Figure Out Your Unfair Advantage (Job Interviews)
I’ve had the pleasure of attending a couple of mixers with the Asset Management club of an MBA program local to me.
It was a real treat to interact and engage with some smart, highly motivated MBA students. As sometimes happens, the topic of career came up. I found myself sharing some thoughts, but one particular idea kept coming up.
It was to figure out your unfair advantage and lean into that.
I first came across the idea of unfair advantage in an Ali Abdaal video where he talked about the book (called The Unfair Advantage) and interviewed the authors Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba. I viewed that video over two years ago, and it’s still memorable.
By the way, be sure to stick around until the end of this email because I’ll show you how to multiply the effectiveness of this.
What Is An Unfair Advantage?
An unfair advantage is something that you possess that’s uncommon and valuable. I’ll go through some examples soon.
But, at a high level, your unfair advantage lets you win more often than expected.
It is NOT, however, something unethical or improper.
Let’s get into some examples that might clarify it and get you thinking about your unfair advantages.
Experience
You may have a set of experiences that make you uniquely qualified to succeed in a particular job.
Let’s say you have started a digital small business in high school. You were designing websites and had developed some basic skills in search engine optimization (SEO). You could use that in interviews for some marketing roles.
You’ll understand a function you might supervise.
Others might not know what questions to ask people in those roles.
Alternatively, you might have industry expertise. It would be a huge advantage in consulting or investment banking groups.
If you’re interested in those areas, try to connect with people in those industry groups at the firms you want to work for.
Remember, you typically need high grades to get interviews in these fields.
Your unfair advantage pushes you over the top, but it won’t make up for huge gaps in their requirements.
Where You’ve Lived/Language
Many companies are interested in hiring people with experience living and working in different parts of the world.
For example, you might have grown up and gone to university in South Korea and then worked in the finance industry there prior to your MBA.
That’s something few people can copy. It’s uniquely valuable to companies that want to do business there, invest in Asia, or source products from there.
Let me clarify something at this point.
An unfair advantage can be overwhelming or just one more positive on your resume. Leaning into it means highlighting it in your hero stories in interviews. It could also mean suggesting to companies ideas on how they can meet their goals in those markets.
Let’s say you’re from India and want to get an asset management analyst position.
Leaning into your unfair advantage could mean analyzing where Apple could set up supply chains in India. It could also mean analyzing the opportunities for your target company to invest in a certain set of companies that are poised to benefit from it.
Prepare a simple PowerPoint deck or relatively brief report and highlight some possibilities.
It doesn’t have to be a 40-page report, but it shows that you are taking what you know and using it to offer solutions to the company’s problems.
Intelligence
Everyone at this stage is smart.
If this happens to be an unfair advantage for you, it’s because you are VERY smart.
Rarely is this enough on it’s own but it’s a great card if you’ve got it. Find a way to use it, supported by evidence like high grades.
Passion
I can practically hear you rolling your eyes. I know, I know.
Everyone says they’re passionate about the job and industry.
Well, let me tell you, I’ve interviewed A LOT of people over time. I can tell relatively quickly who is really passionate about the industry. There are clues everywhere, and when you find someone who demonstrably loves the work, it shows.
It’s generally not that easy to fake and funny enough, it’s often the passion for an industry that makes you good at it.
So what do I mean?
If I meet someone who claims to love investing, I might ask them which books shaped their investment thinking.
If their answer is that they don’t read much or listen to podcasts, they’re not passionate about investing. Or, they don’t care about getting better at their craft.
For example, two individuals both complete their computer science assignments. But the person who loves computers then spends the rest of their weekend making a homebrew network with computers they built.
Both fulfilled the requirements, but one used their free time to augment their skills.
I’d urge all of you to be passionate about what you do.
You’ll enjoy it more and become better at it because you’ll find ways to improve.
Great Social Skills
You might be that person that everyone just likes.
Wherever you go, you seem to be able to connect with people.
This is a great characteristic, and you should make sure to leverage it. The obvious place is in roles involving sales since people will likely trust you because they connect with you. There may be other ways to leverage it, though.
Many jobs have client relationship management as an important but not principal element.
If it’s down to you and someone else and you’re both equally skilled, focus on the ability to connect with clients.
As you become more senior in many of these roles, sales and client relationships become a bigger and bigger part of the job.
Educational Background
Let’s face it: there are a set of schools that provide you with an unfair advantage when you have them on your resume.
We can debate why that’s the case and whether it makes sense or not, but you’d be crazy not to take advantage of it.
By the way, that doesn’t mean walking into an interview wearing a sweatshirt from Harvard. What it means is taking advantage of the robust and generally supportive network that such schools provide.
Which brings me to two other nuances of this whole idea of unfair advantage.
1) An unfair advantage is not enough on its own. Being an alum might get you an interview, but then you have to perform.
2) You might also have noticed something I completely glossed over. It may be that top schools have a lot of alumni doing interesting things. This definitely makes for a deep pool of potential help for you. What I didn’t mention is that it’s not just the top 5 schools that have impressive alums doing impressive things.
This is another way of saying you may have an unfair advantage that you are ignoring or selling yourself short on.
In a funny way, unfair advantage is a bit of a relative thing.
There is only one person who is the smartest but LOTS of people who have an unfair advantage because they are very smart.
When people talk about unfair advantage, one aspect I think is very wrong is that they think of it as something unique to that person. There could be two people in your graduating class who worked in finance in India.
So in a sense, you both would have an unfair advantage in jobs where that’s highly relevant.
But there is a way to make the unfair advantage unique to you. Before we get there, let’s consider…
How To Identify Your Unfair Advantage?
There are a few ways to identify your unfair advantages.
Figuring Them Out Yourself
I’d say there are two kinds of unfair advantages that you figure out yourself: obvious and non-obvious.
Obvious ones are just that.
If you’re in the top 10% of your class, intelligence and work ethic may be a couple of unfair advantages.
To figure out the less obvious ones I’d recommend going through an exercise I first heard attributed to James Altucher.
He recommends making a list of 10 items, in this case, ten unfair advantages. The idea is that you’ll find the obvious ones first and then the rest will be duds or gems because you had to struggle to figure them out.
One way to do this is to sit down and not get up until you have ten ideas each day for 3 or 4 days.
They can be ridiculous ideas, like “I can hold my breath for 45 seconds,” but you have to write down ten of them.
Then, once you have 30 or 40 possible candidates for unfair advantages, you start to hone in on the ones that will help you the most. I suspect you’ll be surprised with what you come up with and there’ll be more gems on the list than you might expect.
Talk to People
This one is also pretty simple but can be effective. Talk to people who know you well but from different domains.
Tell them what you’re doing and ask them what they think your unfair advantages are.
It’s important here to cast a wide net. What is obvious to your professors may not be obvious to your family. The opposite also applies. The people you talk to should be some combination of
- Your family
- Your business school friends
- Your nonbusiness school friends
- Your professors
- Your previous employers and colleagues, where possible
- Coaches and friends from previous sports teams, where possible
- Supervisors or colleagues from extracurricular organizations you’ve been a part of
These are some ideas of who to talk to and should give you a comprehensive list of what might be your unfair advantages.
It’s even more valuable to consider different domains. Figure out how to make your unfair advantage unique to you. Or at least, make it much more rare.
Combining Unfair Advantages To Create Something Rare
Combining unfair advantages is a way to transform a couple of unusual – but not unique – unfair advantages into something much more rare.
This is where you can really set yourself apart. Once you start combining two or three or more unfair advantages, you start to get into territory where fewer and fewer people can compete with you.
Let’s say you love and are excellent at computer programming but are really socially skilled. That makes you somewhat unusual.
If you take that and combine it with having grown up overseas, things start to get really interesting.
Alternatively, let’s say you have really high grades and secured a great internship. You’ll stand out if you position it right.
Now combine that with a love for the industry. This will let you talk about what you’ve learned from your internship. You can also talk about the podcasts and books you’ve read.
Is there any doubt that this combination makes for an interesting candidate?
I can keep going, but you get the idea.
Parting Thoughts
I hope you use this idea and leverage your unfair advantages. So much of the job search is how you position yourself. This method structures your strengths in a compelling way.
One last note I’ll add is that you can also use this to work backward. Let’s say you want grades to be an unfair advantage for you. Early in the year, start using the evidence-based study approaches I describe and work hard.
Let’s say you are enthusiastic about a particular industry. Start early in the year to do things that prove that. Read about it and find ways to learn more.
You’ll be more confident and have more to draw on for your answers to wow your interviewers.
P.S.
🎧 Good listen recommendation 🎧
Check out this Ali Abdaal interview with Indistractable author Nir Eyal.
I’d heard about Eyal and his book Indistractable for quite some time but wasn’t yet familiar with his work. This was a great intro and I left with specific tactics I could implement immediately to help me reduce distractions and complete more high quality work, faster.
Definitely worth a listen.
