This post is about best practices and what I learned job searching. For a more reflective, experiential perspective, see my other post, “The Abyss of Job Searching.”

What are the three things you can give someone who’s job searching?

• Information. For example, how to job search well, or knowledge about your industry.
• Confidence. Encouragement, love and support.
• Connections. An introduction to someone you know.

This blog post aims to share the first category of thing: information.

Stage 1: Explore what you want to do.

• Let’s break “what do you want to do?” down into three sub-questions:
  • What role?
  • What industry?
  • What location?
• I’m not saying these questions are easy to answer, but at least you know what you’re looking for.
• These decisions will require you to be both introspective and opportunistic. Generally, you must learn where what you are good at / interested in intersects with a market need.
  • Interviewing many others to learn what they do
  • Doing self-assessments and reflections to consider what you’re good at
  • Surveying the market and considering what’s in-demand (skills, industries, types of organizations).
• Once you’ve answered these questions, you can give a mission statement. For example:
  • “I’m looking for product management roles at AI startups in the Bay Area.”
  • “I want to do customer success remotely for an ed-tech company.”
  • “I’m targetting operations roles at climate tech companies.”
• Having trouble? Here are some thoughts:
  • Have more conversations. Trust your gut.
  • Choose a couple roles or industries to start with. You may narrow down later as you continue to learn about these fields.
  • Just pick something! No one has information, and there is no right answer. By picking something, you’ll learn about yourself and can recalibrate the next time you look for a job.
• Notes: on mission statements
  • Some “mission statements” will be more attainable than others. This depends on your background, the field you choose, and the job market in your target location.
  • It helps to know your priorities. If your goal is to move countries, switch fields or do something where there are fewer jobs, by all means – go ahead! It will be hard, but honestly, this process will be hard any way you look at it.
  • My mission statement, for both pragmatic reasons and personal assessment: operations/sales jobs at AI startups

My 2025 search experience: I did about 8 informational interviews before I had any idea of what job I was targeting. From that point, I still had questions so kept clarifying my career direction with every subsequent conversation.

Stage 2: Create a narrative.

• The Tell Me About Yourself question (TMAY) is the most critical thing I’ve found to nail in the job search process. The function of TMAY is:
  • To humanize you. What’s your story?
  • To define your value proposition (i.e., make the case that you’re the perfect person for the job).
• I got this advice later on in my job search: build a portfolio. This came from a frank but jarring conversation with someone well-connected at a venture capital firm. He said, “I can’t recommend passing on your CV just because you’re a nice guy and went to Berkeley. That’s a bad look. You have to have demonstrated skills.” So the three things recommended for this are:
  • Good hustling. Hustling (see next step) is 1000x better than sending in cold applications. Particularly if you are pivoting in roles, industries, or locations (I’m doing all three).
  • Good branding. 10x better than good hustling. This means having a portfolio, like some document that has a display of your notable past work and how you thought about each step.
  • A halo project. 10x better than good branding. If you’re a salesperson, schedule a meeting for the company before you’re hired. If you’re a product manager, critique their product and recommend solutions. If you’re a UX designer, rebuild their website using Figma. This method is not scalable, since each halo project takes time. But just like hustling and good branding, it sets you apart. So few people do it—if you build something good and relevant for a company, it’s bound to get the attention of any CEO you email.

Throughout my process, I:

• Practiced my tell me about yourself extensively
• Made a work portfolio that documents my past accomplishments
• I never got to doing the halo project, but I did build a demo for a startup (Wordware) after an initial interview. That was cool and they found it impressive!

Stage 3: Network.

• Networking essentially means having 20-minute professional conversations with as many people as possible. The goal is to build rapport.
• With rapport, you may gain access to a contact’s connections and influence. Contacts can help advance your job search in three main ways:
  • Information. They can teach you to speak the language of the industry/role. If you’re early on in the job search, they can probably tell you things you don’t know. If you’re later on, you can still ask for information as a way to build rapport.
  • Connections. If they’re well-connected within their organization or know many people, they can pass you on. For instance, venture capital folk will know tons of startup founders. An engineer at a big company may help you, or they may not.
  • Influence. If they’re in the position to directly hire, they’re a great person to talk to. Or, if the hiring manager is busy, getting connected with their friend could lead to a warm introduction, and you’d stand out in the crowd.
• How do you meet people? This is the meat of networking, and networking is the meat of job searching. I found four ways effective:
  • Cold emails. Find someone on LinkedIn, get their email, and send them a short email asking to talk. Follow Dalton’s 6-point email for specifics!
  • Go to events. Conferences, parties, one-offs on Eventbrite—whatever! At events, you can meet people, get the contacts of anyone who may be relevant/useful, and ping them later for a 20-minute phone call. Since they’ve met you in person, they’ll be much more useful than cold emailing. You should remember that not everyone will be well-connected or in a position to hire, so the hit rate is not 100%.
    • Tip: Michelle Fang’s Starter Guide to SF lists tons of events and event aggregators in the SF Bay Area.
  • Communities. Joining a Slack community for a particular field or a professional association will make people more likely to respond to a cold message. I got introductions and numerous helpful advisors this way.
    • Tip: Ask ChatGPT, “what are good online communities I can join in X field” (e.g., East Bay climate tech, remote product managers, environmental nonprofits)
  • Warm introductions. You may be lucky enough that a family friend, old college classmate etc. knows someone who’s hiring. You can start with a 20-minute catch-up call, then ask if they know anyone else to chat with. They may not, if they’re not well-connected—don’t take it personally. If someone you do speak with passes you along to someone else, follow up and ask for an innocent informational chat!
• What does the conversation look like?
  • Read Steve Dalton’s The 2-Hour Job Search! He describes the TIARA technique (trends, insights, advice, resources, assignments)
  • In brief, you should ask questions about their work and keep the interviewee talking. Your goal is for them to consider you a mentee, so they provide sustained guidance throughout your job search.
  • As you’re closing, you may ask, “do you know anyone else I should chat with who may be useful?”
• Note: Stay the course!
  • Networking is the strongest, evidence-backed way to find a job. Stay the course! When in doubt, re-read the 2-hour Job Search! People tell you to send cold applications to the void. Of course, some jobs are gotten that way, but those are the exceptions. Know that these people are not career coaches or job searching experts, and don’t know what they’re talking about!
  • Some people are downers to talk to. Don’t let them get to you! By nature of being a “search”, you never know how close you are to finding a job until it’s right in front of you. Continue having conversations at a reasonable, sustainable pace.
  • Be confident. Take breaks. Pursue fun things on the side. You cannot typically grind out networking in one week, so do it in parralel with things that make you happy.

In my job search, I:

• Sent 100+ cold emails, with 10–15 resulting informational interviews
• Went to 2 conferences (Effective Altruism Global and AI for Animals) where I had ~30 one-on-one meetings
• Attended about 5 networking events
• Sent <10 cold applications (I spent this time cold emailing!)
• Sent about 4 warm applications

Stage 4: Interview.

• Congrats if you get to an interview! Interviews can be sporadic, nerve-racking, and unnatural. Luckily, I learned from Dalton’s The Job Closer (the companion to The 2-Hour Job Search) that you can prepare quite well.
• The key question: Tell me about yourself (TMAY)
  • This deserves a lot of practice.
  • It’s the most important question because it’s the first asked. Some ridiculous proportion of interviews are decided in the first three minutes of an interaction.
  • I included 3 main experiences in my TMAY. These were: economics research or Beyond Meat (depending on the role), co-founding Grassyouths, and teaching English in Taiwan.
• Three other core questions:
  • Why this industry? Why this organization? And why this role?
  • If you can ace these four questions, you’ve got 80% of the value out of interview prep.
• The remaining 20% may come from situational questions. “Tell me about a time when you…” (dealt with conflict, managed competing priorities, dealt with customers, had to take initiative)
  • I recommend having three really great stories, and seven more that you can pull from. This helps in case you’ve been through many interviews and the organization has heard your stories before. If you have 10 stories, you can be pretty certain that one of your examples can fit the situation that’s coming up.

I had 5 initial interviews, most of them with a warm introduction. 4 of those progressed to a second stage interview.

Stage 5: Negotiation.

• First of all, some employers or recruiters may ask, “what’s your salary expectation?” This was jarring for me—I was earning something like $15k USD in Taiwan, so it was hard to know what to aim for.
  • Your answer should be, “Salary is not the most important thing. I’m really focused on finding a company that has the right culture and mission. However, I am considering jobs with salaries ranging from X to Y.”
  • You can use jobs you’re considering to gauge expectations, or your current salary, or jobs you’ve had in the past.
• If you get a verbal offer, ask to see the details of the offer written out for you. Do not give the first number! Not even if asked directly.
• Do a Pre-Negotiation Call (PNC) to feel out the company’s flexibility on different aspects of the offer (see Dalton’s The Job Closer).
• Subsequently, do a negotiation call where you ask for certain improvements on the offer with a “because” after every statement (see Dalton!).

In my process, I received two verbal offers. One of which was full of smoke, and I accepted the other (there were also 2 other bad offers that were 100% commission sales gigs—I said I’d rather keep looking).

Timeline:

• Oct 30. Landed in America bewildered, startled.
• mid-Nov. Set the intention to get a job.
• Nov & Dec. Informational chats with friends and family. I learned a lot about career ladders and phrases.
• mid-Dec. Started cold outreach emails to employees at target companies.
• mid-Jan. Had my first informational interview with someone from a cold email. These ended up coming consistently at a 10% rate.
• Feb 12. Came in-person to the Bay Area.
  • Feb 14. At a Valentine’s Day party, met someone who heard I was job searching and said, “we’re hiring like crazy! I’ll get you an interview.” That went somewhere, actually—but more importantly, it validated the strategy of in-person networking.
  • Feb 21–22. EAG Bay Area, professional conference.
  • Mar 1–2. AI for Animals. Met an employee at Constellation.
• Mar 6. Verbal offer that was a shitty, commission-only sales position. I said no!
• Mar 11, 19, 24. Friendly chat with the recruiter at Constellation. Then first and second interviews. Simultaneously, going to networking events and following up. Did a work demo for the guy from the Valentine’s Day party.
• Apr 2. Constellation mega on-site interview day.
• Apr 3. Offer from Constellation.