The Texas Two-Step
Two contests. Two skills that'll pay off long after today. Take both steps, show off your hustle, and dance your way to a career-changing prize. Let's two-step!
The Prize: A Free LinkedIn Profile Makeover from Jeremy
Each contest winner earns a personal, top-to-bottom LinkedIn profile makeover from Jeremy Schifeling - former LinkedIn insider and founder of The Job Insiders. Two winners, two makeovers, two profiles recruiters won't be able to scroll past!
Here's the deal: landing the job you want comes down to two moves - reaching the right people and working smarter with AI. So we've built one contest around each. Do them in order, give them your best, and enter both before we wrap. Two steps entered = two shots at the prize!
The First Step: The Alum Outreach Challenge
Your network is your net worthThe fastest way into a company you love isn't the "Apply" button - it's a fellow Longhorn, Comet, Maverick, or Roadrunner who's already there. In this step, you'll find one alum at a company you're excited about and craft an outreach message so personal they can't help but say yes.
- Pick a company you're genuinely excited about - the one you'd be thrilled to work at.
- Open that company's LinkedIn Page and click the People tab.
- Find a fellow alum. Use the "School" filter (or search your university's name) to surface people who came from your UT campus and now work there.
- Write a short, super-personalized note asking for a quick chat - not a job. Mention your shared school, something specific about their path, and keep it to a few genuine sentences.
- Send it to Jeremy for review first - don't message the alum yet! Jeremy will give you feedback so your real outreach lands even better (details below).
What Makes a Winning Message
- Personal, not copy-paste - it clearly could only have been written to this one person
- Short and respectful of their time - a few sentences, easy to say yes to
- A shared connection - your school, their journey, a project or post of theirs
- A small, specific ask - a quick 15-minute chat to learn from them, not "can you get me a job"
The Second Step: The Bot-Powered Business Challenge
Your side hustle starts hereThis is where your entrepreneurial streak comes out to play. Build an AI bot that could be the very first spark of a small business - the kind of scrappy, of-the-moment idea this generation does best. Think a social media content generator for local shops, a late-night taco truck finder, a thrift-flip pricing assistant, a game-day parking spotter - whatever fills a real gap and makes people smile.
- Go to PartyRock.aws and sign in - it's free and there's zero coding involved.
- Dream up your business idea. What's a product or service people would actually pay for - or at least love to use every day?
- Describe the bot you want and let PartyRock build it - then test it, tweak it, and make it shine.
- Make your app public: click the Share button at the top of your app, switch it from Private to Public, and copy your app's link.
The Bots Are In!
Check out the side-hustle bots our Texas crew dreamed up in Step 2. Click through, try them out, and get inspired.