you can finish your answer in two minutes.
— Steve Dalton, The 2-Hour Job Search (2020)
Note also that while “walk me through your resume” appears to be an entirely different question, it is still to your advantage to answer it using FIT, exactly as you would if asked to “tell me about yourself.” The motivations behind your job changes and promotions are far more engaging — especially during the rapport-focused early questions of an informational — than tedious laundry lists of your former responsibilities that bore all parties involved.
— Steve Dalton, The 2-Hour Job Search (2020)
To watch Steve Dalton explain this with an example in a video, click here.
I do like the FIT model. I have found it to be very useful for talking about my past work history, especially because my past work history spans different industries and is meandering and long in a way that doesn't immediately illustrate how the things that I've done in the past relate to what I do in the present (or want to do in the future). In business school, I developed and eventually honed an answer to "tell me about yourself" or "walk me through your resume" that did string my past experiences together, but it was not as succinct as the FIT model helps it be. I think FIT is an incredibly smart way to approach “speedwalking” through your past while highlighting the most relevant and important parts.
Frankly, companies aren’t all that interested in your previous careers. What they want to know is if you have the ability to rock the job they’re hiring for. They also don’t want to hear a vague list of talents and soft skills. Instead, they want to know that even if you’re a career changer, you have prepared yourself to do this role, and that you can articulate exactly how you have the skills and can meet those goals.
We too often think of our résumé as a Wikipedia page. Instead, make it a sales page.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
Job seekers often see the job interview as something that needs to be completely driven by the interviewer. The issue with this is that it relies on the interviewer to extract all the important information from you, and if they don’t ask the right questions, they won’t get to know certain important details about your experience that would influence their decision. Additionally, this often leads to the assumption that, especially in structured interviews, you as the candidate can’t ask questions, request more time, or share information outside of what has been asked of you. Quite to the contrary, hiring managers appreciate this help, and your initiative leaves an incredible impression.
When someone interviews you, their hope is that you will be the perfect candidate.
Don’t regard the interviewer as your adversary or as the one fully controlling the exchange. Instead, be an active participant who guides the narrative.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
It's a Numbers Game—But Not How You Think
They say job searching is a numbers game, and that is true to some extent. But that doesn't mean that the more resumes you throw into online applications and the black holes that they represent, the more chances you get.
Take it from me: don’t bother tracking your applications — that leads to nothing but depression and despair. There isn’t a meaningful “conversion” rate you can calculate based on how many interviews you get versus how many applications you filled: that metric doesn’t tell you anything because you could be applying for the entirely wrong type of jobs for your skills, you might not be applying to real job openings (but the “ghost jobs” that keep cycling as open and unfilled every few months), and who knows if your application even really landed on the other side?
Instead of spending precious time documenting what you’ve applied for and then wasting precious emotional energy looking back at that large, rage- or hopelessness-inducing number, track your conversations — and what became of them. For example, did you ask for a referral, and did you end up applying with a referral? How many interviews did you get beyond the HR screener? It’s very rare for a company to give you useable feedback, but if you are told anything specific or you have a hunch, note that down and look for ways to tweak your process as you keep going.
Measure your progress in interactions, not applications.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
Informational Interviewing just for the Information? Yes!
Is there a point to these conversations other than trying to get a referral? Of course — and you’ll likely have more fun and feel more hopeful if you approach networking as something other than an arduous step to get a referral for your application. If you’re exploring roles (mayhaps you’re a generalist too?), you should definitely make the most of these opportunities to construct a feel for what different jobs and/or industries are really like day-to-day. Try them on for size vicariously. In fact, if you’re just exploring what you may want to do, follow Dalton’s informational interviewing system just to glean information, focused on other people’s experiences and perspectives. Gather advice along the process, and keep interrogating yourself what sounded attractive and what did not. Informational interviews’ most original purpose is to give you an understanding of the big wide world of work, and get some clarity about what you’d want to do in it.
Besides, there’s a good argument to be made that you’ll be more successful in your eventual job search once you have a good idea of what you want to do and/or will be good at — and can articulate a clear, confident reason when asked!
A company only wants to hire someone who has deeply considered their career possibilities and has fully and enthusiastically committed themselves to this path. Essentially, showing that you’re open to many different roles sends up major red flags to employers that you will be difficult to retain. And honestly, it’s not worth the challenge.
Employers do not want to be your career experiment.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
That’s what Job Shoppers do. They aren’t so focused on playing the numbers game or impressing the hiring manager with all the great things they’ve done. No. They understand the job at hand and confidently convey how they are the right fit to tackle it.
Therefore, when a Job Shopper paints this future where they are solving the company’s challenges, the company will pay a premium to hire that Job Shopper over anyone else. Even when they have other, less expensive hiring options!
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
If nothing else, the human conversation helps keep your spirits up in what is otherwise an optimism-draining slog. Do I still feel nervous moments before a call with a total stranger? Absolutely! But strangers that are willing to connect and talk have self-selected to interact with you; they’re rooting for you before even knowing you, and I’ve never regretted a single conversation. Sometimes I just confirm things I already knew, sometimes I learn things that I had never thought of and am happy that I expanded my world of curiosities a tiny bit.
Enough Said — Get Going and Good Luck!
Winter break of senior year was memorable for how depressing it was. I stayed on campus by myself (all my housemates went home) to focus on job applications and my senior thesis. Every day, I got up, sat down at my computer, and filled out application after application — manually, ad nauseam. That’s the first and last time I ever attempted to track my applications. My eyes glazed over, I lost sense of time, I felt like I was the only person alive (and I barely felt alive) sitting there in the same spot, clicking, typing, clicking.
Some people are much luckier. I’ve seen job searches that happen at sonic speed for folks with much more in-demand skillsets and experiences. The mythical kind where one ends up with multiple attractive, competing offers around the same time so they aren’t even bluffing when they say they need time to consider their options in a negotiation.
I hope one that that becomes your job search reality. Until then, I encourage you to check out these two books and try out the advice laid within. Job searching may not ever become fun, but it could feel much less out of your control.
Good luck!
Below I’ve included some other pieces of advice that I think are valuable and illustrate the kind of wisdom you’ll find from the authors:
On researching career paths and jobs:
A job is work. That certainly doesn’t mean it can’t be fun, enjoyable, and fulfilling, but at the end of the day, you’re putting in effort for the paycheck. […] Market demand means looking at the job market and understanding, for the jobs are interested in:
How much does this career path pay at each stage in the career?
Are role openings in increasing or decreasing?
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
On ways to go above and beyond after you’ve been picked up for interviews:
Finally, I’ll send you on a secret side mission: build a 90-Day Plan while you’re in the interview process. Whether you end up unveiling the 90-Day-Plan to the hiring team or not, this exercise will allow you to get in the Consultative mindset and ask the right questions in the interview process.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
It is becoming more common for companies to ask job candidates to complete a project or provide a work sample as part of the hiring process. However, even if they don’t ask for this, do it anyway.
Providing work examples is your moment to vastly stand out from your competitors.
[…] In all my years of hiring, I can count on one hand how many people have implemented the strategy to land an interview or offer. One time, I even read a job description that encouraged candidates to include a project to show they were a fit for the role. When I asked the hiring manager how many people followed that tip for their application, he said zero.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
On what doesn’t work to get interviews (counter-intuitively!):
Aiming for roles below your skill level in your job search isn’t a shortcut to success. Companies are wary of over qualified candidates since they fear you will ask for a promotion or salary increase quickly, or simply leave when a higher-level job becomes available.
— Madeline Mann, Reverse the Search (2025)
A sidebar consideration for international job seekers:
Our best assumption is that employers sponsored relevant visas last year are more likely to sponsor visas again this year than those who did not.
A number of online vendors offer free and paid versions of the same list, but I personally use myvisajobs.com (free as of this writing), since it provides the ability to sort the government’s H-1B report by career. When a desired career is selected, it will tell you which employer sponsored the most H-1B visas for those careers, listing them into descending order from most to least visas sponsored.
In your case, I recommend replacing the ten-minute “trending employers” approach with employers you find in your H-1B searches. In fact, if you want to populate your list entirely with employers you find using this method, I would support that as well. Just be sure to familiarize yourself with all the other brainstorming methods since each offers its unique value for helping you to define a coherent set of target employers. Also remember not to rule out SMBs simply because they’re smaller and you’ve never heard of them.
SMBs are less likely to have formal rules about the work authorization requirements of potential hires — they may simply want to hire the best candidate possible, regardless of the individual’s background. Remember, hiring managers are more interested in finding good enough talent quickly than perfect talent slowly, so if you are an otherwise superior talent to what they would find in the US-only talent pool, and you find them instead of vice versa, you may be surprised how willing they are to work with you.
— Steve Dalton, The 2-Hour Job Search (2020)