Stories from people who got hired by contacting someone they didn't know: a cold email to a hiring manager, a direct message, or a note to a founder. Across these 9 stories, the median was 5 applications and 3 interviews, over a search of about 10 weeks (8 of 9 report it).
Newest first. Each one links to the full story.
Cold Instagram DM with spec work landed a Brand Designer contract at a Buenos Aires design studio, which converted to a full-time US$36k USD role within three months.
PhD dropout built a public UK retail footfall dashboard to learn dbt and Streamlit; hiring manager at a Manchester retailer found it via Google and offered her a £28k Junior Data Scientist role after a five-week…
Cold-emailed the CTO of a New York data company after reading his Substack post, attached a relevant GitHub repo, and skipped the recruiter screen through a 90-minute live SQL pairing session on production queries.
Cold-emailed a US software company's CEO with a LATAM expansion pitch and landed a on-site full-stack developer role in Buenos Aires at $65k USD based on async-first culture fit.
Pitched two story ideas to a Madrid magazine without asking for a job, got commissioned for €200 freelance piece in March, converted to €28k staff writer role by June.
Recent graduate landed an SDR offer at an Austin SaaS company within a week by sending 40 personalized cold emails to SaaS companies, securing 8 replies and 3 interview loops with $62k base plus $2k sign-on.
With no experience, a designer cold-emailed ~20 Barcelona companies with highly personalised notes and a portfolio link, converting two replies into a first UX designer role at Inqbarna.
Eight months, 135 applications, and 15 company interviews before landing a first frontend engineering role, the turning point was applying directly to senior contacts and sharpening portfolio, resume and pitch.
Landed a Junior Designer role at a Mexico City design studio after DMing the founder on Instagram with concept sketches, then completing a paid trial week.
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