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I See 800 Applications. Here's What Gets Hired.

2026-05-28 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 15:23 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Work and career · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: AI, Aimed at students, His own numbers, Lesson from a book, Sponsor segment present

As an employer who sees hundreds of applications, Ali says hiring managers are overwhelmed and hire to relieve pain; he advises a sniper approach to a dream five companies, outreach, showing rather than telling with self-made experience, and seeing yourself as a problem solver.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Ali introduces his advice for job applicants as an employer

  • ★★ Ali runs a small business that currently employs about 20 people. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ Job applicants should not give a prospective employer too much credit or treat hiring as an efficient machine, Ali says; one of the most useful skills an applicant can have is empathy for the person hiring. — 00:00:29

00:00:42 — The reality of hiring: chaotic employers, hiring to relieve pain, hundreds of applicants per role

  • ★★ Since nobody hiring really knows what they are doing and companies are held together by duct tape behind the scenes, Ali says, do not rule yourself out of a job for not meeting its listed requirements. — 00:01:35
  • ★★★ An employer would rather not hire at all, Ali says, because hiring is an enormous faff; they hire you because they hope you will make their life easier and relieve some pain. — 00:02:32
  • ★★ Because hiring answers an emotional need, Ali says, applicants should not take the job description, the experience requirements or an employer's silence too literally, seriously or personally. — 00:03:02
  • ★★ When Ali's business hires video editors about 500 people apply and one to three are hired; for student success coaches for the Lifestyle Business Academy 800 applied in about two weeks and four were hired. — 00:03:02 · Lifestyle Business Academy

00:03:37 — The three doors framework from The Third Door; unadvertised roles and backdoor dealing

  • ★★ Ali uses Alex Banayan's The Third Door: the first door is the queue, which is filling in a job's application form; the second door is who you know. — 00:03:45
  • ★ Ali tells how Steven Spielberg got his first directing job: he sneaked off the Universal Studios tour bus onto a film set and talked his way in. — 00:03:45
  • ★★ The third door into a job, Ali says, is neither the queue nor connections but hustling with creativity and ingenuity to find a loophole. — 00:04:30
  • ★★ A career coach in tech who is a student in Ali's Lifestyle Business Academy told him that 80% of senior, and often junior, tech roles are never advertised. — 00:04:59 · Lifestyle Business Academy
  • ★★ Hiring is a human-to-human interaction with much backdoor dealing, Ali says, so position yourself to benefit from it instead of applying to 500 jobs and hearing nothing back. — 00:05:23

00:05:50 — Shortform sponsor read

00:07:38 — Make it easy to hire you: the "anything else" box, the sniper approach, outreach and proactive offers

  • ★★ Ali's team ends its job applications with "Is there anything else you would like to tell us?"; applications that skip it can be deleted, and effort there correlates strongly with how good a team member someone becomes. — 00:07:51
  • ★★★ Rather than a scattergun of mass applications tailored with ChatGPT, Ali advises a sniper approach: work out what you actually want to do and find five companies with missions you find interesting, ideally local. — 00:08:15 · ChatGPT
  • ★★ For each of your dream five companies, Ali advises finding its people on LinkedIn, reaching out and taking them for coffee or lunch to learn about the company and its roles; it is worth the price. — 00:08:45 · LinkedIn
  • ★★ The best roles are not advertised, Ali says, and a company often advertises a role months after realising it needs it. — 00:08:45
  • ★★ Hiring a videographer, Ali's team got about a hundred applicants; one with no experience and a weak resume sent a custom video pitching himself and was fast-tracked to the top of the interview list. — 00:09:24
  • ★★ Ali advises using an application's "anything else" box for a mini presentation or a Loom video showing your face, because building rapport before the interview gives a massive advantage. — 00:09:55
  • ★★ When following up with a company, Ali says, propose specific things you can do instead of saying you will do anything, since the busy employer has no time to work out what to give you. — 00:10:32
  • ★★ Ali would be delighted by an applicant who spotted his business's pains, proposed AI automations, asked for a 30-minute call and offered to work a month for free before he decides. — 00:11:01
  • ★★ Job hiring has become an AI arms race, Ali says: everyone uses AI to apply and employers use AI to screen. — 00:11:30

00:11:41 — When to use AI and when not to: past experience, building your own experience, stories from university

  • ★★★ Employers' anti-AI signal, Ali says, is asking about past experience rather than hypothetical scenarios; one of his business's most discriminating application questions is what cool stuff you have built with AI. — 00:11:53 · YouTube
  • ★★★ If you have no experience, Ali says, create your own: things you have built and done without asking anyone's permission. — 00:12:22
  • ★★ For the director of marketing role his business is filling, Ali says he would be totally open to hiring someone with no experience on a pretty high salary if they analysed his top 10 info-product competitors' sales pages and Meta ads and sent a custom proposal. — 00:12:22
  • ★ Ali's business is looking for a director of marketing. — 00:12:22
  • ★★ Ali advises building your own portfolio on a weekend and putting it on a personal website, so you can show employers your work rather than tell them, because AI can do all of the telling. — 00:12:59
  • ★★ Ali's advice to university students is to get involved in things that give them stories, because interviews and applications ask for examples such as how they handled adversity. — 00:13:37
  • ★★ A story of something you have really done, such as solving a problem on a university committee, is experience that AI cannot fake on a job application, Ali says. — 00:14:06
  • ★★ For each dream job, Ali advises working out the problems the company is likely to have, for example by asking Claude to research the company and surface them. — 00:14:29 · Claude
  • ★★★ Thinking of yourself as hired to solve problems and relieve pain, rather than as applying for a job, makes you much more likely to apply in the right way, Ali says. — 00:14:29

00:14:42 — Mindset shift: think of yourself as a problem solver, not a job seeker; sign-off

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: the third door (concept)

Also: People: Alex Banayan · Steven Spielberg

Projects: Lifestyle Business Academy

Organizations: LinkedIn · Meta · Universal Studios

Concepts: info product

Products: ChatGPT · Claude · Loom

Only in the description or credits: The Third Door (book)

Also centred on the third door (concept): Smart Passive Income + The Third Door - Monthly Favourites #11 · I Read 2,216 Resumes. Here’s How You Stand Out 🚀 · I Asked 5 Millionaires for Their Best Financial Advice · I Helped My Subscribers Fix Their Productivity · The Successful Method to Get Hired

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