Universal skills to land a startup job
Working with the USV portfolio means I get to meet a lot of outstanding candidates looking to join one of our portfolio companies. Here are a few characteristics I’ve found to distinguish the great candidates:
Curious
You need to be curious to create things that never existed. You don’t necessarily have to be curious about something related to the job you’re taking on, but you have to have curiosity for something.
What do you love? If you can’t think of anything, it will be hard to build a product out of love. You have to understand it to get better at building it.
Show Hustle
Now, this is not just, “I got one ‘no’ so I’m going to give up.” That’s persistence, but hustle is more that that. Do your research, put your heart into it, cater to that company that has an open position, then don’t stop at one “no”. Understand what they need and work to become the person the company needs.
This is not, let me send my cookie cutter resume to every startup (even when they’re not hiring). Do the work to understand what you’re applying to and why it would be a good fit. There are other candidates doing this, some with outstanding backgrounds too. Don’t get lazy where it’s important. Do the work.
Be Smart
Being smart is beyond just intelligence, it’s working to raise your knowledge, not just what you’ve been given. Logic works. Learning works. Do your research. What don’t you know? What aren’t you good at? Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, understand your own. Then be smart enough to push to the edge of your potential. See what exists there.
Level Up
Become a mechanic. Understand the what, how, who. You don’t need to know everything but you should be excited enough about your industry that you want to know as much as possible. If you want to work as a Product Manager, learn SQL. If you want to work on Design, learn Javascript. If you want to understand social media, start with a side project just focused on promotion. Be hungry for more. If you’re not hungry in the beginning, it’s a long road.
Become a mechanic. Understand the what, how, who. You don’t need to know everything but you should be excited enough about your industry that you want to know as much as possible. If you want to work as a Product Manager, learn SQL. If you want to work on Design, learn Javascript. If you want to understand social media, start with a side project just focused on promotion. Be hungry for more. If you’re not hungry in the beginning, it’s a long road.
This is why people preach about passion. If you don’t have an interest about something, a let me wake up first thing in the morning and read the news on this topic - then look in a different industry. Every day, ever dinner party, every taxi driver (in SF or Chicago) will want to know what you do. If you aren’t excited about talking about it, keep on moving.
Care
Love to solve problems? Think scaling is challenging? Be excited about that, the thing you do on the day to day. Love talking to people, maybe sales, or customer support. The industry doesn’t matter as much as the mission of the company does. Find what moves you. Serve that purpose in what you do and the mission the company solves.
- Kickstarter, VHX, Soundcloud, Shapeways, Wattapd and Splice empower creators.
- Meetup believes people should build offline communities just like they do online.
- CircleUp, LendingClub, Funding Circle, Coinbase and Dwolla are revolutionizing the way money and banking exist.
- Firebase, Twilio, MongoDB, CloudFlare and Sift Science are creating the best tools to empower developers.
If you’re looking for your next move, we’ve got quite a few jobs worldwide looking for good people. Check out all of the USV portfolio company jobs here.
If you have any additions or questions, happy to discuss in the comments.