First idea: Email the person who is hiring for the job to introduce yourself. If you’re not sure, make the best guess. For example, if you’re applying for a job as a content marketing manager, email the marketing director. If you’re applying for a job as a security engineer, email the director of security. It could be three lines:

Hi [their name],

My name is [your name—also link to your website, LinkedIn, or portfolio], and I recently applied to the [name of role] role at [company name].

[One sentence on why you’re excited to apply for the job. If you’ve used the product—even once!—this is the time to mention it.]

Glad to meet you, thanks for reading and considering.

When I did this, the hiring manager went out of their way during our interview to mention that out of nearly a thousand other applicants, I was the only one to reach out to her. (I’m also sure that an AI tool will be able to suggest a better template as a starting point.)

Second idea: Do some user research and share it with the interviewer. In Backable, Suneel Gupta recalls a time when he was interviewing at a high growth startup. The day before his interview with the CEO, he realized that all of his prior research would only be covering what the CEO knew already. He writes:

So I decided to try something else. I went to UserTesting.com, which lets you hire real human beings to test your product and give you feedback. I filled out a form asking people to try out the startup’s website, and within a few hours I received three separate feedback videos. Combing through the footage, I noticed a pattern—while each of the testers seemed excited about the activity tracker’s features, they all seemed to be confused on how to add the device to their shopping cart.

During the interview, Suneel mentioned the website navigation issue to the CEO, who brushed it off; he had a team of people working on it. Suneel asked if he could show him videos of the user research on his phone, which made an impression on the CEO:

“Where did you get these videos?” he asked. Turning to him, I explained that I had gathered them myself. He took a moment, then said, “I’ve interviewed hundreds of people—and no one’s ever prepared something like this.”

Putting a bit more effort in up front to stand out from the crowd means you’ll also be creating a lot more momentum for yourself.