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Job Hunt Strategies: What Worked for the Winners?
🎯 Zero fluff. Actionable advice from job-seekers who’ve landed offers.
Varun Raghu
April 29, 2025
Table of Contents
Real stories from job seekers
As I was thinking what to include for this week’s newsletter, it occurred to me that in the process of building Zeke, we’ve had many insightful interactions with job seekers including several success stories. And I thought why not share it with you all, if even one strategy from here works for you, it’s a win for us!
Let’s dive straight into it:
🏢 Landing a job in big tech
Those who landed jobs especially with big tech companies mentioned that it was in fact the recruiters who reached out to them first. This was surprising because it’s not like Meta or Amazon lack a candidate pool. We are talking about thousands if not tens of thousands of resumes at their disposal. Even then, you have recruiters reaching out to candidates one-on-one.
What does this mean for Job Seekers? Keep your LinkedIn profile up to date, showcase your skills, respond promptly and nail those interviews. Your chances of converting after a recruiter reaches out to you is reasonably high.
🤝 Cracking the interview
While landing the interview is a challenge in itself, we heard from a few unfortunate job seekers who couldn’t clear the interviews especially technical ones.
🚧 While a new crop of AI tools are facilitating ‘cheating’ for these rounds, we strongly advise against using these for chances of being blocklisted by the employer.
⚖️ Quantity over Quality or Quality over Quantity?
It actually depends. I know, it’s not an answer that you want to hear. But based on conversations we’ve had spraying and praying might work better for entry-level positions. We spoke to a candidate who applied to 12,000+ jobs in a span of two months before landing a job!
Of course, the process was automated and had its issues like applying to the wrong title, resume that’s not tuned to the job description etc. But as you get to more senior positions, networking plus applying carefully yields better results. More on that below.
🌐 Networking is still king
Yes yes, I said the bad word: Networking. What is even networking? (Hmm, a good blog/podcast idea for another time) I digress.
I spoke to one job seeker who landed 4 interviews from just 8 jobs he applied to. How did he do it? He used his connections to find the right people in those companies. He was able to secure the first call with either the team that was hiring or the recruiter.
Once you manage to get past the ‘vibe’ check, your chances of landing that job actually increases.
🤖 To use AI or not to use AI
Despite being in the business of building an AI product for job seekers, we realize that AI is not fully capable of tailoring resumes accurately. Hallucinations are still a problem.
Issues with using AI for resume tailoring:
👉 Many job seekers mention having to spend quite a bit of time manually polishing their resume after AI has had the first pass.
👉 They also didn’t like the obvious ‘AIness’ of their resume.
However saying your resume would be auto-rejected by the ATS if you use AI is pure fear mongering. We have spoken to many recruiters and not one mentioned implementing AI detection software in their recruiting pipeline. Their only complaint seems to be that most resumes look the same and it’s hard to pick the right candidates to move to the next round. In a way, we can say that AI has leveled the playing field.
🪪 Try which roles or job titles work best for you
Most job seekers narrow down on 1 or 2 roles they receive callbacks for. But to get there they have had to test it out by applying to many different titles first.
One job seeker suggested finding lesser-known job titles within an industry. For example Product Manager is a common title but Product Analyst is not. This strategy yielded him several callbacks from companies.
If I had to sum it up, it’s this: everyone’s path to landing a job is different. Some apply to hundreds of roles, others to just a handful. What matters is testing different strategies, paying attention to the feedback and results, and doubling down on what works best for you.
That’s a wrap for this week’s deep-dive. Need a sounding board or want to share a victory story? Hit reply. We are all ears.
Until next time, polish that resume, put yourself out there, send those reach outs and keep momentum on your side.
See you in your inbox next Tuesday with more insights!