Nothing beats personalization.
That’s the conclusion I had while I was researching the best ways to land in-house (and freelance) jobs.
Most candidates nowadays are too AI-slop brained, to the point where I frequently see founders on X complaining about how similar most applications are.
It’s kind of funny, to be honest.
Imagine being a founder and receiving this from 3293 applicants every time you publish a job opportunity.
I’d probably go crazy.
Because of these AI brain-dead people, personalization became more important than ever.
Try to see things from the perspective of a business owner:
After 1000s of AI bs applications, you see this:
“Hey [name], my name is Daniel. I noticed XYZ in your operation. I made a few tweaks to fix it. You don’t need to pay me anything; that’s on me. Have a great one :)”
Even though it’s not the BEST outreach message of all time, it’s definitely something genuine.
As a business owner, I think it’s always nice to see someone genuinely trying to help you and your business.
But you may argue, “Yeah, but he won’t hire you simply because you fix something for him for free. It’s actually better for him, who didn’t have to pay you anything.”
And yeah, you might be right. But my intention wasn’t to get hired immediately (even though it’d be awesome).
The intention with the genuine outreach is first and foremost to create a relationship between me and the bizz owner.
I wanted to catch his attention by generating in him a feeling of gratefulness.
“Wow, this guy actually helped me without asking for anything in return.”
This is already a feeling that no other candidate was able to generate in him.
And that, my friend, is personalization.
But personalization is not all when it comes to getting a job. You obviously need to be qualified for that position.
The genuine outreach I showed you before already shows your qualification in a certain way because you actually fixed a problem that that company had.
But if you didn’t fix anything, you don’t need to worry.
To be honest, even though most opportunities seem to reject newbies because of requiring previous experience, you actually don’t even need REAL experience to start.
You can just CREATE something.
What you need is a portfolio.
But don’t simply create a random portfolio. Be different.
Don’t do:
- Random sales page
- Random ads
- Random welcome emails or/and sequences
It’s a waste of time, and most of these pieces won’t even be looked at by the bizz owner.
It’s the same thing as trying to become an associate financial lawyer by displaying your previous experience as a milkman.
The last thing you’d like to do is to milk the judge…
Anyway, don’t create disconnected pieces. Create something complete.
Create something like an ad that takes the lead to a landing page and then takes the lead to a welcome sequence that takes the lead to a sales page, and so on.
Finally, unfortunately (or fortunately) nothing beats a referral.
You’ll never beat the boss’ cousin. It doesn’t matter if you have PhD in marketing or something. That damn cousin still has the referral advantage.
“Why?” you may ask.
Well, because they know each other. And most of the time, as it happens during a sale, if the customer likes you, your chances of selling to them are substantially higher.
So if you get referrals from business owners or people that liked your work, and the bizz owner from the company you’re trying to enter knows or trusts these people, your chances of getting that job opportunity are definitely better.
But wait, most people don’t have a referral. And that is even more reality when it comes to newbies.
How can we overcome it, then?
It’s simple! You just need to have a good portfolio.
And when I say portfolio, I’m not talking about professional experience.
As I already said, you can pretty much create a very good one without having worked for anyone before.
How?
Just pick something you really enjoy, find a company inside that niche, and create what is, for me, the EASIEST beginner-friendly portfolio:
- 3 PPC Ads
- 2 for Facebook/Instagram
- 1 for Google Ads
- Landing page
- Welcome sequence
- Welcome email
- Story email
- Testimonial email
- Sales email
- Sales page
- Thank you page with an upsell
You don’t need to do deep research. Just find a niche you are familiar with and create everything from your existing experience. In my case, it’ll probably be my brother-in-law’s massage business.
I know one or two things about it.
I’m not a specialist.
However, I just need to ask him; he’ll surely answer.
That’s it for today. Now, I’ll put all of this into practice.
Talk to you tomorrow,
Daniel Costa.
