Today's insight: Why and how to find the 'side door' (aka unconventional ways to stand out and get what you want)

First, an analogy to help set the context...

The hottest night club's just opened in your city. Johnny Depp just won his case and he's throwing a party to celebrate. You want to get in (of course).

But...you get there and there's a huge line at the front door. There are *thousands* of people waiting. 

You wait for an hour. The line doesn't move. You realize your fate — you're never going to make it in 🥵

So you think creatively. You get out of the line, you run down the back alley, climb over the dumpster and sneak through the kitchen. You're in.

You just found the side door — the entrance no one else was using.

The point of this story is not to convince you to sneak into clubs! It's to show you the power of getting what you want by doing creative things that no one else is doing. You should use this approach when thinking about your career too.

🚪  Most people take the front door when it comes to their careers — they do what everybody else is doing. Here's an example — 96%+ of job seekers mass apply to jobs on Indeed, Monster or LinkedIn using the one-click apply buttons.

Yes, this works — but it has the most competition because everyone is doing it. It's the front door.

🔑  For most jobs, there's almost always a side door.

It's the entrance that most people don't know exists. It might take some more effort to find, but when you find it, you're not competing with anyone else so you 10x your chances.

But these unconventional ways aren’t “just sitting there.” You have to be creative and do what no one else wants to do.

Examples

So let's go through an example of how to find the side door when it comes to finding a job.

• The front door (i.e. what most people do): They send off 100s of applications on Indeed.

• Five 'side doors':
  1. You find the hiring manager and follow up with them.
  2. You send the hiring manager a sample of you already doing the job — for examples if you're applying for a sales role, send them a list of 10 prospects and how to target them. If you're applying for a marketing role, write up a marketing strategy they should try.
  3. You set up an informational interview with someone who works there.
  4. You optimize your resume for resume screeners.
  5. You use niche job boards to find roles to apply to (which are specific to your industry), instead of the mass sites like Indeed.

Here's one more example.

If you're trying to grow your network, don't just add people on LinkedIn — that's the front door. Some unconventional side doors could be:

• Interview people and share their insights on your feed.
• Start a weekly email (like this one!).
• Organize an online networking event and bring similar likeminded people together.
• Optimize your LinkedIn profile so opportunities start coming to you.

This advice was inspired by the book, The Third Door, by Alex Banayan, and this Twitter thread by Romeen Sheth.

Do you have other ideas of the 'side doors'? Or 'hacks' that have set you apart in your job search or career? I'd love if you could let me know, and I'll share them in a future email — just hit reply.

Today's article: How To Show Leadership Skills on Your Resume

Especially if you’re applying for mid- to senior-level roles or ones that involve managing others, hiring managers will want to see evidence of leadership or management skills on your resume.

❌  You can't just say things like "I have strong management and leadership skills" and expect hiring managers to believe you —  using subjective buzzwords on your resume is a common mistake people make.

✅  Instead, you want to show evidence of leadership through your experience — for example, you might write about when you led an important project or trained others in your team:

• Trained and mentored 10+ new and existing account executives and interns on solutions selling strategies, customer relationship management, and advanced product knowledge.

This article explains this in more detail — with more sample bullet points to help you write your resume.

🎯  You should also use a tool like Score My Resume to check if your resume shows enough leadership experience. One of the components of your resume's score is leadership (among 20+ other checks), so it's a great litmus test to see if you've checked this box. Try it now.

Share this resource on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, or via email.