I had a meeting with a young person yesterday looking for a job. We had coffee because they are a friend of a friend, so they passed through a filter that normally would have said, “Don’t bother.” Not because I don’t want to meet young, smart people. Not because I’m not interested in coffee or conversation. But because I don’t look for team members that way.

The reality is I don’t “hire” people. I never really have. I don’t post jobs or sift through resumes. If you hand me one, it gets put in a folder or a stack somewhere. But it doesn’t become actionable for me.

If you are looking for a job, you become like hundreds of others. You are relying on being a little bit smarter, having a slightly better pedigree, or having something that provides you with that little edge to move to the top of the big stack of black and white words. I don’t like those odds, and neither should you.

You can be very creative (it helps).

But even creativity can be fall short in a world of so many choices and so little time.

Solve a problem for me. I need rock stars, painters, engineers, architects, and dreamers in my life, people that fully intend to do amazing things. So make it easy for me. You will work for free; you want to open an office/outpost for me somewhere and have already gotten the funding or sponsorship to enable it. You have Lionel Messi lined up to meet me, talk soccer, and collaborate with me. Make it matter to your audience.

If you are solving problems, it isn’t a hire or a job. Make it impossible for me to say NO, and you work yourself into what you wanted.

Same logic for getting your company funded, getting board membership, getting a lunch, dinner, or coffee…

Don’t bother with the resume or summary; solve problems and get what you want.