Hiring hackathons. They used to work so well. Geeks used to be excited about building something cool and getting recognized for it. The sponsoring companies were happy at the prospect of hiring some of these smart geeks. But then something went wrong. We started overdoing it. More and more companies felt obliged to join the… Continue reading Cutting short hiring hackathons

I know you hate it. You find interesting jobs and send messages to the job posters. But you get reply from very few of them. What is wrong? Here are top reasons why you might not be getting responses and how to fix that. Your first impression is lacking Use casual display picture, bad grammar… Continue reading How to get more responses to your job applications

One of the best things about running CutShort is that we get to see so many early stage startups. The innovative ideas and energy in the founders is very refreshing. But sometimes we run into the founders that seem to have taken the plunge a bit too early. Starting up is a huge challenge anyway… Continue reading Before you start your startup

It feels nice. A full 18 months after we wrote the first lines of code of CutShort, we have finally turned in profit this month. A proud moment for a bootstrapped startup like us. Looking back, when we decided to bootstrap back in 2015, it was not a common thing to do. Every other startup… Continue reading How we bootstrapped to our first profit

In 2016, while the world seemed to look inward (e.g. Brexit, Trump), it’s great that we Indians managed to largely remain a liberal lot. We Indians retained our firm belief in free markets and unanimously voted against anything that threatened the level playing field. We shot down clever monopolistic ideas such as Airtel Zero and Facebook… Continue reading Banning Amazon and Uber won't work; let's help each other ?

Comparing startup job offers is confusing, even for seasoned professionals. There is limited information available about startups and popular opinions are often subjective and based on the media hype. Result – many people either accept a bad startup job offer or reject one from the next Google or WhatsApp… To illustrate this dilemma, let’s say… Continue reading How to choose the right startup job offer?

In an unfortunate turn of events, Flipkart announced last week that it is “firing” 800 to 100 employees. I wrote a LinkedIn post on this topic and was overwhelmed to see 100+ comments from people who have expressed their shock on the way Flipkart has handled this entire event. Looking ahead: Connecting Flipkart employees with new employers Criticization doesn’t help anyone.… Continue reading Helping 1000 employees "misfired" and "massfired" by Flipkart

Yes, that’s true. After a year of experimentation and learning, we are changing our name to “CutShort”. Why? SocialHelpouts was a great name, but only when we had explained it to someone for a good 10 minutes. When an average attention span is less than 10 seconds, asking for 10 minutes online is like asking for… Continue reading SocialHelpouts is now CutShort!

Date 14th April. CutShort office. 11 pm. Nikunj: Guys, we need to participate in a VC pitch event tomorrow morning. Can we make a funding deck tonight? Anubhav (rolls his eyes): We are raising funds? Nikunj: Not really. I had filled up an application form for a pitching event. They shortlisted us. Vinit (after sliding through some… Continue reading The slippery slope of startup funding