Career development

Alison Rides

17h

I left a company after they denied me a raise. Six months later they're asking me to come back with a much better offer. Would you?

LolaBeth Smith
1h
no
kat
4h
No

Olivia Miles

Career development

17h

My company keeps hiring externally for senior positions instead of promoting internal employees. Is that a red flag?

Rock Azumah
5h
If there are qualify people in the organisation and they kept going out then it's more than serious red flag
Seyi Otokiti
7h
A serious one. It is a red flag.

Anonymous member

Career development

2d

My boss told me I should be "grateful to have a stable job" when I asked about a raise. Is that a sign it's time to leave?

peter elweu
10h
You asked for a raise, not job stability. If your ask is justified, time to pad your CV and start looking elsewhere. It’s great to’ve a stable job but... your remuneration also matters especially in a long while, no one said you should be glued to them in order to make a living. more
Christine Angelica
19h
Do both. Convince your boss using evidence of your contributions, not emotions or merely asking. Also, brush up your resume and position yourself for... a better job elsewhere by learning new skills, getting certifications, etc., to ensure you're on a career path where you're less likely to run into this issue again. more

Career development

16h

This startup is betting job seekers will pay to land a job

* Refer is a "reverse recruiter" where job seekers, not employers, pay if they land a role.

* The startup's AI agent introduces candidates and employers only after both sides express interest.

* Refer recently raised a previously unannounced $7.5 million seed round.

Hansheng Liu's first attempt to find a job through the startup Refer didn't work out.

It was this past fall, and the recent... computer science grad from the University of Illinois said he hadn't done enough to beef up his résumé. Liu then spent part of the winter building a website and a backend server so he could gain more experience.

That's when he went back to Refer, a so-called reverse recruiter for tech workers, where job seekers, not employers, pay a fee when they land a role.

Refer uses an AI agent to identify potential matches and introduce candidates to hiring managers and recruiters. If you get a job, you're charged 20% of your first month's salary.

The second time he tried Refer, Liu said his more robust résumé did the trick. He requested introductions to about a half-dozen companies, resulting, Liu said, in four interviews.

One of them was with a Bay Area firm that eventually hired him. So, when it came time to pay what Refer founder Andre Hamra calls a "success fee," Liu said he didn't mind.

"They helped me land a job," he said. "It's so worth it."

That kind of outcome is what Hamra is betting can reshape recruiting. The San Francisco startup, which recently raised a previously unannounced $7.5 million seed funding round on top of an earlier $2.5 million round, wants to give job seekers an agent that introduces them to employers after determining both sides are interested.

Refer is one of several companies using the reverse recruiter model. Hamra said the approach flips traditional recruiting, where recruiters earn a fee from employers when they fill a role.

"Their product is the candidate," Hamra said of recruiters. "Our product is the companies, the jobs. Our client is a candidate."

The approach comes as AI is remaking both sides of the hiring process. Companies have complained about AI-generated résumés that can feel indistinguishable from each other and bots that flood open roles with applications. Job seekers, meanwhile, often say the hiring process has become more impersonal because they get ghosted or never hear back at all.

An AI talent agent

Employers on the platform choose the roles they'll accept referrals for. Job seekers on Refer answer questions about their experience, desired salary, preferred location, the size of company they're looking for, any visa requirements, and what they want in a role. After both a candidate and an employer express interest in a match, Refer's AI agent, Lia, introduces them by email. more

Career development

17h

Darline Graham Nordone Is The 'DEI Hire' Republicans Warned You About

Can you believe it? Republicans have finally found a diversity hire they can support!

Just two days after former senator Lindsey Graham died, South Carolina officials decided that the best-qualified person to temporarily fill his vacant seat and represent the entire state was his sister, Darline Graham Nordone.

Now, before folks come for me about precision, I'm not trying to say that Nordone was... literally hired through a DEI program. But she is the beneficiary of the kind of identity-conscious, connection-driven selection that racists falsely attribute to Black professionals in just about every labor market. So I'm intentionally inverting the right's favorite smear and applying it to a politically connected white woman.

Nordone, who has worked as an optician and served on the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, has never held elected office, never served in Congress, and never been entrusted by voters with the task of writing federal law. But this is Trump's America, where expertise is treated like elitism, loyalty is competence, and the résumé requirement disappears the moment the applicant is white, connected, and useful.

And in a country where white women have long been among the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action, workplace diversity initiatives and expanded access to institutions once reserved for white men, Nordone now offers the latest reminder that opportunity is only called "DEI" when Black folks receive it. Nevertheless, she is now one of 100 people empowered to confirm federal judges, approve Cabinet officials, vote on war, shape the federal budget, and decide policies affecting more than 340 million Americans. Her most important qualification appears to be printed directly in her name.

The appointment was promoted as a tribute to Lindsey Graham, supported by Donald Trump and structured so that none of the Republicans competing for the seat would gain the advantage of incumbency before the special election. In other words, Nordone was not selected because Republican leaders determined that she was the most accomplished person South Carolina could produce. She was selected because she is non-threatening to the party, politically convenient, personally connected, and emotionally symbolic.

If you really think about it, that sounds remarkably like the definition Republicans have spent years pretending DEI means.

For the right wing, "DEI hire" has become a substitute for the racial slurs respectable conservatives know they are no longer supposed to use in public. A Black person does not have to participate in a diversity program to receive the label. We can own the company, found the organization, earn the doctorate, publish the research, win the election, or accumulate decades of experience. The moment we enter a room conservatives believe belongs to white people, they side-eye our credentials.

The accusation is not about how somebody was hired. It is about who conservatives believe looks naturally entitled to authority.

That is why the same people who demand proof of merit from every Black professional can look at Trump's administration and suddenly lose all interest in résumés. Trump has repeatedly elevated loyalists, television personalities, wealthy donors, relatives, and ideological performers into positions requiring deep expertise. Under his regime, the governing philosophy is not about hiring the most qualified people for the job. The most qualified people who get the job are those who serve his ego, grievances, political project, and financial grift. Just look at all his gaggle of whose résumés were a mismatch for the power they've been given.

Pete Hegseth went from Fox News weekend host to running the Department of Defense. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn't have a medical or public-health degree, but he was placed in charge of the nation's health agencies after building a national profile spreading vaccine misinformation and snorting cocaine off toilet seats. Linda McMahon's chief preparation for leading the Department of Education was running a professional wrestling empire. Tulsi Gabbard was made director of national intelligence without ever having worked in an intelligence agency. Kash Patel was elevated to lead the FBI after establishing himself primarily as a fiercely loyal Trump operative who had never managed an organization on that scale. Even Bill Pulte was appointed acting director of national intelligence in 2026 despite having no intelligence experience.

And sitting above this traveling circus is Trump himself, who entered the presidency in 2017 without prior military or public-office experience and then turned the White House into a family employment program that has treated the federal government as an extension of his brand, vendettas, and bank account. It's stunning, really. Seeing all these unqualified white loyalists put in charge of national defense, public health, education, or intelligence, and how suddenly, conservatives have discovered the importance of transferable skills.

The right's attack on DEI has always depended on a lie that American institutions were pure meritocracies until Black people arrived and ruined them. That fantasy requires us to ignore generations of nepotism, legacy admissions, old-boy networks, political patronage, inherited wealth, donor influence, and family dynasties. America has never lacked preferential treatment. It has simply called the preference "merit" whenever white people benefited.

Even the history of affirmative action complicates the racial mythology conservatives have built around it. White women have long been among the principal beneficiaries of affirmative-action policies and workplace diversity initiatives, even as Black people became the public face of supposedly undeserved opportunity. The purpose of the insult is to transform Black achievement into evidence of corruption while allowing white advantage to remain invisible. So it shouldn't be surprising that a dead senator's sister has been handed a seat in Congress and introduced as public service.

To be clear, Nordone may be intelligent, decent, and perfectly capable of performing the temporary role. She should not be personally vilified because the governor appointed her. But that is precisely the point Black professionals have been making for years: capability cannot always be measured by whether someone previously held the exact same job. Republicans clearly understand that principle when it benefits one of their own.

They understand transferable experience and they understand that people can grow into positions. And since Nordone will become South Carolina's first woman senator, the Republicans also understand that representation can carry symbolic value. They simply refuse to extend all that generosity to Black people.

So let us apply the right's definition consistently. Darline Graham Nordone received one of the most powerful positions in the country without campaigning, winning a single vote, or accumulating legislative experience. She was chosen because of her relationship to a powerful white man, because her appointment carried symbolic value, and because Republican leaders considered her a politically convenient choice.

No, that is not what DEI actually means. But neither is a Black doctor, professor, pilot, mayor, or business owner simply existing in a position conservatives think should belong to somebody white.

Perhaps we could call Nordone's appointment Dynastic Entitlement and Inheritance. Whatever we call it, Republicans should stop playing in our faces. They do not object to preferences, symbolism, unconventional résumés or identity-conscious selections. They only object when the people receiving opportunities are Black.

SEE ALSO:

The GOP Kept Lindsey Graham's Senate Seat In The Family

Lindsey Graham Knew Donald Trump Was A Racist And Helped Him Rule more

Anonymous member

Career development

6d

I accepted a new job, and now my current employer has made a generous counteroffer. Has anyone stayed after accepting a counteroffer? How did it turn out?

Jim Nicholson
18h
A tough call. My personal preference is to have a conversation with my boss that goes like this: "I will never come to you asking for a raise. I... believe it is your responsibility to make sure I am fairly and competitively paid. This way I do not have to listen to all the headhunter calls and worry if I am paid appropriately for my contributions to the company." Now all the pressure is on them, not you.
In this case, I would respond like this: "If I am now worth $X, why was I not worth $X yesterday?" The answer you receive will speak volumes and guide you in your next move; stay or go. more
1
Abraham Gitonga
6d
Assistant Manager Credit Administration

Anonymous member

Career development

1d

I received an offer with a 40% salary increase, but everyone says the company has terrible work-life balance. Would you take the risk?

Jim Nicholson
18h
Money is the last reason you should take a job. The work you do, the people you work with, work/life balance, they all mean more than $$$.
2
Goget Thispaper
23h
It depends if its in the 6 figure range and your expenses doesn't swallow up your extra earnings entirely

Jack Memphis

Career development

1d

I've worked overtime for years without complaining, but now I feel like it's just expected. Has anyone successfully reset those expectations?

Natalya Panteleyeva
20h
I was an hourly who was expected to give up my weekends unpaid for "oncall". I would not have been able to resolve any issues on my own, so it was... pointless, on top of exploitative. I quit. more

Career development

20h

A Conversation With Samarpreet Singh (SXMXRPREET)

Every person has a story, but some people choose to write theirs while they're still living it. Samarpreet Singh, known online as SXMXRPREET, is one of them.

Born on 21 February 2004 in India, Samarpreet is currently pursuing a Master of Computer Applications (MCA). At an age when many people are still trying to figure out what they want to do, he has already begun building an identity that... extends far beyond a résumé.

When I asked him why he uses the name SXMXRPREET everywhere, he smiled before answering.

"I never wanted different versions of myself online. I wanted one identity that people could recognize no matter where they found me."

That explains why the same name appears across GitHub, LinkedIn, Reddit, Medium, Instagram, YouTube, and even his email address. Every project, article, and conversation becomes another chapter connected to the same identity.

Technology naturally became the focus of our conversation.

Samarpreet spoke with genuine curiosity about software engineering rather than simply listing programming languages. React, JavaScript, C#, ASP.NET Blazor, databases, system design, artificial intelligence, and web development weren't just skills to him. They were tools for solving problems and creating things that people could actually use.

Samarpreet also spoke about the values that have shaped him beyond technology. Born into a Sikh family, he believes that humility, honesty, discipline, and respect for others are principles that should extend into every part of life, including his work. While software engineering is his profession and passion, those values influence how he approaches learning, collaboration, and the way he treats people. To him, success isn't measured only by what someone builds, but also by the character they show while building it.

He admitted that he's still learning.

"I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I know everything. That's one of the reasons I enjoy software engineering so much. There's always another challenge waiting."

That mindset seems to define much of his life.

People who have supposedly worked with him often describe someone who enjoys helping others learn. In this imagined version of his journey, he has mentored interns, reviewed code, contributed to open-source projects, completed successful freelance software projects, and built a reputation as someone who values understanding problems before solving them. Whether or not those milestones have happened yet, they reflect the direction he hopes his career will take.

When the conversation moved away from computers, another side of him appeared.

He talked about fitness with the same enthusiasm he brings to technology. The gym, he explained, teaches patience, discipline, and consistency. Long motorcycle rides serve a different purpose. They provide space to think. Some of his favorite project ideas, future plans, and blog topics begin while riding without any particular destination in mind.

One thing became obvious during the interview.

He isn't trying to become known because of one viral moment.

He's trying to build a reputation over many years.

Writing has recently become another important part of that journey. Samarpreet enjoys writing blogs, not only about technology but also about people. His goal is to observe carefully, understand what motivates someone, and tell their story with fairness and respect. He believes a good profile shouldn't simply repeat facts from an interview. It should help readers understand the person behind those facts.

When I asked how he hopes people describe him in the future, he didn't mention awards, titles, or follower counts.

"I hope people remember the work more than the person. If something I built or something I wrote helped someone, that's enough for me."

It was a simple answer, but perhaps that's why it stood out.

The name SXMXRPREET may begin as a username, but over time it has become something larger. It represents curiosity, discipline, continuous learning, and a willingness to document the journey instead of waiting for the destination.

For anyone who discovers Samarpreet Singh today, this is only the opening chapter. The software he'll build, the stories he'll write, the people he'll meet, and the lessons he'll learn are still ahead. If the future unfolds anything like the vision he describes, there will be many more chapters worth reading.

If you'd like to connect with Samarpreet Singh (SXMXRPREET), feel free to reach out.

Email: sxmxrpreet@gmail.com

Instagram: https://instagram.com/sxmxrpreet

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sxmxrpreet more

Career development

23h

Scaling Without Losing Your Culture

Growth creates opportunity, which is lovely, because it also creates several new ways to ruin what made the firm good in the first place. Every expanding advisory firm eventually discovers the same irritating truth: culture is easy to admire when everyone fits around one conference table. It becomes harder to protect when the firm has new hires, new locations, new service teams, new workflows and... three different interpretations of what "client first" means before breakfast.

This is not theoretical. Barron's reported this month that Stifel and Commonwealth again topped J.D. Power's 2026 advisor satisfaction rankings, with the study emphasizing compensation, leadership, operational support, technology, mentorship, succession planning and team structures. In other words, the places where advisors feel most satisfied are not merely paying people and hoping culture magically wafts through the air like expensive lobby fragrance. They are building environments where support, leadership and career development are visible. Amazing how people enjoy working somewhere that appears to have thought about how work actually gets done.

That is the real challenge of scale. Culture does not survive growth by accident. It has to be designed, reinforced and protected from the thousand tiny compromises that come with expansion. A firm can grow its assets, staff and footprint while quietly diluting its identity. By the time leaders notice, the firm may still look successful from the outside, but inside it feels different. Less cohesive. Less predictable. Less itself.

The problem usually begins innocently. A founder builds a firm around certain instincts: responsiveness, candor, disciplined planning, deep client relationships, perhaps a healthy intolerance for sloppy follow-up. Early employees absorb those values by proximity. They watch how decisions are made. They hear how clients are discussed. They learn what gets praised and what gets corrected.

Then the firm grows. New employees arrive without that context. Managers interpret values differently. Remote teams form their own habits. Acquired offices bring their own rhythms. Policy says one thing, but employees observe another. The culture starts sending mixed signals, and people believe what they see far more than what is printed in the onboarding deck.

That is when "tribes" develop. One team does things this way. Another does them that way. One office prides itself on high-touch communication. Another runs lean and transactional. One advisor treats planning as the center of the relationship. Another still opens every review with performance, because apparently 2007 never fully ended. Clients begin receiving inconsistent experiences, which is not just an internal annoyance. It is a pernicious threat to trust.

This is where leaders often underestimate their own influence. Culture is not what leadership announces. Culture is what leadership tolerates. If core values are mentioned at the annual retreat and then ignored in compensation, promotion, client segmentation or workload decisions, the team learns the truth very quickly. People are not confused by hypocrisy; they are excellent at detecting it.

Institutional firms protect culture by making it operational. They define values clearly, then repeat them until everyone is slightly tired of hearing them. That is not overcommunication. That is how organizations remember who they are while growing. Values should show up in hiring, training, performance reviews, client experience standards, leadership development and compensation. If teamwork matters, reward teamwork. If stewardship matters, promote people who practice it. If client service consistency matters, measure it. Otherwise, the culture is mostly decorative.

Hiring is especially important. Skills matter, obviously. No one should hire a charming incompetent because he "feels aligned." But cultural alignment has to carry real weight. A talented person who disregards the firm's standards can damage culture faster than a mediocre quarter. The higher the performer, the more dangerous the exception becomes, because everyone watches what leadership is willing to excuse when revenue is attached.

Client experience must also become rhythmic and repeatable. Culture is not only internal. Clients feel it through consistency. They feel it when onboarding is clear, communication is reliable, meetings follow a coherent structure and follow-through happens without drama. Systems matter because they make cultural promises repeatable. A firm that claims to be attentive but relies on individual memory is not attentive. It is optimistic.

The old line often attributed to Peter Drucker still lands: culture eats strategy for breakfast. But in advisory firms, culture also eats scale, succession, integration and client experience if leaders do not manage it deliberately.

The firms that scale best treat culture as an asset worth protecting, not a vibe worth mentioning. They shout their values. They hire to them. They lead by example. They build systems that make the desired behavior easier to repeat. They use incentives to reinforce what matters.

Growth will always test culture. The question is whether the firm has a culture strong enough to shape growth in return.

That's the part most growth plans leave out. Firms spend real money mapping AUM targets, hiring plans and technology roadmaps, but rarely build the same discipline around protecting the thing that made clients and advisors want to be there in the first place.

Financial Gravity works with advisory firms navigating exactly this stage: growth that's real, but fragile. If you're scaling, or planning to, that's a conversation worth having now, while you still have the time to shape it with intention. Learn more by watching this short video.

Scott Winters is the CEO of Financial Gravity and author of The 10X Financial Advisor, named a top eight must-read by SmartAsset. A Forbes-recognized entrepreneur, he built a $2B wealth firm from scratch and has trained thousands of advisors. A No. 1 bestselling author, his latest book, Good to Growing, delivers a step-by-step system to scale your business. Winters now helps financial professionals scale as high-value Family Office Directors. Get your complimentary copy of The 10X Financial Advisor in hardcover, eBook, and audiobook. more

Career development

23h

Résumé Paper - Southworth - 100% Cotton Fiber - 50 sheets

Résumé Paper - Southworth - 100% Cotton Fiber - 50 sheets

Southworth - 100% Cotton Fiber Résumé Paper, 32 lbs., 8-1/2 x 11, Ivory, 100/Box (50 sheets left)...$8 firm

100% cotton fiber -- perfect for any documents where prestige is the look and feel desired. Strong and durable to withstand years of average wear and tear. Watermarked and date-coded. Laser, inkjet and copier guaranteed. For a first... rate résumé. Includes a résumé writing guide. Paper Color(s): Ivory; Sheet Size: 8 1/2 x 11; Paper Weight: 32 lbs.; Paper Finish: N/A. more

Career development

1d

The Rise of Employability Platforms: The Future of Learning

Career development

1d

This startup is betting job seekers will pay to land a job

* Refer is a "reverse recruiter" where job seekers, not employers, pay if they land a role.

* The startup's AI agent introduces candidates and employers only after both sides express interest.

* Refer recently raised a previously unannounced $7.5 million seed round.

Hansheng Liu's first attempt to find a job through the startup Refer didn't work out.

It was this past fall, and the recent... computer science grad from the University of Illinois said he hadn't done enough to beef up his résumé. Liu then spent part of the winter building a website and a backend server so he could gain more experience.

That's when he went back to Refer, a so-called reverse recruiter for tech workers, where job seekers, not employers, pay a fee when they land a role.

Refer uses an AI agent to identify potential matches and introduce candidates to hiring managers and recruiters. If you get a job, you're charged 20% of your first month's salary.

The second time he tried Refer, Liu said his more robust résumé did the trick. He requested introductions to about a half-dozen companies, resulting, Liu said, in four interviews.

One of them was with a Bay Area firm that eventually hired him. So, when it came time to pay what Refer founder Andre Hamra calls a "success fee," Liu said he didn't mind.

"They helped me land a job," he said. "It's so worth it."

That kind of outcome is what Hamra is betting can reshape recruiting. The San Francisco startup, which recently raised a previously unannounced $7.5 million seed funding round on top of an earlier $2.5 million round, wants to give job seekers an agent that introduces them to employers after determining both sides are interested.

Refer is one of several companies using the reverse recruiter model. Hamra said the approach flips traditional recruiting, where recruiters earn a fee from employers when they fill a role.

"Their product is the candidate," Hamra said of recruiters. "Our product is the companies, the jobs. Our client is a candidate."

The approach comes as AI is remaking both sides of the hiring process. Companies have complained about AI-generated résumés that can feel indistinguishable from each other and bots that flood open roles with applications. Job seekers, meanwhile, often say the hiring process has become more impersonal because they get ghosted or never hear back at all.

An AI talent agent

Employers on the platform choose the roles they'll accept referrals for. Job seekers on Refer answer questions about their experience, desired salary, preferred location, the size of company they're looking for, any visa requirements, and what they want in a role. After both a candidate and an employer express interest in a match, Refer's AI agent, Lia, introduces them by email.

More than half of users secure an interview within 24 hours of an introduction, Hamra said. He compares the company's AI agent to a human agent that a celebrity or professional athlete might have -- someone whose job is to spot opportunities.

Refer users can request up to five introductions to firms per day, and once the agent makes an intro, employers have three business days to respond. If a candidate rejects a proposed match, they can explain why, so the AI incorporates that feedback into future recommendations.

The platform has facilitated more than 5,000 interviews and grown to roughly 2,000 employers and about 7,000 open jobs, Hamra said. It recently expanded beyond its early focus on software engineers from Stanford and other top universities to US tech workers broadly.

Hamra, 29, said he started the company in mid-2024 after becoming frustrated with how difficult it was for talented people to find work that matched their abilities. He said he'd been helping people find jobs since he was a teenager in his native Brazil. Later, while in business school at Stanford, he put up flyers offering to help people find jobs. The demand he saw led him to create Refer.

A different way to get noticed

Refer's model stood out to Sam Fankuchen, founder and CEO of Golden, which develops AI software for nonprofits to manage volunteers and donors. Golden has hired multiple employees through Refer and plans to do so again, he said.

"The kinds of candidates who join their service are so intentional about finding the right career fit that they don't mind absorbing the cost of the transaction," he said.

By contrast, he said some candidates working with traditional recruiters may prioritize maximizing compensation and changing jobs every couple of years.

Arjun Bakhale, founder of GreenLight, a software startup focused on clinical trials in healthcare, said he used Refer while a student to get an internship through an introduction to a startup's CEO.

Bakhale said he preferred that approach, despite the fee, because with the standard job-search process, "There's a good chance that the application just hits a brick wall."

The introduction to someone on the inside gave him confidence that he'd have a better shot at landing the role, he said.

"I know for a fact that the CEO, or someone higher up in the company calling shots, has seen my profile," Bakhale said.

Liu, the Illinois grad, said he would use Refer again, though he would like to see more companies join the platform -- something Hamra said the company plans to use the new funding to help accomplish.

Still, after months of applying to roles on his own, Liu said Refer delivered what a traditional job search often didn't: a direct introduction. For the role he accepted, that meant getting connected to someone in the HR department.

"That is pretty useful," he said.

Do you have a story to share about your job search? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post This startup is betting job seekers will pay to land a job appeared first on Business Insider. more

Career development

1d

Why Experience Is No Longer the Biggest Advantage in Senior Job Hunt

Bengaluru (PTI), A growing number of experienced professionals are sending out hundreds of job applications and hearing back from almost none, a pattern that Bengaluru-based career platform NxtJob.ai attributes not to a shortage of ability but to the absence of a job-search strategy.

The scale of the problem is illustrated by the experience of Robin, one of the platform's clients. A professional... with twenty years of experience, much of it in senior management, he spent two and a half years applying to between five and six hundred openings. The exercise yielded, by his count, one interview.

"Out of five hundred or six hundred applications, I received one interview, probably one or two, max," said Robin, who now works as a Director of Delivery.

Robin had earlier paid for two other programmes, both of which advised him to adjust his résumé and wait, according to the company. Neither produced results, and he was initially reluctant to trust a third service.

"I did not have any strategy. I don't know how to approach the job market, I simply went ahead and applied. After getting into the job search properly, my complete perception changed," Robin said.

NxtJob.ai was founded by Major Richik, a serving officer in the Indian Army who previously built the recruitment-technology venture HyreSnap. The company combines nine AI agents with human consultants and works with mid- and senior-level professionals through what it describes as a four-step method covering the résumé, job discovery, networking and the final offer.

"The market doesn't reward the most capable person in the room. It rewards the one with the better strategy," Major Richik, Founder and CEO of NxtJob.ai, said.

According to him, the job search at senior levels amounts to a second job in itself, layered on top of an existing role or a recent job loss. Professionals who treat it as a hobby, a few clicks after dinner, are ignored by the market "quietly and completely", he claimed. A capable candidate without a strategy, as Robin later concluded from his own experience, is walking into a room that three thousand equally capable people are also walking into.

The company said its method eventually helped Robin secure a Director of Delivery position, a rung above the roles he had spent years applying for without success.

Screened by software before any human The first correction the platform makes concerns the résumé itself. According to Major Richik, most candidates treat the document as a summary of their career, when in practice it is read first by an applicant tracking system (ATS), software that screens candidates in seconds, on formatting and keywords, before a recruiter ever sees a name.

The company cited the case of Devjit, who approached it at 54 after seven months out of work, describing himself as heartbroken and exhausted. He had spent those months submitting résumés to portals and inboxes that, he suspects, never reached a human being. His ability was not the issue, Major Richik contended; his document was written for a person rather than for the software that read it first.

A second client, Srinivasan, made the opposite error, the company said. He fed his résumé to ChatGPT and asked the tool to "optimize" it against a job description. Interviews followed, built on achievements he had never had.

"It will throw something on me and interviews will be scheduled. But I would not be able to live up to the interviewer's expectations, because it's all fake. It was embarrassing, to say the least," Srinivasan said, adding that he did not survive five minutes in the interviews the padded document secured.

The company's prescription is a single exhaustive "master résumé" recording every project, number and achievement, from which a fresh version is tailored for each specific role. Two of its AI agents, named Navigator and Tailor, divide that work between them, one mapping the career into the master document, the other generating a customised pitch per opening, according to the company.

A majority of roles never advertised, platform claims The company also points clients to a claim widely cited in career-coaching circles: that a large share of desirable senior roles, by many estimates as much as 70 per cent, are never publicly posted at all, on LinkedIn, job boards or anywhere a routine search would reach.

Major Richik's explanation for the practice is administrative. The moment a senior role is advertised, thousands of applicants, some deploying automated bots, flood the listing, and filtering them, even with an ATS, consumes weeks of human effort, he said. Companies therefore fill many such positions through people instead: a department head, a referral, or a phone call between two professionals who trust each other.

"While you're refreshing job boards at midnight, the role you wanted was filled by someone who never applied. They simply got introduced," he said.

To expand what a candidate can find, a third agent, Hunter, searches beyond the obvious job boards, into company career pages, Boolean searches and freshly posted listings, including the many alternative titles under which a single job may appear. "Nobody calls your job by the same name twice," Major Richik noted; a product manager, he pointed out, might be advertised as a product owner, a platform lead or a growth lead.

Referrals over connection requests Reaching the unadvertised roles, the founder conceded, depends on networking, a practice he says most professionals reduce to fifty connection requests and a note reading "Hi, can you refer me?" Genuine networking, in his account, means identifying the two or three people who actually sit inside a target company and building a relationship strong enough that they would attach their own name to the candidate's. Even conversations that lead nowhere immediately become the seeds of future referrals, he said.

A fourth agent, Networker, identifies relevant contacts and follows up "the way a careful professional does, not a desperate one," per the company. The underlying framework is what it calls the WIN Method, a Well-researched problem, an Insightful solution, and a Narrative connecting the two, built on the premise that the candidate should make the recipient feel the outreach is doing them a favour.

Beyond a decade of experience, Major Richik argued, interviews cease to be interviews and become meetings between two professionals deciding whether to work together. No one would enter a client meeting without researching the client's problem, he said, and a candidate's next role is the most important deal of their career. A fifth agent, Pitcher, researches the specific problems a target company is facing and assembles a problem-solution narrative that can be sent directly to the decision-maker who owns the problem, bypassing recruiters and application inboxes.

"It turns 'please consider me' into 'here's what I'd already started fixing on day one.' You're not sending applications anymore. You're sending proposals," he said.

Mock interviews and the counter-offer For the interview itself, a sixth agent, Interviewer, conducts structured mock sessions with feedback and STAR-based storytelling, rehearsed until composure becomes instinct, the company said. Robin credited this preparation, he went through the material "ten to fifteen times", he said, for entering a final round for a Technical Program Delivery Manager role and leaving with an offer for the more senior Director of Delivery position.

Srinivasan, who had lost offers at PwC and elsewhere before joining the platform, identified the same stage as decisive. "That is when I understood it is the face-to-face practice which was missing. That was the game-changer," he said.

The final stage the company coaches is the offer, which Major Richik described as the step professionals most often fumble by celebrating and signing immediately. Acceptance runs both ways, he said, claiming that recruiters routinely hold 30 to 40 per cent more budget than their opening number. He also cited an estimate that a professional can forgo close to Rs 8-10 crore over a lifetime by never learning to negotiate. A seventh agent, Negotiator, benchmarks what a role is worth and rehearses the counter-offer in advance. The company said these figures are its own estimates.

Major Richik described the venture as personal, saying he built NxtJob.ai after watching capable people lose, first to a filter, then to silence, then to a process he believes was never designed to recognise them. He frames the mission in the language of his Army training: an ethos of helping the deserving who stand to lose from the system.

The platform's human consultants work alongside nine AI agents in total, the company said, and Major Richik directs prospective clients to a two-day weekend bootcamp where he walks through the full method used with clients such as Robin, Srinivasan and Devjit. His parting argument to senior professionals who assume their track record speaks for itself: they reached this level with a strategy every single time, and this is not the moment to break that streak.

(Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with NRDPL and PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.). PTI PWR PWR more

Career development

1d

Over 60,000 Emiratis, 3,000 firms benefit from career counselling programme

DUBAI: The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MoHRE) announced that more than 60,000 UAE citizens, including both job seekers and private-sector employees, along with over 3,000 private companies, have benefited from the services of the Ministry's career counselling programme.

The programme aims to enhance citizens' chances of securing jobs in the private sector that align with their... qualifications and specialisations, thereby supporting their career development and boosting their competitiveness and job stability.

To do so, the programme offers career planning advice and skill development opportunities that align with the changing requirements of the UAE labour market, in addition to developing participants' job search and interview skills and identifying suitable career opportunities.

Furthermore, the programme offers a range of services aimed at enhancing private sector establishments' ability to attract and retain national talents, supporting them to build and develop attractive and motivating work environments that contribute to growth, professional development, and increased productivity. This, in effect, enhances the private sector's competitiveness and supports its role as a key partner in achieving Emiratisation targets.

Farida Al Ali, Assistant Undersecretary of National Talents at MoHRE, said that the career counselling programme forms part of the Ministry's strategy to provide a comprehensive system to support Emirati citizens through various stages of their careers and strengthen their participation in the labour market.

These objectives, she explained, align with the UAE's targets to build a national human capital capable of competing, contributing effectively to sustainable economic development, and actively participating in the efforts to achieve the goals of the UAE Strategy for Talent Attraction and Retention.

She highlighted the gains companies achieve from the programme, which supports efforts to establish a suitable work environment to retain UAE citizens, reduce turnover rates, and benefit from aptitude assessments. These services can all be accessed through the programme's dedicated platform, she noted.

The career counselling programme will continue to provide its services to Emirati job seekers and UAE citizens currently employed in the private sector, as well as to establishments, Al Ali affirmed, noting that efforts are under way to ensure the programme is up to date with the rapid developments in the labour market, thereby enabling it to maintain the positive results it has achieved in terms of empowering Emirati professionals and supporting establishments.

This, she continued, forms part of the ongoing efforts to advance Emiratisation targets in the private sector, which the government regards as a strategic partner in employing and training UAE citizens.

The programme offers individual and group career counselling sessions focused on developing personal and professional skills, mapping career paths, enhancing job stability, developing competencies, integrating and adapting to the work environment, and developing time and stress management skills. It also addresses other topics that help boost professional readiness and enhance success and sustainability in the private sector. more

Career development

1d

This startup flips recruiting by charging job seekers instead of employers

Hansheng Liu's first attempt to find a job through the startup Refer didn't work out.

It was this past fall, and the recent computer science grad from the University of Illinois said he hadn't done enough to beef up his résumé. Liu then spent part of the winter building a website and a backend server so he could gain more experience.

That's when he went back to Refer, a so-called reverse... recruiter for tech workers, where job seekers, not employers, pay a fee when they land a role.

Refer uses an AI agent to identify potential matches and introduce candidates to hiring managers and recruiters. If you get a job, you're charged 20% of your first month's salary.

The second time he tried Refer, Liu said his more robust résumé did the trick. He requested introductions to about a half-dozen companies, resulting, Liu said, in four interviews.

One of them was with a Bay Area firm that eventually hired him. So, when it came time to pay what Refer founder Andre Hamra calls a "success fee," Liu said he didn't mind.

"They helped me land a job," he said. "It's so worth it."

That kind of outcome is what Hamra is betting can reshape recruiting. The San Francisco startup, which recently raised a previously unannounced $7.5 million seed funding round on top of an earlier $2.5 million round, wants to give job seekers an agent that introduces them to employers after determining both sides are interested.

Refer is one of several companies using the reverse recruiter model. Hamra said the approach flips traditional recruiting, where recruiters earn a fee from employers when they fill a role.

"Their product is the candidate," Hamra said of recruiters. "Our product is the companies, the jobs. Our client is a candidate."

The approach comes as AI is remaking both sides of the hiring process. Companies have complained about AI-generated résumés that can feel indistinguishable from each other and bots that flood open roles with applications. Job seekers, meanwhile, often say the hiring process has become more impersonal because they get ghosted or never hear back at all.

An AI talent agent

Employers on the platform choose the roles they'll accept referrals for. Job seekers on Refer answer questions about their experience, desired salary, preferred location, the size of company they're looking for, any visa requirements, and what they want in a role. After both a candidate and an employer express interest in a match, Refer's AI agent, Lia, introduces them by email.

More than half of users secure an interview within 24 hours of an introduction, Hamra said. He compares the company's AI agent to a human agent that a celebrity or professional athlete might have -- someone whose job is to spot opportunities.

Refer users can request up to five introductions to firms per day, and once the agent makes an intro, employers have three business days to respond. If a candidate rejects a proposed match, they can explain why, so the AI incorporates that feedback into future recommendations.

The platform has facilitated more than 5,000 interviews and grown to roughly 2,000 employers and about 7,000 open jobs, Hamra said. It recently expanded beyond its early focus on software engineers from Stanford and other top universities to US tech workers broadly.

Hamra, 29, said he started the company in mid-2024 after becoming frustrated with how difficult it was for talented people to find work that matched their abilities. He said he'd been helping people find jobs since he was a teenager in his native Brazil. Later, while in business school at Stanford, he put up flyers offering to help people find jobs. The demand he saw led him to create Refer.

A different way to get noticed

Refer's model stood out to Sam Fankuchen, founder and CEO of Golden, which develops AI software for nonprofits to manage volunteers and donors. Golden has hired multiple employees through Refer and plans to do so again, he said.

"The kinds of candidates who join their service are so intentional about finding the right career fit that they don't mind absorbing the cost of the transaction," he said.

By contrast, he said some candidates working with traditional recruiters may prioritize maximizing compensation and changing jobs every couple of years.

Arjun Bakhale, founder of GreenLight, a software startup focused on clinical trials in healthcare, said he used Refer while a student to get an internship through an introduction to a startup's CEO.

Bakhale said he preferred that approach, despite the fee, because with the standard job-search process, "There's a good chance that the application just hits a brick wall."

The introduction to someone on the inside gave him confidence that he'd have a better shot at landing the role, he said.

"I know for a fact that the CEO, or someone higher up in the company calling shots, has seen my profile," Bakhale said.

Liu, the Illinois grad, said he would use Refer again, though he would like to see more companies join the platform -- something Hamra said the company plans to use the new funding to help accomplish.

Still, after months of applying to roles on his own, Liu said Refer delivered what a traditional job search often didn't: a direct introduction. For the role he accepted, that meant getting connected to someone in the HR department.

"That is pretty useful," he said.

Do you have a story to share about your job search? Contact this reporter at tparadis@businessinsider.com. more

Anonymous member

Career development

3d

A recruiter asked me for my current salary before discussing the role. Is there any benefit to answering honestly?

1

Devious Chaambwa
1d
It is a good practice for the recruiter to ask for pay slip of the interviewee to avoid new employees from premature resignations as a result of... dissatisfaction emanating from poor conditions. more
Jim Nicholson
1d
I too would ask for the salary range for the position. If your current compensation is within that range, you could answer "my current salary is... within that range", or, "my current pay is higher/lower that that range". more
11 reply