most people who are really good engineers dont realize that being good =! getting hired. as some guy said, "a focused fool will accomplish more than a distracted genius". you can literally be good at what you do and still get ignored if your application looks exaclty like other 500 people applying for the same job. In big 26 being skilled is still the baseline but knowing how to make people notice that matters just as much.
“applying for jobs is a skill by itself”
Pre requisites :
even before i expain how to get a job, i want to share few pre req which ive learnt over time from people who i look upto in tech
- do engineering for the love of the game, not because your parents told you to, or because you had nothing else to choose
- be good at some domain fundamentally : ai, backend whatever
- have a very good proof of work: resume, portfolio, projects etc
The Game :
there are a lot of ways of getting hired, but these are the things i've either personally used, or seen people waste way too much time in 2026
1. Corporate Stalking :
this is probably the most effective thing ive personally done while applying for jobs.
i used to keep a notion page where i tracked companies i wanted to work for, what they are building, whether they were hiring, what roles were open, whether they mentioned a stipend, application links, emails, and even why i got rejected(if i applied)
every morning and night, id spend 15 mins checking hiring sites. for each company, i used to compare JD with my resume and find skill gaps and tried to close them
i once applied for an AI health tech startup three times, i got rejected twice, the third time i built a small POC related to one of their products and applied, that literally got me to the interview. i cleared three rounds but lost in the final one, but you get the point
pick a list of companies that you want to work and stalk the hell out of them
my stalking system
future targets
2. Cold Mailing :
cold mailing STILL works
i used to find startups on hiring platforms, check what they were building and reach out direclty instead of waiting for the application.
ive sent a multiple cold mails and got a decent amount of callbacks, the important part is not to send the same generic mai to all of them, make it relevant to their product and give them a reason to reply
you can even cold mail companies you;ve already applied to, sometimes it makes you stand out from everyone
template i used personally
- soham parek's cold mail template : https://x.com/lochan_twt/status/2016366372784369843?s=20
3. Application maxxing :
this is the most desperate and ineffective way of applying jobs
they apply to literally every random job they see on any website, that too with the same resume, even though the role barely matches what they know, and they blame the market for not getting callbacks
when it comes to job applications quality of application matters way more than no.of applicaions. ten well-targeted applications can be worth more than 200 random drunk applications
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4. Referrals :
i've actually never tried getting a job through referrals, ive had chances to ask, but personally i never liked referrals
but referrals clearly work for a lot of people
the only thing is if someone is putting their name behind you, be good enough to not make them regret it
- only take referrals if you are confident enough https://x.com/kmeanskaran/status/2067575219242574214?s=20
5. Showcase in public :
this is the coolest way of getting hired
post whatever you’re building, whatever you’re learning, projects, experiments, mistakes anything that shows what you can do
ive seen a lot of unexpected oppurtunites come just from people consistently sharing their work online, you dont need to become an influencer just make your work visible
- creating applications like these : https://x.com/VinnyMadaan3/status/2055656744123293929?s=20
The Forbidden Technique :
the endgame of job hunting
the most effective ones for me are still stalking and cold mailing, but you can literally combine everything
stalk the company, understand what they are building, cold mail them, try getting a referral keep fixing gaps all while posting your work online
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Tips :
these are few things ive picked up from people i lookup to in tech
- stop consuming "job market is dead" content all day from social media and peer groups. if you consume enough of it, you’ll eventually convince yourself there’s no point trying
- the market is disrupted but there are still jobs
- only foucs on what you can control like skills, projects, applications and keep working and stop being too much desperate about jobs
- if you apply exaclty like everyone else, you'll obv get results like everyone else
- own the fu*king application
- post online, as i mentioned earlier the most unexpected opportunities can come from a single post
at the end of the day, being good is just half of the game, getting noticed by right people is the other half
you dont need to become some insane networking machine or spam 500 applications everyday, just stop treating job applications like lottery tickets
applying jobs is a skill, Get good at that too.
there are definitely more ways to get hired which i didnt mention here, you can experiment it and find what works for you
just remember : QUALITY >>> QUANTITY
thats it from your friendly neighbourhood spiderman :)
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