Outlier Actions

The secret to capturing attention in a crowded space.

I recently caught up with a friend looking for a full-time job after graduate school. Let’s call him James.

James is an insanely intelligent and hardworking person. I’m often in awe of his wits after our conversation.

As smart and ambitious people do, he’s gunning for the top 1% of business jobs after graduation, like a Goldman Sachs investment banking job, a McKinsey consulting job, or a Google product manager job. These are some of the hardest jobs to get—you’ll often see tens of thousands of applications for just one role.

Although James is probably one of the most intelligent people I know, he hasn’t managed to find any success with the job search yet. One reason for this is that he doesn’t have the traditional business experience (e.g. internships, job experiences), but is competing against others who do.

Yet he’s still going to the same industry events as his peers, networking with the same execs, applying to the same jobs, and with the same resume template. He’s going through the same exact motions as everyone else in his peer set.

He’s playing a losing game… with an unfair disadvantage.

It’s like trying to beat someone in a 1v1 game of basketball who is twice your height by copying all their moves. You can hope for the best, but something I’ve learned over the past few years is that hope is not a strategy.

We’re taught that you need to work hard to get the outcomes you desire. But hard work itself is not enough. You need to be creative. You need to be resourceful. You need to do valuable, unique, and rare things to stand out from the crowd.

I call these Outlier Actions.

I recently spoke about this topic at Columbia Business School. Thank you to Brendan Burns for having me!

What exactly are Outlier Actions? I recently sourced examples from my network…

Outlier Actions Examples:

• Meeting Fortune 500 business execs: To meet prominent entrepreneurs and business leaders, Chris Duncan took an internship at a major news publication to use the highly esteemed domain to cold-email people he wanted to meet. Chris had already mastered the cold-emailing formula and just needed the right credentials for social proof.

• Landing a hot investing role: To land a highly sought-after venture investing role at Wischoff Ventures, Neal Mintz proactively shared investments that fit the firm’s thesis, and figured out the firm’s largest headaches which he then offered to help fix on day 1. Neal leveraged his network of founder contacts and deal flow to stand out from other candidates.

• Landing a partnership with a global brand: To land a podcast and event partnership with one of the largest fitness apparel companies in the world, Stella Stephanopoulos walked into their retail store and relentlessly pitched herself until she got a meeting with the manager. It took a year of follow-ups before they brought the idea to life. Stella knew how to sell, persuade, and influence people in-person and used this to her advantage in the form of “field” sales.

• Breaking into venture capital: To break into the world of venture, Zehra Naqvi started a newsletter called The Z List to build her network by curating news, resources, and events for the venture community. Zehra mastered the art of writing and generating internet attention and used this to build her audience.

• Getting an apprenticeship: To land a role at the hot new consumer health tech company Superpower, Aidan Murphy proactively called out the CEO and posted his 90-day onboarding plan publicly. Aidan knew how to get people’s attention on X and used this to land his dream role.

• My first hire! Jacob Solano pitched me at an event, offering to work for free initially. After a test period, he’s now become my full-time Chief of Staff for a year—traveling with me to 4 cities to host 100+ events for 20,000+ people this year. Jacob is an incredibly persuasive speaker who perfected his “pitch” to land his ideal role.

In all these instances, these individuals did things that were:

• Rare and unique – Something unique that few, if any, of your peers are doing.

• Valuable – Something that provides value to your target audience.

• They can do well – Something that highlights your unique strengths and talents.

Let’s say you were gunning for a top 1% Product Manager job.

This is what most people would do:

• Apply online, on alumni job portals, and on LinkedIn.

• Send cold emails and messages to execs at the company.

• Attend one or two networking events—with the hopes of speaking with a hiring manager.

• Do a few networking calls with PMs and hiring managers in their 1st and 2nd degree networks.

Meh.

Unless you have an insanely stacked resume, this isn’t enough. Not even close. Not if you want the Top 1% job.

To land a Top 1% job, you either need to be a Top 1% candidate or take the actions that the Top 1% take (Outlier Actions).

• Be the power user and evangelist: Show your love for the company’s product by writing, posting, and building a community around it. They would have to be crazy to not hire you. Example: Tem and his love for Notion.

• Be the functional expert: Interview product managers across different verticals to share best practices, frameworks, and case studies with the community. Be the person that your potential hiring manager would want to ask for advice. Example: Peter with his newsletter, Creator Economy.

• Be the problem solver: Identify the top pain points that your hiring manager and future colleagues and share detailed recommendations on how they can solve the problem. Example: During my early Facebook interviews, I asked what issues kept the team up at night. I’d then share in-depth suggestions on how the team could solve them in subsequent interviews.

• Be the connector: Instead of trying to get into the room, figure out a way to create the room yourself. Leverage PM communities to host product meetups, events, demo days, panels, and so forth. Example: When I moved to NYC four years ago, I didn’t know a single CEO. I started organizing dinners to meet them, and now I have a network of over 3,000 tech CEOs.

• Be the spotlight: Find a way to put your target audience (the PM or the hiring manager) in the spotlight by creating a podcast, newsletter, or social media series to feature product experts, and use this as a channel to meet product leaders. Everyone loves recognition. Example: Grace Gong’s Smart Venture podcast where she interviews C-level execs at companies like Instagram and LinkedIn.

• Be the builder: Create projects that showcase your capabilities, interests, and passions for a specific area. Example: The plethora of Gen AI no-code projects built with Bolt and Claude. Anyone can learn to build software in less than a day.

To effectively reach your target audience, find tactics that are unique, valuable, and aligned with your strengths—you’ll become unstoppable.

📌 Andrew’s Bookmarks

My top picks from the internet this week.

• How to Generate Better Ideas, Master the Art of Suffering, and Design a Beautiful Life – A curated piece by Polina Pompliano on 13 extraordinary people in business, tech, and media. One of my favorite newsletters and something that I look forward to reading every month.

• Perpetual dissatisfaction – The power of Perpetual dissatisfaction and why complacency will kill your culture.

• The Perennial Regret: “I’ve been too Timid” – Most people can benefit from being a little bolder. Here’s why…

💼 Job Board

Job opportunities at companies in my network.

• Head of Brand Marketing, Rho

• Product Marketing Manager, Carry

• City Launcher, POSH

• Head of Customer Support, 1v1Me

• Head of Sales, Thera

• SDR, Otis AI

• Senior Full Stack Software Engineer, Sidebar

• CEO, Portfolio Company of Rebel Capital (PE Group)

• Founding Growth Product Lead, Superpower

• Have a job to share? Let me know by replying to this email.

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🖼️ Behind the Scenes

I’ve never been able to spend a lot of money on luxurious things.

I still wear a $28 Casio watch I’ll never upgrade. My clothes are from Banana Republic, and I fly economy 99% of the time. Spending beyond that doesn’t bring me any satisfaction.

But the one thing I never hesitate to spend money on is experiences and gifts for the people I care about, especially my parents. It is hands down, the most rewarding way to spend money.

Recently, I bought my parents a bunch of stuff—shoes, watches, speakers, jewelry, and even a trip to Portugal. It’s the most I’ve ever spent on anyone in a year, but it’s nothing compared to everything they’ve given me.

There’s a beautiful Japanese word called “Osusowake”. It’s a word used to describe the act of sharing something you already have. Like sharing a few of your McNuggets with a friend, or buying your dad the same pair of shoes because you love yours so much.

The happiest moments of my 2024 have all been around the moments of osusowake—especially when I see the joy on someone’s face.

My goal for 2025: Embrace more osusowake.

After visiting 4 malls… my dad finally found new kicks!