Luciana Diaz Albadan did everything a job seeker is supposed to do: she tailored her resume, submitted her application through the company portal, and sent a polite follow-up email. But it was a subsequent, highly unconventional cold email that actually secured her the job.
After applying to Tenex, an AI startup, the 24-year-old noticed something striking: the company’s roughly dozen employees were entirely male. So, she tracked down the co-founders' email addresses and sent a message with a bold, clickbait-style subject line: “Tenex has swiped right on 0 women.”
Her opening line was equally direct: “My name is Luciana, and I plan to be the first woman you hire at Tenex (according to your very public team breakdown on LinkedIn).”
A ‘Gut Punch in the Best Way’
The tactic worked. Alex Lieberman, a Tenex co-founder, says the email was “the definition of something that makes you stop in your tracks.”
Hiring more women was already a priority for the founders, making her message “a gut punch in the best way,” Lieberman says. “Her email was so full of voice and showed her skills rather than just telling us about them.”
Lieberman immediately offered her an interview. After a screening call, a take-home assessment, and a panel interview, Diaz Albadan was hired as a strategist in February. Today, women make up more than a third of Tenex’s staff.
Navigating a Grueling Job Market
The bold move was born out of necessity. Diaz Albadan graduated with a computer science degree in 2024 and initially took a "spray-and-pray" approach to a difficult job market, sending generic cover letters and sterile LinkedIn messages.
The data shows she was facing an uphill battle. Between December 2025 and February 2026, the U.S. hiring rate for entry-level workers fell 6% year-over-year, according to LinkedIn. Furthermore, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates (ages 22 to 27) hit 5.6% in March, significantly higher than the 4.2% average for all workers.
Realizing her standard approach wasn't working, she decided to take a calculated risk on Tenex, a company whose mission she genuinely admired.
The Secret Sauce: No AI
Ironically, for a role at an AI firm, Diaz Albadan deliberately avoided using artificial intelligence to draft her outreach.
“I didn’t want to send them obvious ‘AI slop,’” she says. “A lot of people are turning AI into their ghostwriter, and then you sound like every other person.”
Tech career coach Kyle Elliott agrees. “This worked because it was so tailored,” he says. “It had a human touch, it was well-researched, and it was customized. The humor and confidence didn’t hurt, either.”
How to Replicate Her Success (Without Copying It)
Elliott suggests job seekers replicate Diaz Albadan’s underlying strategy, not her exact email. He recommends reaching out to five to 10 relevant contacts—such as recruiters or future peers—for every application you submit.
To stand out, Elliott advises:
* **Customize your subject line** so it doesn’t read as mass-produced.
* **Keep the body concise.** Specify the role, summarize your qualifications in a few short paragraphs, or provide a bulleted list of three to five things that set you apart.
* **Include a clear call to action,** along with your LinkedIn profile and resume.
* **Follow up** if you haven’t heard back.
“Your guiding light when writing it should be: How can you show, in the world of AI, that you’re human?” Elliott says.
When Diaz Albadan shared her success story on LinkedIn, dozens of job seekers tried to mimic her by simply swapping the word "women" for another demographic relevant to them. She notes they missed the point entirely by trying to duplicate an original idea. “None of them broke the template,” she says.
Ultimately, her success wasn't about a clever gimmick, but authenticity.
“If Diaz Albadan has learned anything from this experience, it’s that owning your personal narrative is key,” she reflects. “I was trying to really show myself for who I was, and I think that took me very far.”