Earlywork Edition #3: Using LinkedIn DMs To Get Jobs

Featuring roles from Startmate, Lasertrade, Medius Health & more + an interview with Misha Cajic (Co-Founder of Airshuffler)

Hey gang!

It is indeed ya boi Dan and it’s time for Round 3 of Earlywork, a newsletter focused on shortlisting the best roles for students & recent graduates across tech & startups in Sydney.

If you’re not already part of the crew, subscribe now to keep a pulse on our latest stories and conversations:

We’re now at over 200 subscribers just 2 weeks after launching, and I’m super grateful for all the referrals you folks have given so far. Particular shoutouts to Antler, Satori Labs, UNSW Business School, and Emanuel School for sharing among their networks :)

This week, I’m also introducing a new item to the Earlywork menu: One Minute Hustle (uh oh, he used the word hustle unironically).

The gist? Each week, I’ll be asking a student/recent graduate startup founder 3 simple questions:

1. What are you working on❓

2. How’d you get started❓

3. Why do you do what you do❓

Okay cool dude, but why?

I think for a lot of young people (myself included), there’s an information gap and a bit of a fear factor around getting started with building out new ventures and side projects.

Taking the plunge on that idea brewing in your noggin.

Now I could tell you how Steve Jobs or some Silicon Valley bigshot got started…

…but my hypothesis is that sharing stories of students early in their journey is more relatable and in turn, more useful i.e. more likely to spark a “Hey, maybe I should finally give that Uber for Ice cream app idea a go” (note: Unfortunately, I don’t think this one is a winner).

And of course, you gosh-darn millennials have a short attention-span so I was like, hey, let’s try and distill it down to the 3 most important questions.

Keep reading to find our very first interview!

Aaaaanyway, let’s get crack-a-lackin’. First off, of course, we have the:

💡 Weekly Cheeky Tip

Cold LinkedIn DM Frameworks for Student Roles

During my undergrad, I was fortunate enough to work with three super interesting startups alongside some great humans (Tilt, Tayble, and most recently, Ofload), and each of those experiences have helped shape my personal paradigm for what defines meaningful work.

But how many had a job listing for a student role? Zero.

Okay, yeah yeah, so a generic university careers event in university told you to reach out to people on LinkedIn if you’re looking for a job, but hold up…

Who should you be messaging, and what exactly do you say???

Let’s dive in and look at the real-world process we’ve used to land roles in tech and startups through LinkedIn in the past.

In this Weekly Cheeky Tip, I’ve included real screenshots of 2 different techniques I utilised to find these student jobs without an official listing.

1) Add value to the company before your first message
tl;dr - Leverage a small favour to a company to get your foot in the door for hiring.

It was in 2nd-year uni that I first came across Tayble, a restaurant ordering app for dine-in and takeaway well ahead of its time, through an advertisement that popped up on my Facebook feed.

Sold on the idea, I participated in their pre-launch referral competition to win free meals, and through posting my referral link across several platforms in a bunch of relevant groups, I was able to shoot up to the 8th highest spot out of over 3000 entrants in 48 hours.

I then reached out to their COO to tell them about my efforts, explain a bit more about why I was interested in their space, and ask if they had any upcoming intern positions. He put me in touch with their CMO to discuss further. Met up at Bondi Junction for a single casual interview as their first-ever Sales & Marketing Intern and boom! Hired.

2) Turn a full-time entry-level or associate-level listing into a part-time role
tl;dr - Just because a job listing says full-time, doesn’t mean they won’t consider part-time for the right candidate.

Mindlessly scrolling through LinkedIn jobs (the usual), I happened to see an Operations Associate position at Ofload (previously Loadsmile), a digital road freight platform working to reduce waste and increase transparency in the Australian trucking industry.

The problem space seemed super interesting, the founding team looked really strong, and they were at an exciting early stage with pre-seed funding from Rocket Internet, but the role? Full-time. Hmmmmm.

I applied anyway, and upon initial reach-out from the COO, I was upfront about the fact that I was looking for something part-time with the view to full-time in a few months.

Sure enough, that COVID thingo meant part-time was actually quite suitable on a small startup budget. Three interviews later, I joined the team part-time and have since converted to a full-time role after graduating.

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⛅ Intern & Part-Time Roles

🛠️ Technical

• Software Engineering Internship, Deputy
  Rostering and time clock software.

• Data Analyst, :Different (through Hatch)
  Full-service property management startup leveraging a combination of technology

• Network Engineer Intern, NEXTDC
  Designs, builds and operates next generation data centres.

• Data Analyst (Contract), Abyss Solutions
  Autonomous broad-scale asset assessment and monitoring company, specialising in underwater infrastructure. Email info@abysssolutions.com.au.

🎨 Non-Technical

• Marketing Intern, Lasertrade (Remote)
  Online marketplace for pre-owned medical devices. Email mark@lasertrade.com.au.

• Operations Intern, Liven
  An incentive-based mobile payment gateway and ecosystem purpose-built for the lifestyle and dining industries.

• Sales and Marketing Intern, Intel
  Global tech player in semiconductors, cloud computing, data centres and IoT.

• STAR Program Intern, SAP
  Leading enterprise resource planning software.

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🌞 Graduate & Full-Time Roles

🛠️ Technical

• Software Engineer (Python/DevOps/AWS), Medius Health
  Comprehensive AI medical knowledge graph that helps providers & payors gain a thorough understanding of customer’s health.

• Software Engineer, Shippit
  A shipping engine for modern retailers that saves time, money and removes friction in the delivery process.

• Data Analyst, SafetyCulture
  Mobile app for safety inspections.

• Data & Analytics Associate, Slyp
  Smart Receipts instantly sent to your banking app.

• DevOps Engineer, Immutable
  Blockchain for in-game transactions.
  

🎨 Non-Technical

• Accelerator Associate + Fellowship Associate, Startmate (Blackbird)
  Early-stage startup investor and accelerator.

• Customer Experience Advocate, Monday.com
  Project management tool that enables organisations to manage tasks, projects, and teamwork.

• Analyst, Earlytrade
  Supply chain technology company that helps match the working capital needs of companies with trading relationships.

• Sales Development Representative, Limepay
  Payment platform focused on improving the merchant checkout experience.

• Content Editor, Dovetail
  Platform to analyse customer data, collaborate on insights, and build a customer research repository.

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1️⃣ 🕐 💪 One Minute Hustle

Our first ever One Minute Hustle! Eskettit:

Misha Cajic, Co-Founder of Airshuffler

• What are you working on? We've developed an MVP which allows you to queue virtually for any location before you even arrive at the place. You simply join from a weblink, and through your geolocation and position in the queue, we'll let you know exactly when you need to head over, so you arrive right as you get to the front. We're in experimentation stage at the moment and searching for early adopters, and plan to hack in a few extra features such as paid priority queuing in the near future.
  

• How'd you get started? We've gone through a few pivots, and probably still have some to go through. Our original idea was a live airport information app (flight updates/maps) that works seamlessly anywhere you go, but the startup cost was very high, not to mention, the travel industry got messed up this year. However, since one part of that solution was virtual queuing, we did a target market pivot and decided to focus on potential customers that are easier to get to.
  

• Why do you do what you do? For years I've run my own freelancing software business, so I guess you could say I've been conditioned to only want to work for myself. Moreover, I find the challenge of starting your own business, rather than joining an existing one, super intriguing and rewarding. I'm constantly reading business books (The Lean Startup by Eric Ries is my bible), and teaching myself what best practices are, so I have faith that even if it takes longer than is comfortable, we'll be able to figure something out. And that's super fun :)

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And there we have it folks!

As always, would love to chat with you about what career-related resources and content are most value-adding to you.

What should I start doing? What should I stop doing? What should I continue doing?

Flick me an email, send me a message via pigeon post, or leave a comment below (ideally #2).

Ciao for now,
Dan

Daniel Brockwell
Creator @ Earlywork | Operations @ Ofload
Email| LinkedIn