Skip NavigationLuciana Diaz Albadan submitted her job application on her employer’s website, but it’s what she did after that sealed the deal.Square Mouth Studios
We’re looking for people who’ve used unique tactics to land a job. (We’ve published stories, for example, about a job seeker whose snail mail got her a job, and one who landed a role after sending an onboarding plan with her thank-you note.) If this sounds like you, please fill out this form and we may be in touch. Thank you!
Luciana Diaz Albadan applied for her job the way many people are encouraged to do: through the employer’s website with a tailored resume and an email follow-up to the hiring team. But it’s what she said in her message that sealed the deal on her candidacy.
After submitting her application through the employer’s job portal, the 24-year-old sent a cold email to the founders calling out the fact that they didn’t yet have any female employees on their startup’s staff. Then she said she intended to be the first.
“It’s become a little bit of Tenex lore,” she tells CNBC Make It of her application to the AI startup, which she joined in February as a strategist.
She says the tactic helped her stand out in a difficult job market. Between December 2025 and February 2026, the average seasonally adjusted hiring rate of entry-level workers in the U.S. fell 6% compared to the same period the year prior, according to LinkedIn data.
The unemployment rate among recent college graduates ages 22 to 27 was 5.6% in March, compared to 4.2% among all workers and 3.1% among all college grads, according to the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s latest available data.
How her attention-grabbing strategy paid off
Diaz Albadan graduated with her computer science degree in 2024 and, discouraged by the job market, says she took a spray-and-pray approach to her job search, sending “generic” cover letters and “sterile” LinkedIn messages.
But she was drawn to Tenex for its work and mission, so she wanted to give it her all. She says she noticed that Tenex’s staff of about a dozen workers at the time was entirely men and decided to call it out. (Today, women make up more than one-third of Tenex, she says.)
Diaz Albadan hesitated at first. “This feels like a ballsy thing to do,” she says, adding that she didn’t want to be brought on as a “diversity hire” just because she’s a woman.
After some thought, she felt there was nothing to lose and tracked down the email addresses for Tenex’s co-founders.
In the subject line, she wrote, “Tenex has swiped right on 0 women.” She used a “clickbait-y” subject line hoping it’d pique their interest, she says.
Then her opening line read, “My name is Luciana and I plan to be the first woman you hire at Tenex (according to your very public team breakdown on LinkedIn).”
“It was the definition of something that makes you stop in your tracks,” says Alex Lieberman, one of the Tenex cofounders Diaz Albadan emailed.
It had been “very top of mind” for Tenex’s cofounders to hire more women, Lieberman says, so her email “was a gut punch in the best way.”
Diaz Albadan’s email was “so full of voice” and showed her skills versus simply telling them, Lieberman says. He responded to offer her an interview. After a few rounds that included a screening call, take-home assessment, and panel interview, Diaz Albadan got the job.
The initiative she demonstrated in her email “speaks way more than any kind of formal application process itself,” he adds.
Why it worked: ‘It was so tailored’ and didn’t use AI
Diaz Albadan says she deliberately didn’t use AI to write her outreach — “ironic” given Tenex is an AI firm, she says — to avoid sending them obvious “AI slop” and to show off her personality.
“A lot of people are turning AI into their ghostwriter, and then you sound like every other person,” says tech career coach Kyle Elliott. “This worked because it was so tailored.”
Her message was successful, Elliott says, because it had a human touch, it was well-researched and it was customized. The humor and confidence didn’t hurt either, he adds.
How to replicate her success without copying it
Elliott says Diaz Albadan’s example is worth following. He suggests reaching out to five to 10 people for each application you submit. They could be recruiters or someone in a role similar to what you’re seeking. If you’re going for a managerial role, for example, consider contacting other managers in that department.
Customize each subject line, Elliott says, so it doesn’t read as mass-produced or AI-generated.
In the body, specify the role you’re interested in and summarize your qualifications in a few short paragraphs, Elliott suggests. Alternatively, write a bulleted list of three to five reasons they should hire you, or three to five things that set you apart. End with a clear call to action, and include your LinkedIn profile and resume. Don’t be afraid to send a follow-up if you haven’t heard back.
Your guiding light when writing it is, “How can you show, in the world of AI, that you’re human?” Elliott says.
When she posted about her hiring success story on LinkedIn, Diaz Albadan says dozens of hopefuls messaged her and copied her approach by simply swapping out women for a demographic relevant to them. They missed the point, she says, by trying to duplicate an original idea: “None of them broke the template.”
If Diaz Albadan has learned anything from this experience, she says, it’s that owning your personal narrative is key. “I was trying to really show myself for who I was,” she adds, “and I think that took me very far.”
Want to get ahead at work? Then you need to learn how to make effective small talk. In CNBC’s new online course, How To Talk To People At Work, expert instructors share practical strategies to help you use everyday conversations to gain visibility, build meaningful relationships and accelerate your career growth. Sign up today!
About The Author
