If you’re non-technical and have no startup experience, your approach to successfully landing a startup job needs to be different than what your trusty college career counselor told you.

In this post, I’m going to describe what non-technical startup job seekers are up against and provide actionable strategies to overcome them.

Signal to Noise

Every time a promising startup posts a non-technical, entry-level job, tens if not hundreds of applications flow in. Founders don’t have time to go through all of them so they use their network as a filtering mechanism by starting with people that have come recommended. As a result, the candidates who’ve been endorsed by someone the founder knows get the first crack at the opportunity.

A lot of the best companies don’t even post jobs. Instead they rely solely on their network to avoid the barrage of applicants.

What this Means

If you want to incrementally improve your ability to land a startup job you need to be networking your tail off. You’re approach should be to provide value to as many people as you can within the startup ecosystem. The more you improve other people’s lives, the more they will look to help you when an appropriate opportunity arises. This is called the law of reciprocity.

Here are some ways you can provide value:

• Relevant introductions where both sides indicate they’d like to be introduced
• Feedback on their product, site, or personal blog
• Identifying and sending relevant content and news
• Sourcing potential candidates
• Promotion and support for their product(s) amongst your personal network

Naturally, the more klout the people you’re able to build relationships with, the more weight endorsements will hold and potential opportunities you’ll be privy to.

De-Risking

When you have no prior startup experience, employers are taking a chance on you. They use your previous accomplishments and pedigree as a proxy to determine your capacity to do your job well.

If you’ve demonstrated high potential through value creation at your previous jobs, this might be enough to tip the scales. But a lot of people haven’t and sometimes major accomplishments aren’t even enough to land a startup job.

One way to overcome this is by employing what I call the Proof Approach.

The Proof Approach is taking the initiative to successfully perform an element of the job before you have it. It means acting like you’ve already been hired during or before the interview process.

My friend Ari did this to get a job with Square. Instead of trying to convince them that he had the capacity to be an evangelist and sign up local businesses to use the product, he just did it. By the time he interviewed with the company, he had completely disarmed the perception that it might be risky to hire him by successfully executing a required responsibility. He was hired immediately.

The Propensity for Doing

One difference between a startup and more established company is the limited handholding. Founders aren’t looking for someone to micro-manage, and they rarely have a blueprint for you to do your job at a high level. They’re looking for someone who can figure things out, get stuff done, and find ways to create value beyond the scope of their specified assignments. They want someone with initiative.

One thing you can do as a candidate to separate yourself is demonstrate initiative by having “projects.” Self-imposed projects demonstrate that you’re a doer. They can also signal other attractive qualities like creativity and hustle.

A project can manifest itself in many forms. Here’s a few examples:

• Create A Newsletter
• Build A Website or Blog
• Create an Event
• Create A Physical Product To Sell (i.e. Elementary school-style recess bracelets!)

In Conclusion

If you really want to land a job at a quality startup, you’re going to need do more than a resume drop. It’s going to require some work, creativity, and getting outside your comfort zone. By putting these approaches in action, the chances of successfully making the startup career jump are exponentially higher.

The post Landing a Non-Technical Job at a Startup appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

An excerpt from Piotr Gwiazda’s translation of Grzegorz Wroblewski’s book of prose poems, Kopenhaga, scheduled for publication by Zephyr Press, is scheduled to appear in the April 1, 2013 issue of The Nation.

Read a translated selection from Kopenhaga at the PEN America Center’s website: http://www.pen.org/poetry/kopenhaga.

http://www.thenation.com/authors/grzegorz-wroblewski

Today, we're introducing an updated interface that makes learning to build something easier than ever.

Here's what you can expect:

An immersive experience
We've simplified the interface to let you focus on what matters: the lesson, your code, and what you're building.

A better feedback loop
It's easier to learn when you can see you're doing. For most screen resolutions, you can now always see a visual preview of any webpage you are coding, or a terminal output of your code.

A responsive layout
Our new layout fills your screen, making it easier to code on both a small laptop and a large monitor.

We're rolling out our updated interface to everyone over the next week. When it becomes available to you, you'll see a "Switch now" link at the top of any Codecademy course.

We can't wait to hear what you think. Enjoy!

For many of us, a 30th birthday celebration means balloons, presents and parties with friends and family. For Maaden “Madie” Eshete ’07, biological sciences, however, the milestone birthday will also mean a lasting change for hundreds of rural Ethiopians without access to clean water.

A first-generation Ethiopian-American, Eshete is nearing the end of a giving campaign to raise $10,000 for charity:water, which aims to help an estimated 800 million people worldwide without access to clean water by providing freshwater wells, rainwater catchments, sand filters and other lasting solutions.

We talked with Eshete, who is a digital communications manager for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and co-founder of Divas – MPH Making Our People Healthier, as her March 31st birthday approaches about what drove her to donate her birthday to benefit others. See her fundraising page here.

Q:  What inspired you to raise money for your 30th birthday, and what do you hope to see come of it?

A:  I love my birthday. Always have! And since everyone was making such a big deal out of the “BIG 3-0” I began to look at it as an opportunity to bring some attention to an issue that I really cared about. I am a first generation Ethiopian-American, so raising awareness around the world water crisis and impacting that crisis in rural Ethiopia was a natural fit.

Q: Is this project a first for you?

A:  Yes and no. I gave up my Christmas presents a few years ago, which funded a water project in part, and I’ve donated to charity: water on several occasion in the past. But this is my first time “giving up” my beloved birthday. This is also my first time raising enough money to fund a complete water project – $10, 000 USD.

Q:  Can people continue to donate to your campaign past your birthday?

A:  The campaign period only last 90 days. I started on New Year’s Day 2013, so it ends at midnight on March 31st. But no worries, because I plan to facilitate regular campaigns through charity: water so there will be more to come.

Q:  You’re a health educator…so how does your work tie in with your birthday project? And what do you like best about your work?

A:  We take it for granted but water changes is everything. With that in mind, I care about water for the same reasons I care about health. Clean water impacts not just sanitation or hydration, but it means relief from water borne illness and decreased infant mortality, it means time spent in classrooms for young girls and not out fetching water for hours on end, and the project means jobs for local community members. Health, education, occupation are all intertwined in how they impact our communities and water is integral to that at a very basic level.

Q:  Do you have any favorite pieces of UMBC (classes, clubs or profs, for instance) that helped you become who you are today?

A:  Mr. (Lamont) Toliver, who worked in the Meyerhoff Scholarship office, and passed away suddenly last year was my dear friend, mentor, and brother. I worked in the scholarship office as a student aide my sophomore and junior years — and he treated me just like he did the scholars — inviting me to events and lectures, letting me know abut opportunities to apply for, helping me out of trouble with my classes, writing me recommendations, and even introducing me to his contacts when I graduated. We kept in touch regularly up until his passing, if I ever visited UMBC I always stopped in Mr. T’s office. He has been a huge motivation and my fondest memory from UMBC.

“Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters” by Kate Brown, associates professor of history, was recently reviewed by Nature.

“A multitude of…harrowing accounts fills the pages of Plutopia, a ‘hidden history’ of two communities — one American, one Soviet — that fuelled the nuclear arms race. Unusually, historian Kate Brown inter­viewed dozens of frontline workers for her meticulously researched account of how these two remote towns became indelibly linked by plutonium, and by catastrophic radioactive contamination,” the reviewer writes.

“Plutopia has important messages for those managing today’s nuclear facilities, arguing for caution and transparency,” the magazine concludes.

The full review can be read here.