I Am Not Applying For A Job At Perplexity
I love my job. I’m not leaving my job. I don’t even qualify for the job I’m about to discuss… But I can’t help myself when I have an idea. I recently saw this post on X:
As I’ve mentioned already, I don’t even know where to begin to answer Raman’s brief: “How would you uniquely approach bottoms-up University and K-12 student growth.” I barely understand the words forming that sentence if I’m honest. But this got me thinking about how people apply for jobs. I know a few people looking for new jobs and they all say the same thing: I have applied for 50, 60, 100 jobs and I never hear back.
I’m not good at job hunting. I’m OK at networking and that’s served me well over the years but I think AI is ushering in new ways to talk to employers, or at the very least talk to the people looking for real talent and true agency.
So with idea in mind, I went to my favourite AI building assistant, Replit, and talked to it about my problem. (As an aside, when I say “…talked to it…”, I mean literally talked to it using transcription, I’ve found this to be the most descriptive way to engage with AI.) OK, so I talk to the Replit agent and tell it about Perplexity, why I’m interested in the job, share my linkedin profile, the original X post, and type in some key unifying points between my career and perplexity and then ask Replit to build me a something because I need perplexity to hire me.
I hit enter.
And I waited.
And I waited.
And for just a little longer I waited, and then…
Replit shot out a something that did exactly what I wanted it to do.
It took my career, my experience and my history and added the appropriate context for the original X post (job ad) but in a very interesting way.
If I were applying for a very specific job that I absolutely loved (which is really what we all should aspire towards, right?) I would do this:
I would build a landing page.
No, I would build landing page, after landing page, after landing page for every job I wanted because now you can with AI tools. You have simple hosting, one click domain connection, and an intelligent partner to help you think through your career and each application, mix up designs and host the pages for you.
The AI will hold the context of your experience, cv, LinkedIn, it can apply relevant brand design nods to the employer’s brand or vibe and it can do this all in less than two evenings.
I honestly can’t believe I just typed that, but I built this entire landing page top to bottom, in two evenings.
Of course I had to do a lot of design prompting and content tweaking but holy shit, look at this bloody landing page.
In the past, someone like me with my skillset (or lack of engineer/design skillset) would need a lot of money, many partners and a lot of time, I’m talking about months here, maybe weeks if you’re lucky and know people.
I can’t stress this enough; the only thing holding me back right now is the idea popping into my head. Execution used to be difficult, complex, expensive, reliant on unreliable partnerships and a lot of intricate systems coming together. Today you can think of a new way to combine different things (job ad, job application, landing page, LinkedIn, AI) and then two days later have a job application for a job you don’t want at a company you highly respect for a newsletter you’re writing.
OH, did I mention I also spent €10 and bought a domain: perplexinic.com ← click it! (I haven’t setup up the SSL certificate yet so just click through the warning).
Stay curious,
Nic
Here’s a list of a few ways I used AI this week.
Design landing pages
Build a new idea into reality (on my phone!!)
Translate languages
Summarise meeting transcriptions into actionable items
Review PDF agreements
Do research for various work and private projects
Help me with timezone planning
Trip planning
Assist with financial planning and help with researching stock portfolio balancing and performance
Help with basic laptop settings help
Fact-checking a story I read
Calculate a tip at dinner
Research which pro athletes endorse sports betting
Build a go-to-market strategy
Research a new idea I have for Speakers
Research ways to combat/slow down dementia in older dogs
Remember the name of a night club I used to go in JHB 20 years ago (Hit reply and ask me the name of the club)
To hold myself accountable I want to share updates about my side projects every newsletter.
New
Daystash.com - save links now, read them later in a personal newsletter in your inbox. More on this in a later newsletter! For now, sign up and pay $25 per year to get a personalised email of links you don’t want to forget.
1000fifteen - An app to help me learn the 1000 most frequently spoken Dutch words and speak basic sentences.
Splitville - I’m not giving up on this one! I found an open-source project that I’m going to try and implement to restart this.
Significant progress
Decision Tracker - 192 users, 11 likes and 3 comments. No new updates or releases.
Still running
GoodGoodweeds - Changed the name and still tracking my own weed reviews until I can get this out in the world! A weed review site. Early development and currently testing out Leafy to see if it's worth me even pursuing Goodweeds.
StumbleSong - No change. Still around, still working but I haven't made any changes this month.
Deadpool
Flirtbot - Moved to deadpool, dating apps have started adding this functionality natively.
PositionMe - Moved to deadpool. I think monetising this would be too complex. An app for couples who want to try new sex positions. You both rate various positions and the app then suggests the most compatible options to you to try.
BucketListAssist - Added to the deadpool for now. Too complex for me to stay engaged.
Pixeldash - Added to the deadpool - 20 April 2025. I don’t want to build games. While this is still live on the domain, no progress has been made and I’ve decided game dev is fun for the weekends but I want to spend my time on solving problems.
A list of links that I think are worth saving and a short breakdown of why I shared it with you.
The best product launch I’ve seen in years - The Pencilvac
Homemade DVD Dodge game - Using AI and motion detection
Google’s AI in Chrome - I was so impressed with Google’s latest I/O event that I bought stock (not financial advice!)
Great advice for first time founders - Copy and improve.
If you made it this far, to me a huge favour and share this with someone. They need it, I need it, give us a win, hey?