In today's tough hiring market, job seekers are trying everything to get noticed by hiring managers, including sending prospective bosses a direct message to kick things off.
It could work, as long as you go about it the right way.
A good self-pitch has gotten the attention of Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, co-founders of the buzzy AI-powered shopping agent Phia, who said they've made some of their earliest hires from their own Instagram and LinkedIn inboxes.
In addition to posting openings on an official board via Ashby, the co-founders said they've posted callouts on Instagram and LinkedIn for followers to introduce themselves and submit their interest through DMs, Kianni, 24, said in a conversation at the SXSW conference in Austin on March 13.
Candidates have three sentences to make their case, Kianni said: "Give us a pitch about who you are [and] what you've done in the past, what you want to do with Phia, and how you would be able to solve a problem for us."
The method is "the best filtering mechanism" to gauge a good fit, Kianni said.
"Person one will hit you with an extremely long ChatGPT text that is very hard to understand," she said, "and then person two has an extremely succinct, consolidated pitch of why they are a good candidate for your company."
A unique, concise and high-impact message is all the more important in a market where recruiters are "drinking through a fire hose" of applications. A typical job opening in 2025 attracted an average of 244 applications, more than double the number in 2022, according to data from Greenhouse.
AI tools make it easier to mass apply to jobs, but relying on these algorithms without adding your own touch could leave your resume and cover letter sounding too generic.
On the other hand, if a well-crafted message answers Kianni's three questions and is to-the-point, she'll check the candidate's LinkedIn profile for a skills match and set up an intro call directly.
Of course, not all hiring managers welcome direct messages to their inboxes, especially their personal social media handles, so use good judgment and pay attention to signals they've given about how they hire before reaching out about a job.
So far for Kianna and her co-founder, it's an "unconventional" method that's worked for them. "A lot of our hires have come from good old-fashioned cold DMs," she said. In the year since launching, Gates and Kianni have kept their small team to about 20 employees and have hired for positions ranging from interns to engineers to a chief financial officer.
As an AI-powered shopping platform, the Phia founders also want to see that candidates are using the technology in smart ways. Gates, 23, said she values candidates who can show "high agency" and creativity in how they leverage AI to do more at work â hinting, perhaps, at the kinds of problem-solving that might stand out as part of a three-sentence pitch.
Gates gave an example of one person on her operations team who cut down the time it takes to pull revenue numbers by building an agent that can do it quickly.
"I think we're going to see a rise in that," Gates said: "People with high agency are just going to be able to do more and more and more, and going to be able to use AI to basically supercharge [their work] and not have to do a lot of these manual or laborious tasks that used to have to be performed."
The co-founders also discussed the importance of building a strong network as you get started in your career. Gates and Kianni said they've hired some employees not only by keeping an eye out for promising DMs, but also by sending cold messages to people they want to work with and through referrals from their networks.
As Kianni put it: "Having that person vouch both to the other person that we would be a good employer, but then also us that that person would be a good employee, often is the easiest way to have a very quick hiring process."
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