Imagine your best friend calls you one afternoon and says, very calmly, “I’m getting married.”
You stop mid-step, phone to your ear.
“Wait. To who?”
He laughs like you’re the one behind.
“Oh, we met at a party. It just… took off.”
And then he starts stacking details the way people do when they’re trying to convince themselves: weekend trips, joint accounts, baby names, a quiet street with trees, a shared calendar, matching mugs with inside jokes you’ve never heard.
You realize something while he talks.
You don’t even know her name.
So you do the math.
He is about to spend most of his waking hours with a stranger.
Eight hours a day. Every day. For years.
And all of this is based on what, exactly?
Three hangouts. A few late night conversations where everyone is charming, rested, and on their best behavior.
This is the moment where a good friend feels the pull to intervene. Not with drama. Not with a speech about true love. Just with one quiet question.
“Have you ever seen her angry?”
Silence.
“Have you seen her handle conflict?”
Silence.
“Have you seen what she does after she’s wrong?”
Silence.
Because chemistry is not character.
Time is.
Time is the lie detector.
Given enough time, you see the full graph. The highs and the lows. The way someone apologizes. The way they carry stress. Whether “kind” is a real setting, or just a costume for first impressions.
Now here is the unsettling part.
We treat hiring like it’s safer than it is.
We run people through three, five, ten rounds of interviews.
Polished questions.
Polished answers.
A candidate running on caffeine, adrenaline, and their best stories.
We sit across from them for forty five minutes, maybe an hour, then invite them into a team that took years to build. A team with history, scars, and tacit rules nobody writes down.
Eight hours a day. Five days a week. For years.
And we tell ourselves those interviews gave us signal.
Often, they did not give you signal.
They gave you a trailer. A carefully edited preview where the best scenes are spliced together and the messy parts are hidden.
What you actually want, if you are honest, is what you want for your friend.
Not a performance. A pattern.
You want exposure over time.
How someone thinks when they are not being graded.
How they disagree when there is no HR witness.
How they react when a release goes sideways.
How they treat the IC who cannot help their career.
How they repair after they screw up.
How they teach someone without turning it into a humiliation ritual.
How they handle being misunderstood without making it everyone else’s fault.
Now flip the camera.
Imagine a hiring manager watching you over weeks instead of minutes.
They see your posts scroll by.
They see how you think about tradeoffs.
They see you argue with ideas, not with people.
They see you hold a bar without becoming a tyrant.
They see you share a mistake without turning it into a humblebrag.
At that point, something subtle happens.
You are not really applying anymore.
You are being interviewed quietly.
Before the recruiter ever sends a calendar invite, trust has already started forming. By the time you sit down for the formal interview, you walk in with trust already loaded, because they have seen a pattern instead of a performance.
That is reputation.
And it is the one thing the traditional application funnel cannot manufacture in a 45-minute loop.
Writing is how you build it.
Not because writing is magical.
Because writing creates repeated exposure. Every time you publish, you show up in public with the same brain. The same standards. The same way of seeing work, tradeoffs, people, and responsibility.
Over time, your body of work does what a single interview never can.
It reveals how you think when nobody is watching.
There is a cost. Writing is hard. Not hard like memorizing solutions. Hard like putting your own thinking under a bright light and realizing half of it is vague.
You have to drag half formed thoughts into the open. Notice the gaps you usually gloss over in meetings. Say something clear enough that a stranger scrolling in line at the grocery store chooses to keep reading.
And you have to do it without hiding behind safe corporate phrases that sound like they were approved by a committee afraid of being quoted.
If you stay with that discomfort, something shifts.
You stop being a résumé in a stack. You stop being a profile full of keywords.
You become a pattern.
And patterns are easier to trust than promises.
If you want help doing this in practice, watch the video attached to this post.
It is a 101-minute hands-on masterclass, recorded live in my Top Tech Leader weekly meetup.
Not a slide deck lecture. A working session.
I share my screen. I open the editor. I take a dry, forgettable update and turn it into a career asset, step by step.
By minute 30, you will be able to apply the framework yourself.
It is the same tactical method I teach clients who pay me $12,000 to land roles.
They rarely tap “Apply.” Their inboxes fill up with invites.
Click play to watch the video above. 👆
You will need the resources in the Google Drive folder below, along with the chat log, to follow along.
Resources
Get them here: Google Drive Folder
Zoom Chat
Deepak Talwar: Hi Taha, how do we access meeting recordings and transcripts of these calls? new joinee here!
Taha Hussain: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wnwWTHeR72rI7bUOLFPMtgsqQo7w96VS?usp=sharing
Priya: Taha your post on the golem effect was very useful and resonated.
Jimmy: Same chat for 2nd prompt?
Mjellma Berisha: How many posts do you find you need to give GPT to get good results?
Mjellma Berisha: I like the tough love vs supportive perspective, reminds me of good cop vs bad cop 😄
Jimmy: Don’t mind I am going to post after this call, picking your ideas 😄
Umang: Replying to “Don’t mind I am goin...” I was thinking the same thing🙂
Uma: That’s a great tip
Tuan Vu: Is this mean you have different tabs for different author voices?
justin: Btw, does anyone know where to find recordings for previous live sessions?
Deepak Talwar: is psychology of marketing a newsletter?
Umang: I have a project folder for my LI posts.
Mjellma Berisha: Do you use Thinking mode (based on screen) instead of Auto mode for posting?
Tuan Vu: ChatGPT keeps global memory per account so probably you don’t need to calibrate much even if you start a new chat
justin: Replying to “ChatGPT keeps global…” Yes + use folders
Tuan Vu: Replying to “I have a project fol...” Nice tip
Mjellma Berisha: Taha do your shorter posts get more likes? I noticed Prasanna’s posts don’t have examples, which is something I personally really like. Is writing short posts without examples intentional?
murali: “Good marketing cannot save a bad product”
justin: Does anyone have examples of Engineering Leaders who are attracting VPs? Examples are great for speaking to ICs, but I am looking to attract VPs, CTOs, looking to hire EMS, Directors.
Deepak Talwar: Replying to “is psychology of mar...” thanks Taha - sign up here: https://www.stackedmarketer.com/psychology-of-marketing/
murali: How to bring technical gaps in a domain in linked in posts without making it long. But I think if I keep it short, I may not be able to convey it clearly
Alejandro Rodriguez: You messaged me a few months ago, that’s why I’m here :-)
Agnideep Bagchi: I am feeling nostalgic. You messaged me last year
Manoj: This requires linkedin premium, do you recommend it?
Umang: I have sales people reaching out to me 😂
Mayuresh: Does this work for “sales” people or for everyone looking for a job?
Siddharth: What tooling you are using for stacking new connections/profile views and messaging?
Umang: Commenting on Taha’s posts gains a lot of impressions, significantly more than my posts 🙂
Alejandro Rodriguez: Great advice.
Peter Idah: What times do you find best to post?
shria: Generally how much time/posts ( posts per week or month) for people to start noticing you?
Umang: Dang, I have always been posting at night 🙁
murali: I am currently serving notice period. Taha - Still you advise me not to put Open to work?
shria: weekday post vs weekend posts..which one is better?
Jimmy: Can you tell us about your coaching for 12k, how does it work (not just to get the job but continue to perform well/ exceed expectations ), how long does it last?
Najmun: ok to start 1 post per week, and then up the frequency to more than once per week, gradually?
Uma: Thanks Taha for sharing this valuable knowledge.. this will shape our online presence and writing skill.
Agnideep Bagchi: I am currently working as a SDE III (UI) and aspiring to become an EM. Is it a good idea if I post twice a week where one post will be having the persona of senior frontend engineer and the other aligned with aspiring EM/ leader persona?
Siddharth: What tooling you are using for stacking new connections/profile views and messaging?
Taha Hussain: Octopus
Alejandro Rodriguez: Hope noone gets your history via a prompt injection
Taha Hussain: 🙂
Siddharth: Replying to “I am currently worki...” https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthlikhar/
murali: I am currently serving notice period. Taha - Still you advise me not to put Open to work?
Agnideep Bagchi: Thanks for the clarification, Taha! 🙂
shria: this is GOLD!
Lawrence Aiello: Immensely useful
Agnideep Bagchi: It brought a lot of values!!
Umang: Great session, learned a few more things about LI today.
Deepak Talwar: great session, Taha....learnt quite a bit and excited to start building on LinkedIn
Nilesh Kulkarni: Super useful ,thanks Taha
Siddharth: Big thanks for making it free
Jimmy: Love it, we would want to keep the sessions going
Lawrence Aiello: Hey Taha - when I get connection requests I usually just accept everyone because I am trying to maximize connections and followers. Is this a good idea? Should I be filtering who I accept?
Najmun: this was awesome Taha! thank you so much!
murali: I am currently serving notice period. Taha - Still you advise me not to put Open to work?
Manoj: For messaging profile visitors (recruiters in particular), what’s the best outreach approach that feels natural i.e. not needy? Any best practices on follow-ups and timing?
shria: yes
Mjellma Berisha: Yes please 🙂
Deepak Talwar: yes!
murali: yes
Uma: Yes, please
Najmun: yes 👍
Alejandro Rodriguez: Giphy [ID:J336VCs1JC42zGRhjH] [Full message cannot be displayed on this version]
Lawrence Aiello: This was excellent thank you!
Umang: Thank you, great session. Have to drop off.
Mjellma Berisha: Can we pitch topics for the upcoming sessions ahead of time? It would be great to get targeted advice on a special topic and know what that will be ahead of time, like today’s topic on LinkedIn posting for example.Follow me on LinkedIn for daily insights shared with 80,000+ incredible minds.
If you’re looking to grow your career, here are five ways I can help you:
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