Hey Reader,

Yudi here,

A few days ago I was at a FinTech conference.

Just sitting down and having real conversations with people who are actually making hiring decisions right now. PMs, engineering managers, data leaders from companies like Goldman Sachs and Discover.

I asked all of them the same question: what actually matters in hiring right now?

And what I heard was not what I expected.

Because the playbook most candidates are using today is not just outdated. It is actively working against them.

And the frustrating part is that most strong candidates have no idea this is happening.

Here is everything they told me.

The Market Is Flooded, but Not in the Way You Think

Every role right now is getting 1,000 to 3,000 applications. Most of them are AI-assisted. Most of them are indistinguishable from each other.

One hiring manager said it casually, almost bored: "90% of what we see is noise."

That one line reframes the entire problem.

If you are stuck in the job search right now, you are probably asking yourself the wrong question. Most people ask "how do I get better?" But in this environment, the real question is "how do I become visible in a pile where everyone looks similar?"

You are not failing because you are unqualified. You are invisible because you look exactly like everyone else. That is a completely different problem and it requires a completely different solution.

Proactivity Has Been Redefined

This came up in almost every single conversation, especially from engineering managers.

A few years ago, proactivity was a bonus signal. If a candidate did something extra, it stood out. Today it is the baseline expectation. Doing it does not impress anyone anymore. Not doing it disqualifies you.

But here is where most people are misunderstanding this shift.

They think proactivity means

• applying to more jobs
• following up on emails
• sending connection requests.

That is not what hiring managers are talking about.

What they actually mean is problem-oriented thinking that nobody asked for.

The difference is visible immediately. A weak signal sounds like: "I am very interested in this role and would love to discuss further."

A strong signal sounds like: "I spent some time with your product and noticed X. Here is how I would think about improving it."

Same intent. Completely different impact. One is asking for an opportunity. The other is demonstrating that you already think like someone who belongs there.

The Biggest Structural Shift Happening Across All Roles

This was the insight that hit me hardest. And it applies whether you are in engineering, product, or data.

Execution used to be enough.

• Write the code.
• Build the dashboard.
• Ship the feature.

That was the job and doing it well made you valuable.

AI has compressed all of that. What used to take days now takes hours. What used to take hours now takes minutes. So the question hiring managers are asking has fundamentally changed.

It used to be: "Can you do this task?"

It is now: "Can you expand what is possible here?"

That is not a small shift. That is a completely different bar.

Here is what it looks like in practice. An average candidate says: "I built a dashboard that tracked user retention." A stronger candidate says: "I realized the metric we were using was not actually capturing the behavior we cared about.

So I redefined the logic, and it changed how the team made decisions for the next two quarters."

Same work. Completely different level of thinking. And hiring managers can tell the difference in about 90 seconds.

Good Work Is Now Invisible Without Clear Thinking

This is where most strong candidates are losing right now, and most of them do not realize it.

Everything looks polished today.

• AI has normalized good presentation.
• Resumes look clean.
• Portfolios look impressive.
• Projects look well-documented.

So hiring managers have stopped trusting surface signals entirely.

What they trust instead is how you think under pressure.

One hiring manager put it simply: "The moment we go one layer deeper, everything becomes clear."

That layer deeper is the follow-up question. The edge case. The tradeoff they ask you to defend in the moment. And that is exactly where most candidates fall apart, not because they did not do good work, but because they prepared answers instead of preparing thinking.

If you can do the work but cannot clearly explain why you made the decisions you made, you will lose to someone whose work is weaker but whose thinking is sharper. Every time.

Referrals: Why Most People Are Doing This Wrong

Almost everyone I know is chasing referrals the wrong way.

The typical approach is to cold message someone at a target company, ask them for a referral, and hope they say yes. Sometimes it works. Mostly it does not. And when it does not, people conclude that referrals do not work.

But there are really only two kinds of referrals.

1. Someone who knows your work refers you, and that is a high-signal endorsement.
2. Someone who barely knows you agrees to submit your application, and that is low-signal and hiring managers treat it that way.

The shift is not to ask for more referrals. It is to create reasons for people to want to refer you.

Share your thinking publicly. Build something and write about it. Send someone a specific insight about their product before you ever ask for anything.

When you eventually reach out, you are not another request in their inbox. You are someone interesting who happens to also be looking.

The Final Decision Is More Human Than You Think

When two candidates are close, and hiring managers told me this directly, the decision comes down to one question.

"Do I want to work with this person?"

Not the one with the better resume. Not the one with the more impressive answer. The one they felt something from. Curiosity. Energy. Genuine interest in the problem.

Hiring managers make this read very quickly. You cannot fake it and you cannot rehearse it. What you can do is actually care about the work you are going to do and let that come through naturally.

The candidates who walk in trying to perform the perfect interview almost always lose to the ones who walk in genuinely engaged with the problem.

What This All Means for You Right Now

The market is not rewarding effort. Everyone is working hard. That is table stakes.

What is rare is thinking clearly. Showing up with signal in an environment full of noise. Demonstrating that you already operate at the level of the role you want.

One concrete thing to do this week:

1. Take the last project or role you are going to talk about in your next interview and ask yourself not what you built, but what problem you identified, what tradeoff you made, and what you would do differently now.
2. If you can answer those three questions clearly and out loud, you are ahead of 90% of the candidates in this market.

That is your edge. Use it.

If any of this made you rethink how you are approaching your search right now, hit reply and tell me where you are stuck.

I read every single one and it shapes what I write next.

See you next week.

– Yudi J