No one at Concurate knows this about me: I applied for the content writer role some two years ago and didn’t make it.
The team will read it here for the first time, along with you. (Surprise!)
It was a small task. I had to write an introduction for a topic. Our writing styles didn’t match, and I got a polite “No.”
Back then, I tucked away a quiet promise that I’d knock on their door again someday. And that “someday” came last month, when I got the chance to work as a writer for one full week at Concurate. AKA the great Live-In period.
During this time, you take on real assignments and get a sneak peek into how Concurate really works. And they, in turn, get a good long look at you.
But before I dive into it, I want to go back to how it all started. Because that’s the only right way to tell this story.
If It’s Meant to Be, It’s Meant to Be
It was the end of June. My last month as an assistant customer marketing specialist for a leading brand I’d loved dearly and dreamt of working with for years. And all of that was thinning down to its final days.
Around 23rd June, I saw Concurate was hiring content writers, and I’d already sent my application, hoping it would work out in my favor.
Then came a week of silence while my contract wound down and I quietly started looking elsewhere. I wasn’t panicking exactly. I’ve always believed the universe is holding something better for me, and that it will arrive right on time.
But belief is easy in daylight.
On the evening of June 30th, I got on my final call with that client. And only when we had said our goodbyes, it hit me: I was on my own now, even if only for a while. So I did what I do. I called my bestie and spilled out everything—that I wasn’t okay, not really. I knew I’d finally have room to focus on myself, but I also wanted to get new work ASAP.
I kid you not, ten minutes into that call, my laptop screen lit up. A LinkedIn message from Subhasri, Sr. Content Strategist at Concurate, saying that I’ll hear from HR soon.
The timing felt almost theatrical. As if the universe had waited for one door to close completely before nudging another one open.
I Braced for a Test. I Got a Teammate, Instead
I won’t get into the details of how I landed the Live-In. After all, a magician never reveals her tricks.
So, let’s skip to the first day of my Live-In period.
I got the brief a day ago from HR. My task was to understand the impact of llms.txt files on AI visibility. Now, forget the impact; I barely knew what an llms.txt file was.
The moment I got this assignment, I felt completely lost and spiraled into overthinking that I was not cut out for this. But Subhasri proved me wrong in our first call.
Talking to her, I realised this Live-In period wasn’t just a test. It was a simulation of what working together would actually look like. She wasn’t there to sit quietly on the other side of the screen with a scorecard. She was there to guide me, challenge my assumptions, and when necessary, stop me from wandering too far down the rabbit hole.
I remember my first instinct was to not trouble her with too many questions. But she dismantled that logic right away.
“If you think it’s a stupid question,” she told me, “ask it anyway. It’ll save both of us time, and probably save you from doing something much stupider.”
(And now our Google Chat has a permanent record of exactly how dumb I can be.) 👇
(Jeez, don’t look at our typos.)
But jokes apart, on that first call, she walked me through the whole exercise. How I should approach the research, how to think about designing experiments, what kinds of internal data the team could provide to validate my findings.
I wouldn’t say she handed me the roadmap, but rather she taught me how to draw one myself.
Researching, Experimenting, and Making Dumb Mistakes
Being a literature student helped in one regard: reading lengthy research papers wasn’t a new territory to me. Where my dumbness comes in is that I did all of it manually.
I’m deeply skeptical of using AI to analyze research papers (we all know how these tools love to hallucinate). So, I was reading every paper myself.
When I confessed this to Subhasri, she pointed me straight to NotebookLM. A tool I’d never used before but which made my Live-In experience smoother. I could simply create a notebook that had all my research papers, ask AI questions, and get answers drawn only from the papers I’ve selected for analysis.
In short, there was no scope for hallucination now.
By the end of day two, I had acquired a whole new toolkit: fresh ways to hunt down research papers and faster ways to read them. I also had rough sketches of the experiments I actually wanted to run ready with me.
Yep, a writer, running experiments. If you’d told me that a week earlier, I’d have laughed in your face. But that’s the thing about working at Concurate: you’ll always get to do more. And most importantly, you’ll enjoy it.
The Art of Overestimating Yourself
Just like you’re reading about my Live-In period right now, I’d once read about Rinku’s Live-In experience at Concurate. In her account, she talked about wrapping up her first task in a couple of days and earning some additional ones. So there was already a benchmark set, and I had every intention of meeting it.
Which is why, when Subhasri asked me how long I thought I’d need for my assignment, I said three days, max. That would leave me two more days to prove myself on something else. But her response caught me completely off guard.
“Speed matters,” she said. “But quality matters more. If this takes you four days, that’s perfectly okay. We’d much rather see thoughtful work than fast work.”
She was right, because that one task ended up taking me the entire week. 😅
The Waiting Game
It would be a lie to say I wasn’t anxious. I had taken all five days on a single task. I knew I wasn’t the fastest person in the room. I had written a LinkedIn post around the same topic, which received some feedback.
Anxious was the first and last thing I was supposed to be.
Yet, sitting with that uncertainty, I realized something that steadied me: even if this doesn’t work out, I wasn’t walking away empty-handed.
Over the course of a week, I’d explored new tools. I’d learned what real research looks like and the depth of it. And I’d seen, up close, the kind of environment I’d want to spend my working life inside.
In short, I was ready for the worst.
Thank god I got a call from the HR next day, informing me I’d cleared the Live-In. I’d have passed out otherwise.
Right Things Come at the Right Time
At last, came the onboarding: HR rounds, official paperwork, a stretch of certification courses recommended by Concurate (trust me, they’re the opposite of tiring; you’ll love them). I spent a week on all of it. And today, I’m writing this on only my second day as an official Concurate employee.
If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably realized that I have a soft spot for believing in timing. Two years ago, I wasn’t the writer Concurate was looking for. And that pushed me to upskill myself.
So, if you’re applying at Concurate, here’s the only advice I have for you:
Don’t obsess over getting everything right. Just work hard and be open to challenges.
Because the biggest thing that worked in my favor was being myself. Subhasri is known for building systems and processes. She believes quality content comes with discipline. And when she saw I could work that way too, it only tipped things further in my favor.
I hope to meet you soon at Concurate!
