The recruiter ping came on a Thursday afternoon. By Tuesday I was on a call with the founders. I'd been at my previous company for four years. I wasn't actively looking. My LinkedIn was up to date because that's just hygiene. About a hundred recruiter messages a year hit my inbox. Ninety-five I ignored, four got a polite "not right now", one sometimes turned into a real conversation. This one was different. The opening message was four sentences. It named the company, the team, the specific PM problem they were trying to solve, and a line about why my background looked like a fit. No platitudes, no asking for a phone number, no asking me to update my résumé. The link went to a brief written description of the role and a salary band wide enough to include where I actually was. I replied that day, asking for fifteen minutes to talk about scope. The recruiter was prompt and direct. The job was Senior PM on a payments-adjacent product at a Series B scale-up. Reporting to the head of product. Real ownership of a roadmap. The company had funding through 2027 in the bank. The first interview was with the founder, on a Friday. He was the most prepared interviewer I've ever spoken to. He'd read my CV, looked up two of the projects on ↓
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