How I went from job hunter to hunted

After sending out hundreds of copies of my CV to dozens of companies over the last year, I realised that I was getting nowhere because my approach was wrong.

I did everything I was taught to do: I created a list of the top 20 companies I wanted to work for, I customised my CV for each opening, I networked online and offline. I met some fantastic people throughout the process, but nothing got me closer to securing a role, or even a chance to interview. What I had failed to do was ask myself some of the tough and honest questions early on.

My story began in May 2014 when, after 10 years of building a successful career in the Middle East, I decided to move to Silicon Valley to look for opportunities with tech companies.

I wanted to learn and to be part of something big. I knew it would be a challenge to restart my career in a new market, especially one that is densely populated with talent, so I expected the process to take a few months.

As a few months turned into a year and I saw no signs of progress, I reached a point of panic. Something felt wrong.

As a marketer, I decided to reframe the challenge. Instead of thinking as a job applicant, I had to think of myself as a product and identify ways to create demand around hiring me. I applied everything I knew about marketing and storytelling to build a campaign that would show Silicon Valley companies the kind of value I would bring to their teams.

The experiment was a report that I created for Airbnb that highlighted the promise and potential of expanding to the Middle East, a market that I am extremely familiar with and that, until recently, Airbnb had not focused on. I released the report on Twitter and copied Airbnb's founders and leadership team. Behind the scenes, I also shared it by email with many personal and professional contacts and I encouraged them to share it if they thought that it was interesting.

Within hours of releasing the report, a recruiter from Airbnb contacted me to schedule an interview. Within a few days, I had interviews with many of the area's top tech companies. And within a few weeks, I had identified an exciting role and have since joined Upwork, an online platform that connects businesses with freelancers.

What I realise in hindsight is probably one of the most important lessons of my career so far. The project highlighted the qualities I wanted to show to recruiters; more importantly, it also addressed one of the main weaknesses they saw in me. In my case, having moved from Jordan to California, I was at a disadvantage. I didn't have a network of people that I had worked with in the past, people who knew my work and would want to bring me onto their teams.

The company I had co-founded there didn’t have the recognition it enjoyed in the Middle East either. I had only looked at those shortcomings from my perspective until recently. What I had failed to see was that from most recruiters’ perspectives, the market I was coming from was irrelevant.

What the report helped me to do was to show, not tell, my value beyond their doubts. It refocused my perceived weakness into a strength: an international perspective with the promise of understanding and entering new markets.

– Copyright Harvard Business Review 2015. Nina Mufleh is a freelancer growth manager at Upwork, an online talent platform for freelancers, where she works with top freelancers around the world to establish and grow their careers online.