Taylor Stanton, a former student of mine, spent nearly 15 years as a communications professional for tech CEOs in Silicon Valley. On the side, he photographed the underexplored backcountry of national parks and posted the images with educational content on social media, drawing around 20 million impressions. When he turned that work into a self-published book, he doubled his investment within 48 hours of launch. That same year, he landed a job with the largest congressionally chartered foundation supporting public lands, an opportunity he says came from his thought leadership about those underexplored places. Turns out, his work had been making the introduction for months.
Most job seekers try to make that introduction in one cold message, and the odds are against them. In an analysis of 12 million outreach emails, only 8.5% got a reply. Leading with an elevator pitch, which many critics have now declared dead, makes it worse because it’s about the speaker, or writer, rather than the listener.
When a marketing message flops, I look at the customer before I touch the copy. In a job search, the customer is the hiring manager who needs someone to solve a problem. So instead of a pitch, ask an Elevator Question, a surprising question that shows how you think about someone else’s problem in an uncommon way and introduces a possibility the company may not have considered. Here’s how.
1. Find the problem everyone else overlooks, and the person who owns it
Pick a company you’d genuinely like to join. Read its announcements, leadership interviews, and industry coverage. Find a challenge connected to your target role, then ask yourself what the coverage is missing that you see clearly.
Let’s say a growing consumer packaged goods brand is investing the majority of its budget on customer acquisition. A common question might be whether awareness or conversion is the bigger challenge. A distinctive question might sound like, “As you attract new shoppers, how do you reengage the ones who show interest but aren’t ready to buy?” The distinctive question allows the candidate to signal expertise in a commonly underfunded stage of the direct-to-consumer funnel. You don’t need years of experience to do this. Public information and analysis are enough to show critical thinking, a skill that’s increasingly sought after in the AI era.
Finally, be sure to send the message to the person who owns that problem, usually the hiring manager or their boss, not the CEO or recruiter. You don’t need years of experience.
2. Publish the evidence before you hit send
Hiring managers will likely look you up online. In a CareerBuilder survey of more than 1,000 hiring managers, 70% said they research on social media, and 47% said they’re less likely to interview someone they can’t find online. So clean up your profiles, then fill them with your original ideas.
Publish one short teaching post a week on LinkedIn. This structure works well:
A relatable, story-based opening. “We thought our retargeting was optimized until our KPIs declined for three straight ad cycles. Consumers didn’t mind a reminder but they did mind reminders they’d learned to tune out.”
A surprising segue. “Retargeting isn’t dead. Most of us just run it in the way we did 10 years ago. A funnel based on video play time is the new way to decide who gets reminders, without them feeling like reminders.”
A framework. Teach three to five steps readers can take to implement a better way, and name it.
When you have time, to this weekly routine you can add a simple personal website with a short bio, a newsletter signup, and your posts in a blog section. As artificial intelligence summaries replace search results, a personal website that you control helps shape what the internet says about you.
3. Let them see you
Under the 90-9-1 rule, 90% of online users mostly watch, 9% contribute occasionally, and 1% create most of the content. Posting consistently sets you apart, and video sets you apart even more. Prop your phone on some books and spend 30 to 60 seconds explaining that week’s idea. I call this the FaceTime Effect. People trust you more when they feel they’ve met you, and an imperfect video does that better than a list of boring credentials that can be found elsewhere, like on social bios or that personal website I mentioned.
Share the post on Instagram, too. In a Zety survey reported by SHRM, 76% of Gen Z respondents said they use Instagram for career content and networking, compared with 34% for LinkedIn, a shift that FastCompany has covered. In general, repetition helps. Under the mere exposure effect, the more often we encounter something, the more we tend to like it.
4. Lead with a question, not a résumé summary
Now write the message. Send it by email if you can find a verified address. Otherwise send it on LinkedIn. In the same outreach study, personalized subject lines lifted responses by 30.5%.
Subject: Your growth strategy
Hi [Name],
As you grow conversions, how do you reengage people who show interest but aren’t ready to buy? I’ve been following [Company]’s expansion and keep coming back to the consideration phase of the customer journey because it’s so cost-effective compared to the awareness phase.
I explored that question in a short LinkedIn post [Link].
I hope it’s helpful,
[Your Name]
There’s purposefully no request for a meeting. When you give something useful first, everyone knows a reply becomes the natural next step.
5. Follow up once, then widen your reach
Silence could mean rejection but it could also mean a busy week or the wrong inbox. After five to seven business days, send one sentence asking whether they saw your note. In the outreach study, one follow-up increased replies by 65.8%. Resist adding more, though. Someone who doesn’t engage today may need you in a few months, so you want to be remembered as helpful, not desperate or annoying.
Then find a second contact, such as an alum or mutual connection. They don’t need to be close to you. A LinkedIn study of 20 million users, published in Science, found that moderately weak ties, defined as people with whom you share about 10 mutual connections, were the most useful for landing new jobs. Mention your earlier note without asking them to chase it: “In case I reached the wrong person, I wanted to share this with you, too.”
6. Make your thinking the reason they reach out
Taylor Stanton’s photos circulated for a long time before his dream job came along. A cold message is one touchpoint. Helpful information, published consistently, keeps working until the right people find you first. That’s the pull marketing effect in action.
An elevator pitch tells someone what you’ve accomplished. An Elevator Question gives them a reason to discuss what you could accomplish together.
