Dominik Nitsch's Linkedin Analytics

Having a hard time getting a job interview? Here’s what you might be doing wrong: With my recruiting business, I’ve looked at 1000s of CVs over the last few months. Let’s dive in: (1) Only featuring professional experience You are more than your university and your previous employers. You’re a full person, with hobbies, passions, and a unique story. The more of that you tell in your CV, the easier it’ll be for the hiring manager to get a full grasp of who you are. I personally index highly on people who do their hobbies well: show me your black belt in Karate, your appearance in a national team, or your Diamond ranking in League of Legends. Yes, it might not directly relate to your professional experience, but it tells me so much about you as a person. That’s a good thing. (2) Talking about activities instead of results “Cold called customers daily” vs. “Generated an average of 7 new opportunities per week via cold calling”.  → What’s better? Companies care about outcomes. That’s why they hire you. They don’t need someone to cold call, they need new business. How you acquire that is secondary. Always show your results and achievements. Past performance is the best predictor of future performance, and if you have no results in your CV, I will assume you haven’t generated any. (3) Trying to do too much Assume that someone will look at your CV for about 30 seconds before they make a decision.  → For hot positions, recruiters will receive 50-100 applications per day.  → If they spent 5min looking at every CV, that’d take up their entire day. They have to be fast. Make it easy for them by featuring the most relevant things, pointing out your impressive achievements, and making the CV easy to digest. Less text, more whitespace. (That being said, having a 2-page CV if you have >5 years of experience is better than attempting to cram everything into one page. Whitespace > page count.) (4) Including generic, fluffy statements “Motivated, highly analytical, results-driven team player with a passion for innovation and strong communication skills.” → What the f**k is that supposed to mean? Look, I get it – you want to sound professional. But this means absolutely nothing. Instead, outline what makes you unique: “Former athlete turned founder, now looking to build in B2B SaaS”. Much better. (5) Not listing your notable achievements  Include a sidebar where you list your most impressive achievements – professionally and personally. Not only does this help catch instantly how awesome you are, but also gives the interviewer plenty of stuff to work with in the interview. Providing talking points allows you to shine in the interview. — I have plenty more ideas here, but am running out of space. Would you want to see a part 2? Let me know in the comments (+ hit that follow button). Speaking of building a career as a generalist: you might like my newsletter. Hit the button below my name to check it out.

I still cannot believe that I can: - Ask an app on my phone basically any question and get a fairly reasonable answer - Spend hours procrastinating looking at satellite photos of remote islands on Google Maps - Based on said research, access the most remote island (Pitcairn Island) in the world in less than a week of traveling - Build an entire business without leaving my desk - Access more music with a quick search than my parents’ entire CD collection - Train tiny computer programs to do exactly what I need them to do  - Receive ads on my phone for stuff that I literally just talked about  - Carry 100 books with me weighing less than 200g - Take a photo with my phone that has better quality than most cameras from 10 years ago  - Write this and several thousand people (!!!) read it (seriously, wtf, how is this possible) If you dropped your great-grandparents into today’s world, their head would explode.

Specialists are a generalist’s best friend. Here’s what I mean: As a generalist, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you’re good at everything.  I’m certainly not. You will never outcompete the specialists in their discipline. That’s the point of being a generalist.  So when a specialist talks, you listen. Take recruiting. I run a recruiting business; but I will never outcompete a full-time talent acquisition manager at recruiting itself. I might deploy different techniques from other fields to get better results, but as long as I’m playing their game, I will never be able to “win”. That’s great! Specialists are a treasure trove of information – as long as you retain your beginner’s mind, and aren’t afraid to ask dumb questions, challenge your assumptions, and try new things that might seem silly at first. So whenever I meet a seasoned recruiter, I try to learn as much as I can from them.  Without pretending that I know everything about recruiting – they’ll smell that from a mile away (and that’s a huge turnoff). To constantly get better at what you do, approach conversations with a beginner’s mind. There’s something to be learned in every conversation.

Timeless career advice from Charlie Munger:

Google has a famous 70/20/10 rule for allocating time on the job.  Here’s how you can use this for skill acquisition: → 70% learning by doing → 20% learning from others  → 10% structured courses & books Say you’d want to get good at writing:  → 70%: Write and publish – anywhere you’d like (social media, newsletter, internal emails) → 20%: Get feedback from pros, analyze top creators  → 10%: Read books and take writing courses Or language learning:  → 70%: Studying vocabulary and active speaking → 20%: Taking 1:1 language classes → 10%: Reading grammar books Most people over-index on the 10%. They take courses, read books, and never start.  The real learning happens in the 70%. Start today.

If you have an iPhone, you gotta set this up ASAP - so your phone works for you, not against you. My friend Timo showed me this shortcut to turn your screen into grayscale. It’s too good not to share it. Read on below ⬇️

Feeling like your time is passing by and you have zero control over it?  I've got good news for you: We all have 24 hours in a day, and it's completely up to us how we use them. One of my favorite podcasters, Chris Williamson, said it well: "everybody should be a productivity bro for at least six months of their life." That phase has lasted like 10 years for me. But after having read every book on the matter, 100s of blog posts, and tried everything from cleaning my desk to giving myself electrical shocks, I feel like I've identified a few things that work. So if you're struggling to keep up, make the next few months your "productivity bro" phase. (And if you want to accelerate that phase to reclaim 4 hours per day ... Personal Productivity OS might be for you. 3 hours of video content, 18 actionable systems, implemented in a week if you're fast. This weekend, I'm giving you 10% off for each social media platform you follow me on. DM to claim.) Life's too short to do things you don't believe in.

A quick hack to improve your personal network: Start a “to-see” list. For every major location in Europe, I keep a tracker of people I want to see. → Every time I speak to someone interesting where I feel like it’d be cool to get to know them in-person, they go onto the to-see list.  → Once I book a trip to that city, I reach out in advance to set up a meeting.  → You meet, and if the meeting is cool, they get to stay on the list :) This way, I never forget to reach out to the people I want to remain in touch with. (Plus, if your to-see list is really long for a particular place, maybe that’s a sign that you should go there for a few days.)

We’re now as far away from the year 2040 as we are from the year 2010. Kind of crazy to think about, eh? 2040 seems like a futuristic imagination from a science fiction book, whereas 2010 doesn’t feel too long ago.  → Miroslav Klose dominates the World Cup in South Africa → The Burj Khalifa is opened → Instagram launches That’s not that long ago. And yet, 2040 feels insanely far away. Thinking about this, I was wondering: how can we best prepare for life in 2040? In the last week, I went down a rabbit hole of really old blog posts to dig up the best advice given in the early 2000s. Tomorrow, I'm sharing my answer in my newsletter: how to use the past to prepare for the future. Sign up clicking the link below my name, and have it in your inbox tomorrow mid-day.

In fifth grade, our class teacher asked us what we wanted to do when we grow up. Back then, I answered “geography professor”. Man, I wish I had that clarity as an adult. But ultimately, I think it’s the wrong question. Most of us don’t have enough information to make a decision about the rest of our lives right now. We do, however, have enough information to decide what we want right now (and extrapolate this to the next 1-2 years). Work with that instead, and regularly check in whether that’s still the right way to pursue. There are many paths in life you can take – many of which will take you to a place that you enjoy. One thing my fifth grade self hadn’t considered: you don’t just have to pick one path. You can do several things at the same time. So if I had to answer again, I’d say: “a generalist – a person that adapts to new developments, enjoys a variety of activities, and bridges disciplines.” But idk, ask me in 2 years and my answer might be different. (Graphic courtesy of Wait But Why, the best blog on the internet.)

The next puzzle piece of my long-term strategy: Going long on content. If I’m already writing all this stuff, and it resonates with people, then it’d be a shame not to distribute it further. Not everybody’s on LinkedIn (especially younger audiences who appear to benefit the most from my content), and not everyone’s subscribed to my newsletter (are you? link’s above!). So from today onwards, I’m building my presence not just on here – but on all other channels: - Bluesky: @dominiknitsch.com - Instagram: @dominiknitschofficial - Threads: @dominiknitschofficial - YouTube: @dominiknitsch22 - TikTok: @dominiknitsch_ - X: @dominiknitsch (A note on X: as it stands today, I’m still posting there, but I hate the platform. Every time I visit, I get drawn into a MAGA insanity black hole.) First time founders worry about product, second time founders worry about distribution. Social is a fantastic way to get that. Go follow on your favorite platform – the content will be slightly different from what you see on here, but typical Dominik-style stuff.

Every time a product claims to be “less than the cost of a cup of coffee”, I wonder: What kind of coffee are y’all drinking that’s so freaking expensive? I’m personally a big 1€-espresso-at-the-bar kind of guy (pastel de nata dependent on geographic availability).

I speak to 20+ people every single day.  Here are – for no particular reason – 12 tips for coexisting with others. (No. 11 is interesting). What should No. 13 be?

Use these three steps to be more lucky (yes, really): (1) Increase your luck surface area (2) Learn to recognize a good opportunity (3) Take decisive action Want to go into more detail? A few months ago, I wrote an in-depth post about this. Link in comments.

In recruiting, speed matters. And the opportunity cost on missing out on the right hire? Insane. Even on a crowded market, where a job ad for Founder’s Associates can generate upwards of 100 applications, top talent is still a rare breed. And plenty of others are competing for them. The best way to outpace the competition? (1) Run a fast process. (2) Getting a chance to present to A+ candidates. Generalyst can help you with both. → You could make a hire by the end of next week.  → While getting to pitch your company to a group of 15-20 pre-vetted, top business generalists. As one candidate put it: “When I read the job description, I didn’t even consider applying. But after hearing [the founder] pitch, I felt that this was a fantastic opportunity.” The only thing you have to do? 🎤 Present your business tomorrow afternoon (12.03.) in a 30-min virtual session. I’ve got 2 spots left – comment or DM to secure yours. 🤝

"In an early-stage company, everybody should be the Growth team." When hiring, the most natural thing to do is to describe the job-to-be-done. Simple, right? You have one job, you describe it, you hire for that job and that job only. That's how you end up with silos of specialists. Which may or may not work for later-stage companies. But early on in the startup journey, there are a gazillion of jobs to be done with very little budget to hire people for it. So you hire a bunch of generalists that can do all the jobs. Not as good as a specialist, but you're aiming for survival, not perfection. Rocket Internet did this: on any given project, they'd just hire a bunch of young, hungry interns and had them figure shit out. Worked pretty well. Everybody was the Growth team. I believe the future belongs to generalists. → the companies of the future will be smaller (which requires one person to do more jobs) → technology will be developing faster (which rewards adaptability + rapid learning) → problems will require diverse solutions (which benefits people with a toolbox that contains more than just a hammer) If you want to be at the forefront and bring in bona-fide generalists (who will be your growth team, and much more), we should have a beer. 🤝 (and now watch the video, will you? otherwise, my content guy will be disappointed)

“You can't plant a field of only potatoes and then be shocked when potato blight wipes out your entire harvest. That's monocropping—the agricultural equivalent of overspecialization—and it's incredibly vulnerable.” — Milly Tamati The same goes for jobs: if you only have one stream of income, and then you get fired, you have a problem. Career monocropping, if you will. “Stable” jobs are a myth. With even giants like VW laying off massive amounts of workforce, the job security that our grandparents put so much emphasis on simply doesn’t exist anymore. So you have to fend for yourself: 1. Learn how to make money yourself (ideally by building a business) 2. Diversify your career into a portfolio career What’s a portfolio career and how can you build one? Follow me + comment below, and I’ll send you my five-part guide on building one. 🙂

Since I started posting on LinkedIn, 1467 new people decided to follow me. About time that I re-introduce myself: Hi, I'm Dominik. I believe the future belongs to generalists: This is my story & why I believe this (watch until the end) ⬇️

As a former founder, for a while, I felt “unemployable”. Most applications I sent were rejected directly – and if I got to the first interview with a recruiter, the process would usually stop there. Until I skipped the recruiters and started speaking directly to company founders, who recognize opportunities where others see risks. Here’s what you can do if you just left your own company and are looking for a job. ⬇️ PS: Former founder? Consider applying to Generalyst . You might be a great fit for the program.

Recently received a connection request on LinkedIn that got me thinking: “I have six months until I graduate, and want to take on a Founder’s Associate position after. What are the highest ROI skills to build in that time?” Fantastic question. Here’s what I told him: 1/ Get good at structuring information As in any generalist position, you’ll be bombarded with information. Without structure, this is overwhelming – and it will be your job to take a lot of information and make it digestible, whether it’s for clients or your founders. → Learn how to use the Pyramid Principle  → Practice writing your thoughts out in a coherent manner (honestly, posting online helps a lot) → Read “Clear Thinking” by Shane Parrish 2/ Work on your financial literacy One thing that doesn’t make a company’s “beer taste better” is accounting and creating financial reports and plans. While you don’t have to have worked in banking for this, you should know your way around Excel and the most important financial terms. → If you’re not proficient yet, take an online course on financial modeling in Excel → Read “Financial Intelligence” by Karen Berman & Joe Knight → Check out the “Mostly Metrics” newsletter 3/ Learn how to manage yourself Chris Williamson said it best: “Everybody should be a productivity bro for a few months of their career”. Since you’ll be thrown into chaotic situations, the least you can do is manage yourself and your time. → Practice deep focus daily (no distractions, just you and a challenging task, for at least one hour) → Get a comprehensive overview of existing productivity techniques (I have an online course for this, DM for a student discount) → Begin building good habits that will sustain you in high-stress periods (think: working out, fixing your sleep, learning how to cook) This is far from comprehensive, though. I’d love to hear your thoughts – especially if you’ve worked as a Founder’s Associate before. What would you add?