Our industry is in a weird place right now. Social media is full of software engineers sharing their struggles getting hired (or even getting an interview). There are reports of excellent engineers struggling to find a new role for six months or more. At the same time, employers are lamenting the dearth of talented candidates. It seems that hiring has gotten harder for them, too.
How can these two things be happening at the same time? People often point to macro factors like AI. After spending a lot of time on hiring, I have an additional hypothesis: most inbound job applications are not very good. Many applications misunderstand what startups look for.
The good news for candidates is that even though a startup might get tens or hundreds of applications a day, it’s not hard to stand out. I spend far longer considering candidates who follow these simple steps.
1. Be a real person
If you’re a real, authentic human applying to a tech company, then good job: you already have a leg up on a lot of the competition.
Companies (ranging from startups to Fortune 500s) receive masses of applications from fake remote workers. If hired, these workers funnel wages to illicit operations, including North Korea. We saw a lot of this at Cinder and wrote about our experience.
In addition, a significant portion of inbound applications are from real people, but are generic. Many job sites make it easy for applicants to apply with a single click, which leads to large volumes of poor-quality applications that employers have to sift through.
The lesson here is that employers have to deal with an awful lot of noise in their applicant pool. It doesn’t take much to give them some real signal.
2. Write a real cover letter
The cover letter is the single best place to make yourself memorable. Don’t squander it.
There are two major points here: first, if an application form asks for a cover letter, write one! Don’t just upload your CV again. Many applicants do this, but it makes them look lazy and uninterested in the role.
Secondly, don’t write a generic cover letter that regurgitates your CV. The cover letter isn’t a box to check, but a chance to tell the company why you’re applying. What motivates you? What kind of work are you drawn to? Why do you want to work for this specific company? If your cover letter only repeats what’s in your CV, then you’re wasting the reader’s time.
At a startup, every hire has a significant impact on the culture. It’s also hard work. If you can’t answer these questions, you might prefer a more structured environment than a startup (and that’s fine)!
3. Write for humans
A lot of traditional CV and cover letter advice encourages an overly professional tone. I disagree! Take this made-up example:
I am writing to express my interest in the Software Engineer position. I have experience building reliable, scalable systems, collaborating effectively with cross-functional teams, and delivering high-quality code in fast-paced environments. I am confident my skills and professional approach would allow me to contribute quickly and effectively to your engineering team.
My eyes glaze over reading it. It’s full of clichés, isn’t tailored to the role, and doesn’t tell me anything about the author. No one actually writes like this, yet the vast majority of cover letters still do.
Here’s another example, but far more effective:
Hello! I came across your company via a Reddit thread on durable execution. I wish we’d had this kind of tooling when I worked at FooCorp; it sounds like you’re solving some real problems!
I’m a software engineer with a background in fintech. I value simplicity, reliability, and ownership, and I can talk at length about distributed systems. The product you’re building aligns closely with the kind of engineering I care about: reducing accidental complexity and giving teams better primitives for complex workflows.
This is far better. It’s professional but not weirdly formal, it gives a real sense of who the author is, and it’s clear that they are actually interested in the company. Sincerity is more striking than perfection. You can keep it quite minimal; your only goal is to make the hiring manager want to talk to you.
4. Use AI sensibly
Don’t use AI to write your CV or cover letter. Even if it looks superficially good, you often end up with writing that sounds exactly like every other LLM-written application. They also tend to lie: I’ve seen many AI-written CVs with details that are clearly made-up.
However, AI shines for proofreading and general feedback. It’s a good idea to upload your CV/cover letter and ask an LLM if it’s easy to read, has typos, or emphasises the right things. Just be aware that LLMs might try to make your application overly formal, because they’re trained on outdated corporate advice.
If there’s one thing to take away, it’s that most inbound applications are noise. If you write clearly and show genuine interest, you can easily end up in the top tier of applicants.