He Didn’t Fit the JD. He Fixed the Problem Instead.
A few months ago, someone forwarded me an email from our general inbox. It was from a guy named Arnav. No fancy subject line. No resume attachment. Just a quiet two-line note:
“Hey—noticed your mobile site search feels slow. I rebuilt something similar last year for a marketplace. Just sharing a version of it that might help.”
There was a GitHub link. I almost skipped it.
No application. No cover letter.
No keyword-optimized anything.
But I clicked.
It wasn’t just clean code. It worked. It solved a real problem.
And yet, under our usual process, that email would’ve been filtered out.
Because Arnav didn’t apply through the portal. He didn’t match the job title.
He just… contributed.
What We’re Missing When We Filter Too Much
Traditional hiring filters for safety.
We look for signals: education, years of experience, big brand logos.
But signals don’t always equal substance. And substance doesn’t always come in a format our systems can read.
We’re conditioned to look for what’s expected—so much so that we ignore what’s exceptional when it doesn’t look like it should.
That’s where AI can shift things.
Not by speeding up the resume screening.
But by rethinking what we value in the first place.
Your Inbox Is a Goldmine (If You Know What to Look For)
There are hundreds of messages sitting in inboxes right now from people who were never going to pass a keyword filter.
But their work is strong. Their intent is clear.
And most importantly—their thinking is original.
They’ve shared prototypes without being asked.
They’ve suggested fixes without titles.
They’ve shown up early, without permission, and tried to help anyway.
What they lack in formatting, they make up for in initiative.
That’s not noise. That’s a signal.
AI Can Help Us Rethink What a “Great Hire” Looks Like
What if your hiring model was trained not just on past hires, but on:
- The emails people ignored, but shouldn’t have
- The follow-ups that showed character
- The side projects that predicted growth
- The unsolicited ideas that ended up in your backlog
AI has the capacity to spot things we’ve trained ourselves to overlook.
We just have to show it what matters.
Founders Don’t Always Come Through the Career Page
Some of the best people I’ve worked with didn’t have the “right” background.
They didn’t wait to be asked.
They noticed something, they built something, and they sent a note that started with, “Hope it’s okay to share this…”
Those aren’t applicants.
They’re architects.
And AI—if guided right—can help us find more of them.
Regards,
Rupesh
P.S.
If you’re someone who’s ever sent that kind of email—where you just built something useful and hoped someone noticed—this is me noticing. Don’t worry about the format. Just send it.
Cloverbites By Rupesh Sanghavi 
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