The CEO of a recruiting-software company that works with Slack and Airbnb explains how to build a personal brand and stand out in a sea of applicants

• Boost your chances of landing the job you want by staying active in your community and building your personal brand.
• That's according to Daniel Chait, the CEO of the recruiting-software company Greenhouse. Chait has recruited for some of the buzziest tech startups right now, including Airbnb and Pinterest.
• For example, you might contribute to open-source projects on GitHub, attend Meetup events for people in your industry, or stay active on Instagram.
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Looking to land a job at one tech's darling companies in the new year? David Chait, the CEO of the recruiting-software company Greenhouse, can help.

Greenhouse's clients include some of the hottest tech startups like Slack, Airbnb, Venmo, Pinterest, and HubSpot. Of his list, Slack and Pinterest had successful openings in the public market last year, and Airbnb announced it intends to follow suit in 2020.

If you're applying for a job at one of these stellar startups, Chait said there was a relatively easy way to draw attention to yourself and up your chances of landing the role you want: Be active in your community and build your personal brand.

According to Daniel Chait, the CEO of the recruiting-software company Greenhouse, few job candidates do much to help themselves stand out amid a sea of talented applicants.

"Most people do zero," he said. "So the bar is pretty low."

Here's how to build up your personal brand if you want to land a job at Slack or Airbnb.

Maybe that means attending Meetup events for people in your industry; maybe it means staying active on Instagram if you're in a field like marketing.

Chait shared a hypothetical example of someone looking to make a career change: The person has a degree in art history, and has been working in food service, but they'd love to get a job in tech.

"Do you have a GitHub profile?" Chait said, referring to a site that hosts free programming projects. "Have you contributed to some open-source projects? Have you gone to a local technical meetup? Have you written some articles on Stack Overflow?" (Stack Overflow is a question-and-answer site for programmers.)

Dora Korpar, a former Trader Joe's employee who's now a programmer at a San Francisco startup, told Business Insider's Julie Bort that it's helpful to create a GitHub profile and participate in open-source projects, since programmers evaluate each other's work there.

Even people who started contributing to Quora and Reddit forums without any intention of finding a job have found career benefits, like potential clients looking at their profiles and getting in touch.

An additional benefit of being involved in your community, Chait said, is that you might meet people whose teams have openings. "You get the inside track," he said. (Though your willingness to schmooze at Meetup-type events depends on your feelings about the power of networking.)

"You don't have to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author or have 2 million followers on Twitter to really stand out," Chait added. "You just have to do something that's somewhat noteworthy and different and represents you."

SEE ALSO: This LinkedIn message took 2 minutes to write and got the sender a job at a successful startup — even though they weren't hiring

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