From unemployed to tons of job offers

How Adrian 100x'd his number of job opportunities

Mar 16, 2025

The job search process can be exhausting. It can be especially exhausting when you are unemployed. In some days being unemployed is an advantage - you have lots of free time to in theory spend finding a new job. The reality, though, is that applying to jobs is exhausting. Applying to jobs can feel like a job!

You may get stuck in the monotonous routine - search for companies that are hiring, send in applications, and wait for responses. And oftentimes, the responses never come. Perhaps you get some traction, and then things fall apart and so you are back to square zero. This whole cycle can be frustrating.

If you are in this position, we are here to tell you that a) you’re not alone (lots of people are in this position!) and b) there is a way out of this loop. There’s no one way to find a job, but we promise you that there are paths forward.

Sometimes, though, you will have to try something radically different from your current approach. That’s why we asked next play community member Adrian Tovalin to share his story, as he went from unemployed for a year (sending in tons of applications and receiving little traction) to getting job offers sent to him by many companies.

We hope you find his story useful - and if there’s anything we can do just let us know: hi@nextplay.so.

Adrian’s Story: From Unemployed to Scaling Startups

I’ve spent the last 10 years consulting for FAANGs, serving as Chief of Staff to billion-dollar C-suite teams, and scaling startups from zero to $1 million in ARR. If my career looks like a straight shot to success, it’s because you haven’t seen what happened in 2018.

That year, I was unemployed for almost a year. I sent out thousands of applications, followed every conventional piece of job search advice, yet nothing worked.

And then it hit me: I wasn’t doing anything wrong—I was just doing what everyone else was doing.

I cast my net too wide, applying to any company that would take me. I had no online presence, no network, and no leverage. My resume was my entire professional identity, and in a market flooded with Ivy League grads who were also unemployed, that wasn’t enough.

Everything changed when I asked myself one question:

👉 What do I actually want to do, and how do I become the top 1% in it?

That shift took me from chasing opportunities to attracting them. Here’s how you can do it, too.

Step 1: Get Clear on What You Actually Care About

Most people aren’t struggling because they lack talent—they’re struggling because they have no idea what they actually want.

Before you send out another application, take a step back. Define what matters to you.

What industry excites you? Fintech? Healthtech? AI? If your answer is "I’m open to anything," you’re already at a disadvantage. In my experience, startups don’t hire people who are kind of interested in their space—they hire people who are obsessed with solving their problems.

If you’re struggling to nail down an industry, a strategy many of my clients at SparkGen have used is identifying the products or causes they are obsessed with as a guide.

For example, are you a Robinhood power user or passionate about financial education? Fintech might be a good pick for you. Are you an avid traveler and track your points on 10 different Excel sheets? Traveltech it is. Do you track your hormonal cycle daily via apps like Lively and love talking about health outcomes till the cows come home? Femtech seems like a good bet.

What stage of startup do you want to work at? Early-stage startups (Pre-Seed to Series A) are chaotic but full of high-growth opportunities. Mid-stage startups (Series B-D) offer more stability but still move fast. Late-stage startups (Series D+) provide structure but come with more bureaucracy.

To choose the stage that works best for you, be honest about your risk tolerance. Are you relatively early in your career and/or do you have a solid financial cushion should the startup go bust? (In my experience, a good financial cushion is 6+ months of savings.) Then, an early stage startup may be the right move. But if you’re relatively more senior in your career and/or don’t have a sufficient financial cushion, then later stage startups may be the better move.

What is your unique superpower? Are you an operations powerhouse who can build systems from scratch? A marketing genius who can scale a brand? A product strategist who sees around corners? The more specific you get, the easier it becomes to position yourself as an essential hire.

How do you find your superpower? Look across your classes, roles, and projects (personal or professional) to find which single skill people consistently describe as “above average.”

Once you define these elements, you have the building blocks to a brand that makes you impossible to ignore.

For me, it looked like this:

I grew up in a dual-language household, so international work was a priority for me.

After a successful stint in consulting, I had built my GTM and operations chops to rival the best. But I also realized I preferred early-stage teams where execution, not fancy decks, was the value driver.

Finally, as the child of immigrant entrepreneurs, I deeply believed in the power of the capital markets and wanted to help the next generation of immigrant founders.

Bottom line? I wanted to work with international early-stage fintechs focused on democratizing global finance as an Operations and GTM lead.

This clarity led to opportunities with the World Bank, hyper-growth fintechs, and eventually my own startup, SparkGen.

You can do the same.

Step 2: Build in Public

This is where things get real. Now that you know your niche, it’s time to prove it by creating relevant content.

I’m not talking about random LinkedIn posts or "thought leadership" for the sake of it. That’s garbage advice.

The goal with posting is simple: become a visible authority in your field.

How do I define becoming an authority? Simple: People begin reaching out to you for opportunities as a result of seeing your content.

But how do you stand out in the seemingly flooded LinkedIn content engine?

Here’s how I did it with my startup, SparkGen:

I used Taplio to analyze top-performing posts from successful content creators in my niche (tech recruiting and job hunting) and studied what worked:

What topics resonated most?
What tone and language did they use? (aspirational, logical, emotional)
What kind of headlines pulled the most engagement?

After dissecting ~20 high-performing posts from each creator, I identified what made their content memorable using a custom tone of voice GPT, which I then imbued with my own unique twist.

For me, that meant startup recruiting for first-generation students and professionals.

The result? I was able to create posts that resonated with my audiences almost immediately, giving me the flexibility to experiment with different topics.

And experiment I did.

I proceeded to post every single day for two months to hone my newfound voice and create a brand all my own.

I tracked my performance using LinkedIn’s built-in analytics to see which posts gained the most traction. Over time, I doubled down on what worked and ditched what didn’t.

Six months in, I had 168 posts. So, I took it a step further.

I built another custom GPT using my most successful posts to mimic my writing style. Now, whenever I come up with an idea, I run it through my GPT for a first draft.

These days, creating compelling content has become a complete science and allowed me to expand my brand without much effort.

The result?

I more than tripled my followers in under a year. (screenshot below)

I built a brand that functioned as my resume—without ever sending a single job application.
CEOs from VC-backed startups started reaching out to me for opportunities

Step 3: Turn Content Into Real-World Experience

Building an online brand is great—but it’s not enough. To be a 10x candidate, you need real-world experience.

Here’s the biggest mistake job seekers make: they think they need a job to gain experience. That’s backwards.

You don’t need permission. You need social proof.

Find startups and founders in your niche. Identify a problem they have; then offer to solve it. For free, if necessary.

If you’re a marketer, audit their website and suggest improvements. If you’re an operator, analyze their workflows and propose efficiencies. Execution is everything—if you can provide real value, people will take notice.

And once you deliver results, ask the founders for references and/or endorsements on LinkedIn or your personal website to reinforce your credibility. The more proof of impact you accumulate, the easier it becomes to land paid work—especially if those endorsements come from respected founders.

For example, before I landed my project with the World Bank, I knew I needed more experience with underserved communities.

So, I leveraged my online presence and offered GTM consulting to Bay Area startups—pro bono.

One project had me designing an employment strategy for highly educated, disabled populations. My team? A quadriplegic Excel whiz, a project manager with half a brain (literally), and a blind financial coach.

Once I delivered results, I asked these founders to become references in my job search.

Better yet, some even offered me full-time roles.

This same strategy helped me scale SparkGen.

I started by offering SparkGen for free to help first-gen professionals break into startups.

I did this with a single LinkedIn post (link here) that detailed SparkGen’s mission and how people in my network could sign up for SparkGen’s “beta” cohort.

I then asked 20 of my closest connections on LinkedIn to share my post to their networks. Again, it’s all about social proof.

Via this tactic, SparkGen landed 72 applicants for our beta cohort. We were aiming for 15.

After I helped 5 of these professionals, I began requesting public testimonials on my website, and I asked particularly successful SparkGen alumni to serve as “ambassadors” who would speak to potential clients on my behalf.

It was actually one of these ambassadors who helped put me on the radar of Johns Hopkins University—one of the top universities in the U.S.—by sharing my content directly to the Hopkins network.

At Hopkins, I help entire cohorts of young professionals break into the startup ecosystem, and I create talent pipelines between startups, VCs, and the Hopkins student pool.

This is the power of building leverage instead of waiting for permission.

Step 4: Take Your Brand into the Real World

Once you’ve built credibility online, it’s time to go offline.

Speak at events. Join industry meetups. But most importantly—host your own events.

Start small. Gather 10-15 people for casual meetups. The goal isn’t scale; it’s to refine your ability to build relationships.

And as your events grow in attendance, follow Priya Parker’s Art of Gathering framework for optimal party sizes: 6, 12, 15, 30, 150.

This is exactly what my co-founder and I did in D.C.

Tired of the elitist and stuffy networking that D.C. was infamous for, we built an event where VCs, Founders, and Operators could throw away their business cards and pitches and instead, connect on a human level. The level where real business happens.

Our first event had 15 attendees. Our second had even fewer. But we didn’t stop.

At our third event, 200+ people showed up. It was featured on Luma and went semi-viral (screenshot below). At our fourth event, there were 150+ attendees, and major sponsors reached out to fund us.

In 6 months, we went from nobodies to movers and shakers in the D.C. startup ecosystem.

Moral of the story: If you want opportunities, focus on building relationships in the real world.