Concept
Generating Offers
Generating offers is a job-search strategy from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans in which you stop applying cold to postings and instead hold curious, low-pressure conversations with people in the field, so that opportunities, often unadvertised ones, reach you before you have to choose.
The default search is to scroll postings, polish a CV, send it off and wait. It feels like progress, but Burnett and Evans call it the weakest route, especially if you are changing direction. A posting describes someone who has already done the job. A career changer gets screened out by software or by a recruiter skimming for keywords. Many good roles are filled before they are advertised, by someone a team member already knows. So the goal shifts. You are not hunting for the one right job. You are generating offers, because you cannot choose well between options you do not have. The engine is the prototype conversation: you ask someone for their story, not for a job. When the curiosity is real and the conversations keep coming, the other person eventually asks, "Would you like to meet the team?" That is when an offer path opens. Turning an offer down later is part of the design, not a failure.
A real-life example
Elena, a high-school chemistry teacher, wanted to move into product work at an edtech company. Instead of sending forty applications, she messaged three alumni from her university and asked only how their days actually went. On the third call, a product lead said, "We're about to need someone who understands classrooms. Want to talk to my manager?" Three weeks later Elena had an offer for a role that was never posted.
How to use it
- 1List five people doing work you're curious about, and ask each for 20 minutes to hear their story, not to ask for a job.
- 2In every conversation, ask what a real day looks like and what surprised them, then close with "Who else should I talk to?"
- 3When someone invites you to a next conversation, say yes. Collect several offers before you decide on any of them.