Mindaugas Petrutis
8 Jan 2025
When you stop downplaying your expertise, the right companies notice.
Late last year, I had a career session with a designer — let’s call him Alex. He’d been applying to jobs for about three months with no traction, frustrated and stuck in a loop of sending resumes into the void.
Within 60 minutes, Alex had a clear path forward. He was excited, with a renewed sense of clarity and energy. And when he messaged me a few days later, he’d already landed interviews with companies he was thrilled about.
Here’s exactly what we uncovered and the steps that shifted everything for Alex:
1. You’re hiding the good stuff
When we started our chat, I asked Alex about his experience. He told me he’d been a designer for 10 years, much of it in healthcare. He spent about five minutes talking about his experience very generically.
But I kept probing more. I simply wasn’t hearing anything interesting. I even opened up his LinkedIn while he was speaking and saw the same — boring, bland, bare.
Eventually, maybe he got annoyed with all my questioning, he casually dropped this:
“In the past two years, I worked on some really complex AI healthcare projects. Oh, not sure if this is also relevant, but I used to be a practicing physician assistant, and I still have an active license.”
This definitely wasn’t in his LinkedIn profile. Or his resume. He wasn’t mentioning it in outreach.
I stopped him right there:
“Why are you hiding this? Do you realise how rare this combination is? Healthcare companies are hiring AI designers left and right. You’re exactly what they need and you’re not even letting them know.”
Alex hesitated. He said:
“If I focus too much on these very specific things, I’ll miss opportunities in other industries. I’m not getting many calls as it is, so if I niche down, there will be even less.”
My response to that was quite direct:
“Sorry to be so blunt, but literally no one is calling you right now. Am I wrong? So what’s the risk here? When you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.”
We then revamped Alex’s LinkedIn headline from:
“Senior Designer”
to:
“Senior Designer | Healthcare & AI Specialist | 10+ Years Improving Patient Outcomes.”
Simple first pass, but the difference already was night and day. His profile now screamed, “I’m the designer for this exact type of role.”
2. Look in the right places
Most of Alex’s job search was spent applying to roles on LinkedIn and job boards. He was sending out applications to dozens of companies, hoping one would bite.
I told him:
“Stop applying like everyone else because you’re fishing in the same pond as thousands of other designers. And you’re blending in.”
We took a different approach. I introduced him to the Y Combinator startup directory, which lists hundreds of companies actively hiring. If I remember correctly, there were a couple of hundred building in healthcare alone. And looking for designers with experience in AI.
To my surprise, he’d never even heard of Y Combinator.
Then I asked:
“Where are you based again?”
“NYC,” he said.
I filtered down a bit more, shared my screen with him, and pulled up a startup from the directory, voila, a healthcare AI company hiring a senior designer.
“They’re based in NYC too,” I told him. “This is right on your doorstep, and you don’t even know they exist. And look, all the info about the company is right here — from how much they’ve raised to the founding team. Plenty of context for you to assume some specific problems you can help them solve.”
He was floored. I could see the wheels turning inside his head. It was the moment he realised how much opportunity he’d been missing by sticking to the same broad, generic search.
3. Stand out in outreach
When Alex told me about his usual outreach like sending LinkedIn messages similar to, “Hi, I’m a designer. Here’s my portfolio. Would love to chat,” — I told him:
“That’s why you’re not getting replies. You’re doing what everyone else is doing.”
Here’s what we did instead:
Research the company: Look at their website, press releases, and announcements to understand their challenges.
Craft a message that solves their problems:
Instead of, “I’d love to chat about opportunities,” Alex wrote:
“I noticed your team is tackling [specific challenge]. I’ve worked on similar problems in [past experience], and I’d love to bring that expertise to your team.”
This approach reframes you as a problem-solver, not just another designer hoping for a callback.
4. Go beyond the screen
When we found that NYC startup, I told Alex:
“Don’t just apply online. Walk into their office. Tell them why they need you.”
He hesitated. “That feels too bold,” he said.
Maybe…but when everyone else is hiding behind emails and LinkedIn DMs, showing up in person will make you unforgettable.
I told him:
“The worst that can happen is they say no. The best? They hire you on the spot. How often does the right candidate, with literally every bullet point ticked from the job description, walk into someone’s office out of the blue?”
The Result
Precisely seven days later, Alex messaged me:
“I got inspired after our conversation spending the rest of the day doing targeted research on 15 companies and challenges I can help them with. Reached out to 9 so far and I’ve already had two interviews with companies I was most interested in. This approach is so much better than what I was doing before.”
Here’s what Alex did differently:
He stopped hiding his strengths. We highlighted his unique healthcare and AI experience, making him the obvious choice for companies in that space.
He targeted companies that aligned with his expertise. No more mass applications but focused outreach to companies where he could have the biggest impact.
He got bold. Alex didn’t go straight to the startup’s office, but he did the next best thing. He sent the founder a hyper-personalised message, crafted to highlight his unique fit for the role. Then, he added:
“By the way, I’m going to be in your building next week for an interview, how about I buy you a coffee?”
The founder responded almost immediately, and they set up a meeting.
By the time they met, Alex was already in the interview process. Even if this role doesn’t pan out, Alex said: “I’ll have a super valuable relationship in the space I work in. The founding team is legit — if they grow the team in the future or build something else, I’ll be top of mind because of my approach.”
Your Turn
Ask yourself:
Are you making it obvious why someone should hire you?
Are you focusing your search on the right companies?
Are you doing what everyone else is doing — or are you standing out?
If your current strategy isn’t working, it’s time to try something new. You got this.
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