I am evaluating new career options and paths as we enter an uncertain economic future. A friend and I discussed VC and playing with different ways of how I could pitch myself and my story. 

Whenever I meet him, I learn something from him and I think highly of him. Being a VC himself, he said that it wasn't a good time right now to ask VCs for 30 minutes or a coffee, since they were all tremendously busy firefighting with their portfolio startups in light of the pandemic.

He then gave me advice that I found tremendously valuable on how to "break in". He said, Christine you should leverage your current company and ask for business meetings instead of asking for informal coffee chats.

Since I work in the travel, he said, that people would regard me as a travel insider and that people would listen to me, simply because I work in the industry. This way I could generate value by sharing my perspective on it and perhaps even help the VC with my knowledge. He also suggested that, once I get to have those meetings, I should softpitch myself by telling them casually that I was generally open to consider working in the VC industry.

Amazing.

Breaking it down, his approach was genius for 2 reasons:

• Approaching your potential future employer out of a position of strength rather than weakness (talking business makes you an equal, asking them for an informal coffee to pitch yourself puts you in a weaker position)
• Providing free value and do due diligence in an inception-kind-of-way. Business is always about people, and paying forward and receiving reciprocity is kind of the rule of the game.
  By providing insights into a certain sector, not only do I provide free value and "insider information" to them, but also leave a first (positive) impression. We forget sometimes that we are regarded as experts in our respective fields (even if we may think differently) and under the pretext of a business meeting, we can then evaluate the culture of their company and just so gently drop the fact that we are open to a new job.

In a nutshell, finding an angle to do (job) due diligence smarter and putting oneself in a more advantageous discussion position is something I had never considered before.