This post is like the hyper-accelerated, lightning version of “how to get a job” for Africans looking to break into the tech startup scene. Each section here could be an entire article on its own.
All the stuff here is really just to prove you can help a startup solve their problems. If you can convince a startup founder you can help them solve an important problem, you’re worth hiring. It really doesn’t matter whether they were officially hiring, whether they had a job opening available, whether your past work history matches their requirements, or if the role title is what you expected.
What are hiring managers thinking?
I’ve run interviews and been a hiring manager or a key decision maker in hiring at several startups. I am always looking for someone who can take initiative, be responsive to feedback, use critical thinking, and communicate with others before I have to prompt them. Most candidates:
- Don’t communicate their interest in or understanding of the company well
- Don’t describe the “why” or the context of their past experiences well
As a manager at a startup, I don’t want to hold your hand through every step of the process and unlike many other businesses, I am not going to tell you exactly what to do.
What is it that you want to do in a startup?
(this is an oversimplification of how day-to-day work maps to functions in a startup, but it’s a starting point)
- Talk to lots of people I barely know and try to convince them to do something they’ve never tried before, get to know many people and build a relationship by assisting them and following up on those relationships → business development, sales
- Figure out how to get people’s attention, get anyone who will look/listen to spread the news, shape the public’s view of a product → marketing, growth
- Get things done, make sure any customer experience is being delivered in a consistent and timely way, remove roadblocks and find ways to be faster and better → operations
- Build software/hardware, write documentation, test products, troubleshoot, rework software/product features over and over → engineering
- Follow-up with customers to see how I can improve their experience, deal with unhappy people, solve problems through creativity and research → customer support
- Listen to customer and team feedback to identify root problems, convince team members who disagree to work with me, think through exactly how a new feature or service could work, test new things with customers over and over → product, design
How do I put together a strong resume / CV?
You’re (hopefully) already on LinkedIn, but make sure you have a descriptive LinkedIn profile. Other people will read through your past positions, education, volunteer work, etc. like a cheat sheet version of your full resume.
Your resume must show that you made a contribution to each team or client you’ve worked with.
Bad: worked at university IT lab
Better: worked at university IT lab assembling computers, troubleshooting student laptop issues, and reinstalling cables
Best: led a group of three students to assemble computers, troubleshoot 5-10 laptop issues per week, and reinstall cables for a university IT lab serving 60 students annually
Bad: sold designer shoes on Instagram
Better: worked for a three-person team selling designer shoes to fashion-forward Gen Z clients by marketing through Instagram
Best: in a team of three, managed an Instagram page for designer shoe sales with over 1000+ followers; targeted Gen Z buyers, leading to sales of over 30 pairs of shoes per month; posted brand awareness and new inventory content at least 3x per week
Questions you can think about and address when you write about your experiences:
- how many people did you work with?
- what exactly was your role in the team?
- was there anything unique about your role vs. everyone else on the team?
- how many people did you manage, if any?
- how many people did you serve? Over what time period?
- what problem did you identify or solve? How many people did that problem affect or how much money did the problem represent?
- how did the number of people you served grow over time? How did sales grow over time? How did your followership or reach grow over time? You get the idea…
- what changed as a result of you being part of the team or company or client?
- what tools did you use on the job (e.g., Excel, Google drive, Adobe creative suite, python)?
Side hustles are valuable work experience too, don’t be afraid to write about those.
Your online presence and personal brand - do you have one?
- Twitter - do you have one related to your work / career interests?
- Facebook / Instagram / TikTok - could be a good platform if you want to show you have a strong followership for marketing, social media management or growth
- Github - especially crucial for engineers
- Behance - designers
- Dribble - designers
- Personal website - anyone, but especially nice for design / engineering / product
Google yourself and look at what and who comes up too.
What startup-focused job boards are you on?
- Movemeback
- Shortlist
- Peoplewho
- Brave
- AngelList
- Go to the websites of venture capital funds (VCs) active in your area and look up their portfolio companies; then look up whether those specific companies have posted open roles on their own websites or another recruiting platform
Make profiles on these platforms.
Maybe apply to jobs through these platforms.
Most of the time, you can use these platforms to see which startups you find interesting, which ones are hiring, and most importantly the PEOPLE who are responsible for recruiting.
What do you use to research tech startups?
LinkedIn - this is number one on the list because the startup is nothing if the people are crap
What you need to figure out:
- are there real people who work at this company
- how qualified are they to build the business they say they’re building
- would you learn something if you were around them
- how big is this team / how long did it take the team to get to the size it is
- is there any trend to the kind of people they hire
What you need to figure out:
- how recently did this startup raise money? The more recent the more likely they are to hire, especially 0-3 months after the funding was announced.
- how much money does this startup have in funding? Startups burn cash like crazy, most of the time on payroll. Some early stage startups burn through 500k USD in a year (small-ish team, not many capital needs) and others go through over 3 million USD in a year (growing team, capital-intensive). It’s rare to find a startup that is actually profitable.
- what do the press releases say the startup is planning to do with the money? That can give you an indication of the most important problems they will be addressing in the next year.
- Go to their website and sign up to use the service
- Download their app and actually try it
- Read reviews of this product/service wherever you can find them
- If they have a physical site/store, go in person and ask a bunch of questions
- If they have a live chat or whatsapp number, ask questions about how everything works
- Talk to someone who has actually tried using the product
What you need to figure out:
- why would anyone use this product
- how well is the product doing what it claims to do or solving the problem it’s supposed to solve
- how do people feel about the product experience so far
- most products and services from early stage startups are trash, but is there evidence that the team has improved in at least one way
Things you should be doing if you’re serious:
- Talk to as many people as you can and LISTEN to what they have to say about their domain, startups, their career paths, whatever. Anytime you speak to one person, ask them for an intro to another relevant contact. Be prepared with specific questions. Always be gracious.
- Help other people first - this helps you become recognized as proactive, knowledgeable, and easy to recommend to others, and grows your network.
- Get a mentor in the startup community. Figure out which people know a bunch of other people in tech.
- Use startup products and services and try to work for the ones you like - as a customer for a product you have an excuse to talk to the team and give feedback on how the product experience could be better (and you’re willing to put in the work to make it better)
- When you see a startup that interests you in the news or on a job board, find a way to reach out to that team and get one of the founders on a call if you can. Get someone’s email or whatsapp number and ask “who’s the manager responsible for hiring X role?” Have a thoughtful, concise intro about yourself and why you believe you can solve challenges on that team.
- It makes scheduling meetings a lot easier if you have a calendar booking app. Calendly is probably the easiest one to start with and it can check for conflicts with your google calendar if you use gmail.
This post is already too long so I won’t go into how to approach conversations and interviews, but you can reach out to me if you need part 2.
✏️ Ismail Louafi
This is very insightful. Thank you for sharing