How I Invented my First 100 Dollars per Hour Offer at 21.

I got this without a master’s degree or a US citizenship by networking with strangers online for a role [ Stock/Industry Analysis of AI Companies] that I had no prior experience in.

As an international student looking for my second internship in the USA, I had a few issues-

1. Most places I applied to had automated resume filtering systems, which bumped out my resumes since I didn’t have a degree (that was actually one my motivations for starting my writing- so that I could prove my skills).

2. A good number didn’t hire international students. Also, being international, I didn’t really have a huge pool of contacts that I could rely on.

3. My university’s (Rochester Institute of Technology) career services group gave us one piece of advice- “Find RIT alumni on LinkedIn and tell them you’re a student looking for internships.” This advice is extremely stupid (I’ll explain why and give you a better alternative in this article)-

   

   Most networking advice online is too generic and superficial to be useful.

All of this forced me to get creative with the job-search process, and led me to develop some great tips on networking/building relationships online. I used this to land my first major contract – helping a stock picking and financial analysis firm evaluate AI and tech companies for investment potential – by building a relationship with a complete stranger on LinkedIn.

In this post, I'll walk you through my journey, from making that first connection to creating a role that didn't previously exist. This involves:

1. How I originally established a relationship with one of the firms senior members (we’re gonna call him Mr. Krabs).

2. How I established credibility over time w/ said senior member. This was not a quick process, but I think the longer time frame of this process was very helpful in establishing our relationship. There seems to be a weird push to always do things quickly (how to get 100 referrals next week), but I think there is a lot of value in slowing down at certain stages,

3. How I leveraged this into a referral that let me skip the early stages of the interview process.

4. How I invented my job (they weren’t actively hiring for this position) with this group: I used the referral to set up a conversation, which I used to convince the group that there was a gap in the market that both they and their competitors were missing. By complete coincidence, I happened to have the right set of skills to address this gap (who saw that coming).
   

   The role had two responsibilities- Firstly, I analyzed companies in accordance with my investment thesis (I’ll share what the thesis was and how I came up with it in this piece) and wrote reports about them. Secondly, I was a consultant for the firm and helped them identify ways to improve their AI pipelines-

   

   They added the consultations after reading my research breakdowns on Medium and YouTube. Documenting your learning online has several benefits, even without a large audience.

   The coolest part about this was that my resume didn’t really show any prior experience for an analogous role. I got this role almost exclusively off the interviews + my prior established relationship.

5. How you can develop the skills that will help you follow a similar path.

I’m sure this will help you in your job hunting. I remember how hard it was to get to the interview stage when I had no formal experience, and hopefully, this guide will help you land better jobs.

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