PDF.ai

Founder

Testimonial

Cisco Systems

Senior Software Engineer

Bootstrapping

📚 PDF.ai: Chat with PDFs using AI
💜 Testimonial.to: Grow your business with social proof 

Also, making Docsium.com and Supportman.io for fun

Damon Chen

I'm an experienced interviewer and career coach with a passion for helping people succeed in their careers. 

I've conducted over 500 interviews and reviewed over 2000 resumes, giving me a deep understanding of what employers are looking for. 

I've also helped numerous people with their resumes, cover letters, and LinkedIn profiles, and I've guided and mentored several others to get promoted.

I can help you with:

1. Resume and cover letter writing: I can help you write effective resumes and cover letters that will make you stand out from the competition.

2. LinkedIn profile optimization: I can help you create a LinkedIn profile that will showcase your skills and experience in the best possible light.

3.  Interview preparation: I can teach you how to ace your interviews by helping you prepare for common questions, practice your delivery, and build your confidence.

4. Career guidance and mentorship: I can help you identify your career goals, develop a plan to achieve them, and provide support and guidance along the way.

Here is what some of my past customers say about my work 

- The changes you have done to my resume are magical, all of sudden recruiters are contacting me 

- I had no clue a resume could be written in less than 2 pages and still talk about my 20 years of work experience

- The resume looks good to me. I have read several times that resume should not be more than a couple of pages and in all honesty I have seen resumes on one page but never could shorten my own!
Thanks for making mine short and crisp without skipping anything of significance 


If you're ready to take your career to the next level, contact me today. I'd love to learn more about your goals and how I can help you achieve them.

Vik Gambhir

Gen Z are bad for business.

They drink less.
They want work life balance.
They quit jobs that make them miserable.

Naturally, companies are concerned.

Alcohol sales drop.
“Work hard, play hard” becomes “log off on time.”
Managers discover employees have… boundaries.

And somehow this is called entitlement.

Maybe Gen Z isn’t bad for business.

Maybe they’re just bad for business models that only worked when everyone was too tired to question them.

Turns out “we’ve always done it this way” doesn’t work anymore.

Want a killer resume? DM me | I help people land jobs locally and overseas by writing stellar Resumes, LinkedIn Profiles and Cover Letters.

graphical user interface, text, application

Everyone talks about the pink tax.

But nobody talks about the Beard Tax.

Every time I go vegetable shopping, I return home to a post-purchase review meeting with my wife and mother-in-law.

No greetings.
Straight to audit.

“Kitne ka liya?”
“Bargain kiya tha na?”

I confidently explain how I negotiated like a senior procurement manager.

Then the comparison report appears.

Bananas from the exact same shop:

Mother-in-law: ₹60 a dozen
Wife: ₹65 a dozen
Me: ₹80 a dozen

Same vendor.
Same bananas.
Same day.

Apparently my beard automatically unlocks premium pricing.

I’m convinced sabziwalas run dynamic pricing:

Clean shave → standard rates
Experienced aunty → wholesale pricing
Bearded guy acting confident → enterprise plan

At this point I’m not buying vegetables.
I’m sponsoring the vendor’s child’s education.

I played Holi in India after almost a decade. And it made me realize why the movie Animal became such a big hit.

Not because of the movie.

But because of what it reflects about us.

This morning, my feed was full of reels showing women being harassed in the name of
“bura na mano, Holi hai”.

Different context.
Same pattern.

Disrespect towards women disguised as celebration.

Which is exactly what disturbed me when I tried watching Animal last weekend.
I couldn’t even get through half the film.

Not because it was intense.

But because aggression, control, and disrespect are packaged as “masculinity”.

Somewhere along the way we started confusing loudness with strength.

Real masculinity is discipline.
Respect.
Responsibility.
The ability to protect, not dominate.

The only correct thing about the movie might be its title.
Actually… even that might be unfair to animals.

Because animals don’t choose cruelty.

Humans do.

Maybe the real question isn’t why movies like this become hits.

Maybe the real question is why behaviour like this still gets celebrated.

If a company says “Only IIT or IIM,” we call it hiring the best. If a job says “MBA required,” we call it maintaining standards. But when Deepinder Goyal sets a different kind of hiring criteria, suddenly it’s discrimination?

I honestly don’t get it.

Companies reject people all the time.

Not from a top college? You’re out.
No MBA? You’re out.
No big company experience? You’re out.
Not the “right fit”? You’re out.

And we all accept that. That’s just how hiring works.

Every job description is basically a list of people who won’t be considered.

So why does it become a moral issue only when the criteria changes?

You can disagree with the requirement. That’s completely fair.

But acting shocked that companies choose who they want to hire doesn’t make much sense.

We don’t really hate filters.
We just hate the ones that filter us out.

Or am I missing something?

I asked a candidate his salary expectation.
He said 47K INR.

I had approval to go up to 85K in hand.
He was a perfect match.

So I sent him an offer for 85K.
No negotiation games.
No squeezing margins.
Just fairness.

He smiled. I felt good.
And then I woke up.

Because that only happens in LinkedIn bedtime stories.

Let’s turn this into a puzzle:

If a company has a budget of 85K
And a candidate asks for 47K

What happens next?
A) They pay 47K because that’s what he asked
B) They pay 85K because that’s the real budget
C) They negotiate it down to 37K
D) They say “We value people” and still lowball

Be honest.
We all know the answer is C.

The real negotiation isn’t about value.
 It’s about how much they can save.

Got this message from a friend today.

The funny part?

The silent ones never comment on LinkedIn.

They conduct performance reviews privately on WhatsApp. 😄

LinkedIn gives engagement. 
College friends give reality checks.

graphical user interface, text, application, chat or text message

Yamraj asked an Indian: “Swarg ya Nark?”
Indian: “Bhai, chai kis mein milti hai?”


Translation for my English readers:

Yamraj, the god of death, asked an Indian, “Heaven or Hell?”

The Indian replied, “Bro… but which one has chai?”

Gen Alpha are too much.

We have a recurring argument with our 4-year-old every time we get in the car. She refuses to sit in her car seat and insists on sitting on our lap in the front.

So we invented a rule.

We told her kids with Australian passports are only allowed to sit in car seats.

For months it worked perfectly.

Yesterday I said the same thing again.

She paused… thought about it… and said:

“But I have an OCI card… and that’s like an Indian passport.”

And just like that, the rule collapsed.

Four years old and already finding loopholes in policy.

Anyone else getting out-negotiated by Gen Alpha at home?

I’m convinced Amazon customer support is fooling me just so I can write about it online.

January: I ordered 7 T-shirts.

And before anyone asks, yes… seven.

In case you’re wondering, I’m a simple shopper. If I find a T-shirt I like, I buy multiple pieces and I’m sorted for the next few months. No drama. No fashion experiments.

Unfortunately, the size and quality were off. Return approved instantly. Pickup promised in 2 days.

Nobody came.

Week 1: Called support. Pickup rescheduled. Nobody came.  
Week 2: Same thing.  
Week 3: Same thing.  
Week 4, 5, 6: At this point I could probably train their return team.

Then I was told not to worry. They would process an advance refund and arrange pickup later.

Fast forward nearly two months.

Now I’m informed that pickup agents visited multiple times and I “denied access,” so refund rejected.

Interesting.

Because no one came. Not once.

When I asked for proof, I was told an internal review confirmed the visits but the evidence cannot be shared.

So let’s summarise:

• Pickup never happens  
• Customer keeps following up  
• System marks pickup as attempted  
• Customer gets blamed  
• Refund denied  
• Proof is confidential  

This isn’t about 7 T-shirts anymore.

It’s about how easily a service failure can be rewritten into “customer denied access.”

Open to work badge in your profile photo is useless, do this instead. 



1️⃣ Go to your profile.

2️⃣ Click Open to button 

3️⃣ Click Finding a new job

When you put the hashtag
hashtag

#opentowork filter in your profile, only people in your network see it, doing this will let people in your network know you are looking for a new role but it doesn't magically bring you up in the Linkedin search when a recruiter is looking for a candidate. 

When you set the Open to "Finding a new job" in your profile, LinkedIn Search recognizes you as someone looking for a job, and if a recruiter is looking for someone with your skill, you show up in the search. 

Bonus Tip: If you want to update this setting secretly and don't want your current employer to know, then follow the steps on this post https://lnkd.in/enJRBjjQ which explains how to disable notifications to your network so they don't know you are looking for a job, but you start coming in LinkedIn search.

Why do Indians love mirchi? 🌶️

I don’t think it’s about spice.
It’s about honesty.

Mirchi clearly says: this will burn.
No surprises. 
No fine print.

Unlike corporate translations:

“9–5 job” → 9–9 if you’re passionate.  
“Occasional weekend work” → weekends become theoretical.  
“Sick leave” → available on phone, mail, and chat.  
“High ownership” → accountability without authority.

Mirchi doesn’t pretend.
It burns exactly as advertised.

Funny how the only thing that delivers exactly as promised… is mirchi.
Is this really why you love mirchi?

Perplexity and OpenAI just pulled a silent growth hack on Chrome. When you type “C” for Chrome, guess who shows up?


Comet. ChatGPT Atlas.
That’s not a coincidence.
That’s behavior design.

Perplexity didn’t just randomly pick Comet.
OpenAI didn’t just call theirs Atlas. They called it ChatGPT Atlas; on purpose.

Because when your fingers type “C” out of habit, they want to be right there.
Next to Chrome.

Stealing a sliver of your reflex.
This isn’t just branding.

It’s habit interception, one of the smartest growth tactics in product design.

People rarely “choose” browsers anymore.
They just type letters.

So the new players aren’t trying to change your decision.
They’re trying to change your muscle memory.

Genius move.

Because the best way to replace a habit is to slip inside it.

If I had to land interviews at Meta, Google, or Amazon, here's what I'd include in my resume, and what I'd remove immediately.

I see this every week. Someone with solid experience applying to 50+ roles at top companies, but got zero callbacks.

They're qualified. They've done the work. But their resume isn't making it past the first screen.

Here's the thing most people don't know. 75% of resumes don't make it past the ATS before. And the ones that do, recruiters spend about 6 seconds deciding if they're worth reading.

So if your resume doesn't immediately show you can do what they need, you're out.

Here's what I'd include:

1. Numbers that show scale
Not "improved system performance."
"Reduced latency by 40% for 10M daily active users."

2. echnical decisions and why you made them
"Migrated monolith to microservices, reducing deployment time from 2 hours to 15 minutes."
Shows you think architecturally, not just execute tasks.

3. Business impact
"Increased conversion rate by 12%, resulting in $2M additional revenue."
These companies care about how your work moved the business forward.

Here's what I'd remove immediately:

1. Generic soft skills
"Team player." "Strong communicator." "Fast learner."
Every resume says this. It's just noise.

2. Irrelevant old jobs
They don't care you were a retail associate 10 years ago unless it's directly relevant.

3. Every technology you've ever touched
If you list 40 tools, none of them stand out. Pick 8-10 that matter for this role.

Most people write resumes like a career history. But FAANG companies don't want history. They want proof you can operate at scale, make decisions under ambiguity, and drive outcomes.

If you're applying to Meta, Google, or Amazon and not getting callbacks, look at your resume again.

It's probably not what you've done. It's how you're presenting it.

DM me if you need help fixing your resume and LinkedIn. I've helped 150+ people land their dream interviews with stellar resumes.

I saw this sign at a zoo yesterday in Pune

It lists about 15 different ways not to annoy an animal.

Annoy.  
Torment.  
Pester.  
Harass.  
Tease.  
Tantalise.

At some point you have to ask…

Who exactly were they writing this for?

Because you don’t need that many warnings unless a very specific group kept testing the boundaries.

And if you’ve ever been to a zoo, you already know who’s most likely to knock on the glass, make noises, and try to get a reaction.

It’s rarely the women.

Sometimes I think half the rules in society exist because a small percentage of grown adults refuse to just leave things alone.

When will some men grow up?

To all India cricket fans… do you want India to win tonight?

I need to confess something.

Every time I sit down and watch India chase a T20 match, we lose.

Doesn’t matter the target.
Doesn’t matter the opposition.
Doesn’t matter the required run rate.

If I’m on the couch watching the chase, the cricket gods immediately take it personally.

So right now I’m watching.

Which means I might be the problem.

For the sake of the nation, I am willing to switch off the TV and go to sleep.

But sacrifices of this magnitude require compensation.

Card and UPI accepted.

Let’s see how many of you really want India to win

I don’t know Aman Garg 
Never met him.
No backstory.

But if he hits 10K before Feb ends i.e by midnight, he has agreed to shave his beard.

The internet now holds tremendous power.

Dear Reader, 
Go follow him.
Let’s see if facial hair survives collective action.

#10KBeforeFebEnds

I knew someone who never left the office before the manager.


Today he’s very successful.

Productivity is measurable.
Visibility is promotable.

Coincidence? 
Definitely not

Two weeks ago my reach dropped.

And suddenly LinkedIn “experts” would say:

– The algorithm changed
– LinkedIn is suppressing creators
– You need to post at 8:17 AM on Tuesdays
– Shadowban

Relax.

This week?

1,103,982 impressions.
Up 53 percent.

What changed?

I stopped whining and started working.

I commented aggressively.
Actual opinions. Disagreements. Strong takes.

And I increased posting from 2 times a day to 3.

That’s it.

Most people’s reach drops because their activity drops.

But ego doesn’t allow that conversation.

You don’t have an algorithm problem.

You have an effort problem.

When your reach drops, what do you do?

A. Post less
B. Blame LinkedIn
C. Increase volume and engagement

Be honest

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taplio

The Battle

Damon Chen

Vik Gambhir

Followers

Posts

Engagements

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Performance ScoreVik Gambhir's LinkedIn Performance

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taplio

The Battle

Damon Chen

Vik Gambhir

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Vik Gambhir's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreVik Gambhir's LinkedIn Performance