10 Things for Job Searchers to Learn from Online Dating
From funnels and cohorts to knowing the rules and who to rust.
From 2010 until 2017, I was both gainfully employed and in a loving, monogamous relationship. As such, I was absent from both the dating and job markets. Only in the past few years did I begin to notice the many patterns between dating and job searching. I now firmly believe that the modern worlds of dating and job searching are remarkably alike. While some of the similarities may make us blush, they hold true nonetheless, and that makes for many transferable learnings between dating and job seeking. Below I outline ten practical learnings from online dating with actionable takeaways for today’s job seekers. And sometimes vice versa.
Tinder launched back in 2012. I recall many conversations with single friends at the time about both how addicting it was and how dating would never be the same. Coffee Meets Bagel. Bumble. The League. Hinge. A new app seemingly launched every other month for a while. But if you weren’t single, you didn’t really get it. Beyond occasionally stealing a friend’s phone and swiping on their behalf at a bachelor party, the transformation of online dating only mattered if you were single. Not until summer 2017 did I experience my first authentic foray in online dating. In the three years since I’ve had the opportunity to be both job searching and dating on multiple occasions, and sometimes both at the same time. What follows below are learnings and conclusions derived mostly from my personal experiences, so caveat that for what it’s worth. And as with all of my essays, I genuinely love and appreciate all feedback. So thank you in advance.
You have to “play the game,” so don’t hate. And you might as well know the rules.
Going back to my middle school days, I learned at a fairly young age that there were unwritten rules about dating. Anyone who knows me well would agree I tend not to be the most socially intuitive person, and so much of what I learned was due to first-hand mistakes. Such as stealing a girl’s secret notebook in 7th grade does not make her like you (whoops). Likewise, conventional wisdom is that forbidden first date topics include politics, religion, and past relationships. Similar rules very much exist for the job search. The Game of dating involves not just specific rules, however, but also the very idea of a two-sided competition, where each side gives and takes in a continuous back and forth battle to win each other's love and affection. If one side is too dominant, then the other side will likely give up or get bored and lose interest, both of which spell the end of the game. While much less universally acknowledged, a similar dynamic exists in the job search process. Let us explore three such rules of dating, which are directly transferable to job seekers.
Do not be too transparent - especially on the first interview (date), it is neither good to say “OMG I love you” or to say you’re just looking to hookup. Even if you are just desperate for a job, and any job is better than being broke, the last thing a hiring manager wants to hear is that you are desperate. Likewise, while there are fewer downsides to telling a recruiter that you love Google and it has been your dream job since freshman year, it is still better to temper your enthusiasm. You’ll be much more likely to get a second-round interview when closing the first phone screen with something like this:
I’m actively exploring opportunities with a handful of other companies in the technology sector and expecting to accept an offer in the next 3-4 weeks. Based on this conversation I’d love to continue learning about the opportunity at DREAM JOB ABC.
Put your best self forward, and hide the dirty laundry - even in the pandemic, single men and women still brush up a bit before their first date, whether in-person or on zoom. They also avoid topics of conversation that don’t exactly shine the best light on themselves, such as that time you got arrested in college. Similarly, the fact that you were bored out of your mind at your last job or hated your co-workers is irrelevant to your current job search. In an interview, as with dating, you should expect questions about your past. So be prepared for them, and be able to highlight the learnings you walked away with while glossing over details that detract from what a great candidate you are.
Don’t rush things. Allow mutual attraction to grow organically - As they say, the best things in life are worth waiting for. While your timeline with dating certainly depends on your objectives (getting laid is a valid objective, for both men and women), rarely is your best job opportunity going to land in your lap as a one night stand. Be sure to discuss the prospective timeline on your first interview, and be prepared for the process to generally take longer than that. For the right opportunity, it is worth waiting for. There are certainly exceptions where you have a real sense of urgency, but know that forced timelines often lead to rushed decisions, and rushed decisions are rarely the best decisions. So be patient.
Study and optimize your conversion funnel.
Early in my dating “career”, the analogy of dating “funnels” to the classic digital marketing conversion funnel became quite obvious to me. A few friends vigorously objective (you know who you are), and so I hope to get some good criticism here. In digital marketing, your objective is to acquire conversions, which generally means you want a user to buy something from you. Doing so requires attracting the attention of your target audience and moving those users down a funnel toward their ultimate purchase event. One of the most commonly cited funnel definitions is AIDA, which stands for Awareness >> Interest >> Desire >> Action.
In short, to get to a successful decision, you have to coax users down the funnel. At every new stage, you are undoubtedly going to have some users drop off, and that’s okay. With dating, there are many stages of the funnel you can draw up, and there is far less consensus about what stages matter most, or how much you should expect leads to “churn” between each stage. A quick google images search turned up plenty of potential funnels from others.
In my personal experience, without having ever tracked such metrics before, I think that my dating and job funnels look something like this.
Reality is that there are more than a dozen ways to skin this cat, and there’s likely no such thing as a perfect funnel for either your job search or your dating endeavors. But the funnel framework is helpful to keep in mind, especially when dealing with the first wave of rejections, which no matter how qualified you may be, are inevitable. For more ways that dating is similar to marketing, I’d also recommend checking out this Marketob blog post about An Email Marketer’s Journey through Online Dating.
Cohorting Matters, so don’t take it for granted.
The biggest difference between the dating funnel and the standard e-commerce conversion funnel is the singular nature of your conversion metric. Because you’re only trying to find one girlfriend (assuming you’re not polyamorous), you’re actually forced to narrow your scope as you get further down the funnel. As such, you want to do your best to group prospects into cohorts, in order to maximize your likelihood of choosing the best match in the final stage. For example, if you’ve gone on 3 dates each with two wonderful women over the past three weeks, but then today match with a new woman and want to set up a first date with her, she’s now going to be in a different cohort. The other two women will probably (and rightfully so) not want to just wait around for a few weeks while you date this new person before deciding if you like them more, and so you face a conundrum. If you decide to slow things down with the first two so that you can date the third woman, you’re effectively closing the door on them in order to take a chance on the next door. A similar pattern exists in the recruiting process. A hiring manager always wants to hire the best candidate for the job, but doesn’t know what the “future pipeline” contains. As such, a good recruiter manages expectations and timelines well enough such that the hiring manager can review a “cohort” of final round candidates that will all interview during the same week. As a job seeker, it is important to know about this, so that you can both position yourself well, and not be offended if the employer seems to be stalling between interview rounds. If so, or if the recruiter instead seems to be rushing you, it’s likely because you happened to fall into the early or late stages of the cohort. For the single folk out there, I know this analogy is anything but romantic, but I do think it holds true for both men and women, and so welcome criticism. Have you ever intentionally postponed a date just to keep a cohort together? Cohorting in dating is certainly not romantic, but is it a bad thing?
First Impressions Matter
Relative to funnels and cohorts, this similarity needs little explanation. Whether job searching or dating, prepare to be judged. We’re all human, and we make judgments about other humans every day. Dating and job searching is no different, so what matters is to be mindful of the first impression you want to make. With job searching, know that your first impression is likely not in-person. Your Linkedin profile obviously matters, but for some employers so does your Facebook profile, whatever shows up when you Google your name, and even your email address. Application received from johndoeskaterbro69@hotmail.com? Errr, pass. With dating, it goes without saying that any first-date can stalk you online beforehand, and so in accordance with knowing the rules, you might as well put your best foot forward, and remove those embarrassing pics from Instagram.
Know what you’re looking for, and the relative tradeoffs about what matters most.
While easier said than done, knowing what matters most to you is perhaps the single most important thing in finding happiness in both your professional and romantic life. In the dating realm, I used to often cite the proverbial “checkboxes” that I was looking for -- e.g. physical attractiveness, love of sports, intelligent, ambitious, sassy, etc. At some point, a wise friend convinced me that finding love is not about checking off all the boxes, because there’s always more boxes and because I don’t want to fall in love with someone who is exactly like me. But just like the quest for love, job searching is also about tradeoffs. Some employers will pay more. Others will have better “culture.” Some such tradeoffs are predictable. Startups will entail more risk, generally with lower guaranteed pay but a bigger upside if the company does well. What matters more to you? A job title may be important, but perhaps the opportunity to learn and grow quickly matters more. Similar to dating, you’re never going to find a job offer that checks off every box, and so what matters most is knowing how you value the tradeoffs between the various elements of a job offer. When I began job searching most recently, I outlined 7 key dimensions that I sought to optimize for (perhaps the topic of a future post), and while I haven’t tracked these dimensions rigorously in my job search spreadsheet, I’ve certainly used them as a valuable lens for evaluating whether or not to move down the funnel with particular opportunities.
Referrals are always preferred
Swiping on dating cards is inherently impersonal. In a typical 10-minute Bumble session, I probably swipe through 50 profiles. In contrast, in a typical month while single, 1-2 friends would offer to set me up with someone. I go on first dates with 99% of those referrals. In a very similar sense, while getting a referral to Google certainly will not guarantee you a job, it very likely gets you in the door, and is the best way to secure the first interview. As such, networking is huge, and Linkedin should be your best friend while job searching. Don’t stress if the only common connection is a college acquaintance that you haven’t talked to in ten years. Reach out and ask to reconnect over a 20-minute call. If that short call results in a kind email to the hiring manager on your behalf, you’re way more likely to get the interview than being simply another generic resume in the proverbial haystack. Referrals matter so much that there’s even a new website that allows you to buy referrals to big tech companies like Google and Facebook for as low as $50. I’d personally be wary of this approach, but if you think you’ve maxed out your Linkedin hustling, it could be worth a try.
Market-based dynamics matter too.
Just as cohorting candidates matters in the short-run, the economic climate and an employer’s annual headcount plans matter in the medium to long-run. When economic times are good, recruiters struggle to find good talent, because all the good candidates already have great jobs. In that environment, employees generally have an upper-hand. On the flip side, as many who are job searching today during the pandemic are well aware, the job market becomes flooded with good talent during a recession, which makes things much more challenging for job seekers. This likely comes as no surprise to job searchers today but is perhaps less well-understood with respect to dating. Since online dating apps are themselves marketplaces, they ideally want to have a balance of men and women on the platform. However, a balance rarely happens organically. New York and San Francisco make for good examples. In 2019, the population of SF was 51% male, while in New York City the male population was in the minority at just 48% (both stats admittedly ignore non-binary gender classifications). Those imbalances may not seem stark, but any single person who has moved from SF to NYC or vice versa can attest to the difference it makes. A quick google search produces a handful of blogs like this, documenting such experiences. Without access to Bumble or Hinge’s first-party data, it is impossible to confirm how much “easier” it is to be a single male or female in imbalance markets, but I would speculate that men in NYC have significantly higher match rates than similar men in San Francisco. If you know someone with the data to confirm or deny, I’d love to dig in.
Don’t make big decisions alone. Trust your friends and family.
Meeting the parents is an obvious big step for any relationship destined to go the distance. And while you may laugh or cry about the prospect of a meet the parents encounter gone bad, the reality is that we value our close friend and family’s perspectives, and so we seek them out.
On the job search front, it can certainly be exhausting to talk with loved ones about every job opportunity you apply to, especially since the majority of them will lead to rejections. However, as you get closer to the bottom of the funnel, don’t forget what a valuable resource they represent. Especially as you get to the bottom of the funnel and are considering offers, simply talking through some of the tradeoffs between two job opportunities with a parent or loved one can give you the necessary clarity and confidence to make the right decision.
No one commits to a job for life. Divorce is also always an option.
Whether this is considered a similarity or a difference depends on your desired lense of romanticism. In short, while decisions about job searching and dating certainly matter, they’re generally not irreversible decisions that will make or break your life. On the similarities front, the average number of jobs someone holds in their lifetime is fairly similar to the number of serious relationships they have, on average. I’ve personally had 3 or 4 serious relationships, and somewhere between 3 and 6 serious jobs, depending on how you define “serious.” On the flip side, the objective of your job search potentially has a very different time horizon than your relationship search. I know that I’m not looking for a job that I will hold for the rest of my life. Few people are. Two to three years of good pay and good learning opportunities would be great, in my opinion. In contrast, as a 33-year-old who wants a family, I am certainly looking for a life partner on the dating front. With respect to your decision-making process, what’s important is to be aware of your ideal time horizon, and to not put undue stress on something imperfect, so long as it is good enough for a few years, or a few months. It’s your time horizon, so you decide.
As humans, we remember stories, not stats.
Finally, when in doubt, it is okay to trust your gut. For most things in life, it is possible to assign yourself a grade on how well you did. It is also increasingly easy to quantify your results, especially so with both dating and relationships. How many dates did you go on last week? How many job offers did you get? What’s the efficiency of your funnel? (Okay, no one says that except maybe me.) But at the end of the day, the stats don’t matter. When you’re at your wedding reception telling aunts and uncles how you met your husband or wife, it won’t matter how many other women were in your pipeline the day you met. If anything, you and your significant other will likely have concocted a mildly fictitious story of how you met, simply to have something to say other than we met online. Likewise, your professional career is more like a novel than a spreadsheet, and when you talk to your future children about your career path, it is unlikely that the stories you tell will include anything about joining company XYZ because they gave me a 5.99% more RSUs. While it’s perfectly normal to not know how your career will unfold, it should be a story that makes sense to you. If the only thing drawing you to a company is the salary, and you’re not the type of person that would tell your loved ones that you chose to work at Goldman because they offered to pay you $100,000 more than someone else, then money probably shouldn’t be your deciding factor. That same thinking should apply to your relationships. We tell stories about things we remember, and it is pretty hard to fake memories. So if you’ve over-optimized your funnel and are struggling to choose between two great people, it’s probably worth ditching the proverbial spreadsheet. What story do you want to tell? That’s the one you should try to live.
At the end of the day, there are no secret formulas for job searching or dating. But they are incredibly similar, and I would argue that our decisions in dating and job searching are among the most important decisions we make. The eleventh rule for this list would be that brevity is beautiful - clear and concise communication is great for both dating and job interviews. Unfortunately, I know brevity is not one of my strong suits, and so thank you for your patience in reading this in its entirety. I wish you all the best of luck in your respective job searches and romantic pursuits, and I eagerly anticipate your feedback.
Seems like you might have a bug. I entered the blog through this post, but posted a comment on the stock market/politics post. It posted here for some reason.
Hi Brian, interesting take on current events, I very muck enjoyed reading it. To me, it was very Ray Dalio-esque. If you haven't been following his work on macro-economics, and empire life cycles, I highly recommend you do. I'd also suggest looking into Mike Maloney's view on monetary history.
Maloney dives further into the down fall of the roman empire, and how it actually lasted much longer than history books suggest. While the western roman empire fell, the eastern (byzantine empire) actually lasted for thousands of years, and it was entirely dependent on how the two empires dealt with debt and currency debasement.
Dalio, and Maloney, and many others would argue that America's increasingly looming fall has less to do with politics, and more to do with debt, and debasement which is leading to the loss of our status as the worlds reserve currency. China and Russia are already moving away from the dollar as a medium for bank transfers -- I believe over a 50% fall this year. The reason it doesn't have much to do with politics is because increasing the debt, and debasing the currency seem to be the only policy that both parties can agree upon.
As for the efficient market theory, I think its a quite simple argument that Wall Street wouldn't exist if it were totally efficient. I do agree that it is very difficult for us laymen to beat the market, but I am an optimist (possibly to a fault) so I will continue trying. I think current market inefficiencies -- like the ones you pointed out, and every valuation metric (Schiller p/e etc) -- pose the question: are you patient enough to wait the very feasible 20 to 30 years to experience market efficiency? I know I'm not.
Anyway, I see a lot of opportunities in the markets as a whole, some of which have peen paying off well for me recently. I'm always excited to discuss markets and macro economics with others who enjoy educating themselves in these matters. I look forward to seeing more content like this! 👍