• Career coaches are suggesting bypassing recruiters and contacting executives directly for tech jobs.
• They say recruiters’ inboxes are flooded, making it hard for candidates to stand out in the market.
• The tactic is more effective at smaller companies where it’s easier to get in touch with executives and hiring directors.

Career consultants are pushing a bold new strategy for tech candidates: skip the recruiter DMs and go straight to the CEO.

It sounds bold — and it is. But the idea is to get in front of someone who’s in a position to hire. While a recruiter may be able to get you an interview, those at the top end up making final hiring decisions.

In today’s highly competitive tech job market, candidates are looking for ways to stand out and differentiate themselves in the application process. While DMing a recruiter may sound like a good idea, the reality is that practically everyone’s trying it.

While a cold DM probably won’t yield a response from the CEO of Microsoft or Google, career coaches generally recommend this tactic for smaller to mid-tier companies where it’s easier to get in front of the higher-ups.

Business Insider spoke to career coaches in the tech space to hear about why candidates may want to try this new tactic. Here’s what they had to say.

Recruiter DMs are over-saturated

Katie McIntyre is a career coach and co-owner at CareerSprout, which helps tech professionals land job offers in the $200K to $500K salary range. She told BI that in the current employer-driven market, applications have largely become “irrelevant,” and outreach messages are the most crowded CareerSprout has seen since it was founded in 2016.

“If you reach out to a recruiter directly on LinkedIn, so have 400 other people,” McIntyre said. “And so, getting the nuance of that down is really important.”

That’s led McIntyre to suggest reaching out to executives and potential hiring managers instead. She said this yields better response rates because there’s likely to be significantly less traffic in a C-suite’s DMs.

The message has to be carefully curated, McIntyre added, but if done right, it can offer a better route to success.

Executives may have a more nuanced understanding of technical skills

Raj Subrameyer is a senior IT manager and certified coach who offers career coaching services for mid to senior-level tech workers. He said that recruiters receive too many messages from candidates and may lack the technical expertise to discern subtle differences between applicants. Some tech workers have also said companies are demanding increasingly specialized skills and experience.

Subrameyer said that candidates who get in front of an executive have a better chance of explaining the nuance of what they do. This can also be effective in situations where a worker hasn’t been in an AI-specific role before but has other experiences that demonstrate the skills needed.

For example, one tech worker who studied English literature previously told BI she got her first two jobs out of college after reaching out to CEOs at the companies.

While her English background ended up being an asset, she might not have gotten the opportunity over someone who had a traditional tech background if she didn’t get in front of the startup’s CEO. In both situations, she was able to get an intro call with the CEO and landed a job offer after the call.

It’s not recommended for all jobs

Some career coaches expressed mixed feelings on this new tactic, despite being approached about it by clients.

“If your one shot at a company is to message the CEO or hiring director, you’re giving yourself a small window to sell yourself off one message,” Albano Gega, founder of the tech career coaching platform called Alza, told BI.

While the tactic could work for a smaller startup, Gega compared it to trying to “hit a bull’s-eye.” A better approach would be to reach out to people adjacent to the position you’re applying for, Gega said. Speaking to those kinds of employees can give more room for conversation, he added.

But while there’s no magic formula to landing a tech job in this market, it’s not a bad idea to think outside the box and get creative with your approach.

“Desperate times need desperate measures,” Subrameyer said. “So you need to think out of the box on how to get noticed.”