The CEO of a recruiting-software company that works with Slack, Airbnb, and Venmo says there's a simple way to stand out among a sea of talented applicants

Courtesy of Greenhouse

"The bar is pretty low," said Daniel Chait, pictured.

• Boost your chances of landing the job you want by staying active in your community and building your personal brand.
• That's according to Daniel Chait, the CEO of recruiting-software company Greenhouse.
• For example, you might contribute to open-source projects on Github, attend Meetup events for people in your industry, or stay active on Instagram.

"Most people do zero," said Daniel Chait. "So the bar is pretty low."

Chait is the CEO of Greenhouse, a recruiting-software company whose clients include Slack, Airbnb, Venmo, Pinterest, and HubSpot.

According to Chait, most job candidates don't do anything to stand out among a sea of talented applicants - they simply submit their resume through a website and hope for the best.

But Chait said there's a relatively easy way to draw attention to yourself and up your chances of landing the role you want: Be active in your community and build your personal brand.

Maybe that means attending Meetup events for people in your industry; maybe it means staying active on Instagram if you're in a field like marketing.

Chait shared a hypothetical example of someone looking to make a career change: The person has a degree in art history and has been working in food service, but they'd love to get a job in tech.

"Do you have a Github profile?" Chait said, referring to a site that hosts free programming projects. "Have you contributed to some open-source projects? Have you gone to a local technical meetup? Have you written some articles on Stack Overflow?" (Stack Overflow is a question-and-answer site for programmers.)

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As Dora Korpar, a former Trader Joes employee who's now a programmer at a San Francisco startup, told Business Insider's Julie Bort, it's helpful to create a Github profile and participate in open-source projects, since programmers evaluate each other's work there.

Even people who started contributing to Quora and Reddit forums without any intention of finding a job have found career benefits, like potential clients looking at their profiles and getting in touch.

An additional benefit of being involved in your community, Chait said, is that you might meet people whose teams currently have openings. "You get the inside track," he said (though your willingness to schmooze at Meetup-type events depends on your feelings about the power of networking.)

"You don't have to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author or have two million followers on Twitter to really stand out," Chait added. "You just have to do something that's somewhat noteworthy and different and represents you."