Trying to grow some super cool companies @hirepavago
London, England
Joined January 2025
- Tweets150
- Following51
- Followers15
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Companies I currently have beef with:
@qatarairways, for turning my 14-hour journey into 48 hours and not having the decency to address my complaints about it. It's been 45 days, and all they do is ghost me when they're clearly at fault.
@LinkedIn, for also ghosting my complaint, and for that god-awful new UI.
@Meta, because I hate, HATE their Ads Manager. It's been the most annoying thing since forever, and they don't even bother respecting your decision about NOT using Advantage+.
Twitter (i refuse to call it 'x'), because of that hand animation, and the fact that they still haven't brought back the profile view with tweets and retweets merged.
If you notice a pattern, most of my beef is related to customer service and how awful all these companies are at it (except Twitter, I haven't really reached out to them).
And these companies, just like Uber and others, are pushing AI into customer service, and it just doesn't work.
Meta, LinkedIn and Twitter are probably more like utilities for me because of work. But Qatar Airways, for example? I have zero incentive to choose them after this.
Your AI systems suck. You're leaving your customers unheard, and if the math adds up, that means you lose customers.
And the worrisome thing is how all these big corps are integrating these awful AI customer support systems.
Please stop. It clearly doesn't work.
Put an actual human back on the other end.
@HirePavago can help with that.
You've heard about offshore hiring from the business side. Here's a different side.
I'm Adeel, I'm from Pakistan, and for three years I've been one of @HirePavago offshore hires.
I grew up in the UAE, went to American schools, did the SATs and APs, then moved to Pakistan for a business degree. First job: a seed-stage startup automating marketing for SMBs in third-world countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Then a marketing agency, where I hit the ceiling.
The local economics are what they are. Regulations are tough, taxes are high, and our government cares more about staying in power than the economy. People do work their way out and leave, but visas make that hard, and not everyone can hedge their bets, however hard they try.
At the agency I made $300 to $400 a month. If I'd stayed, I'd probably make around $1,500 now, and only because the clients were in the UK. I wouldn't have been happy with that.
Then I joined Pavago via a co-founder from that startup. Parker and the team tripled my salary, and I said let's do it (duh)
I didn't care about working nights. I love teaching myself things. I wanted autonomy and the resources to fofo, and got it. They even trusted me with LinkedIn ads before I'd spent real money on them.
Three years later, I handle growth: LinkedIn, Meta and Google ads, cold email, GTM tooling and much of our content. I use Claude Code to make videos, graphics, websites and landing pages, which I'd never have learned in Pakistan, where $100 on a tool is a lot. I'm now comfortably in the top tax bracket there and look after my family.
Am I any good? Not for me to say, Parker's a better bet. I just know I try my best.
But this post isn't really about me. It's about all the talent across the world. I just happen to be one of them.
I could name 100 people off the top of my head who'd crush it for American SMBs: developers, designers, videographers, content creators, marketers, salespeople, GTM and AI folks. Some are classmates, some I've worked with, and I know the hustle is real because I know them. Many are in Islamabad, a small city by our standards. Lahore and Karachi have even more.
Lots already work for US and UK companies, so they know how you work.
For some of you, the middleman is the problem. Many staffing agencies eke off the talent, charging you $4,000 and paying the person $500. You think you've got a $4,000 hire. They're getting $500, which folks assume is good money. It isn't. That mismatch is why some of you fail with offshore talent.
With Pavago, there's no middleman and way less friction. You search, see real people in under a minute, watch their videos and hire them yourself.
I can only speak for Pakistan, since that's what I know firsthand. But exporting talent like this has been a net positive for us. People get to earn a global salary without having to leave the country.
None of us got to choose where we were born. Pavago was my way through. Plenty more are waiting for theirs.
(this is one of my fav cafes to work from)
Adeel retweeted
We get immigration firms valid, high-quality leads on linkedin at a consistent ~$34 per lead.
not clicks. not form spam. leads worth a consultation.
here's the exact setup, targeting and ad angles we run for employment-based visa clients (eb-1a, o-1 and eb-2 niw).
first, why linkedin
your ideal clients list their degrees, seniority, employer and achievements right on their profile. linkedin is the only major ad platform that lets you target by exactly those things.
on google, you outbid every other firm for the same keywords.
on meta, immigration is on the list of social issue topics. so your ads can get pulled into the political ad category: identity verification, a "paid for by" disclaimer, and disapproval if you don't have one.
on linkedin, you just pick the person.
here are the steps.
step 1: run two campaigns side by side
1. thought leadership, to build trust first
promote the attorney's own posts (short videos + text posts): case outcomes, process explainers, myth-busting.
everyone who engages gets added to a retargeting audience. that's a list of people who now know your name.
that warm audience then sees message ads and single-image ads offering a consultation or eligibility review.
why: a visa is a high-trust decision. people hire the attorney they already believe in.
2. direct response, to find what converts fast
website visit or website conversion campaigns, sending traffic straight to a landing page (eligibility check or booking).
single-image ads only: one claim, one proof point, one call to action.
why: you learn in weeks, not months, which messages make people act.
the two feed each other. whichever angles win, in either campaign, become the single-image ads that get the budget.
step 2: target with linkedin's own filters
1. geography. your candidate pool sits in south asia and africa, in markets like india, pakistan, bangladesh and nigeria, where linkedin ad costs run far below us rates. same quality of person, fraction of the price.
2. stack the filters. a real example stack:
- years of experience: 6 to 12+
- degrees: bachelor's through phd
- fields of study: engineering, computer science, it, mathematics, physics
- company industries: technology, biotech, pharma, engineering services, telecom
- seniority: manager, director, vp
the targeting qualifies people before they ever click.
3. audience size. keep each ad set between 30k and 80k people. big enough to deliver steadily, small enough to stay precise. linkedin will warn you to go bigger. ignore it. that warning serves delivery, not accuracy.
4. nothing automated. no lookalike audiences, no predictive audiences, no audience expansion. you defined the audience for a reason, so don't let linkedin widen it.
step 3: lock the campaign settings
these are non-negotiable for us:
1. linkedin audience network off. your ads show on linkedin only, not on random third-party apps and sites.
2. audience expansion off
3. maximum delivery off. that's linkedin's automated bidding, and it spends your budget fast. bid manually instead. start about 20% below the recommended bid and only raise it if your ads stop being shown.
4. ad rotation set to "rotate evenly." never "optimize for performance." that lets the algorithm pick a winner after a few days of thin data. you pick winners with full data.
5. five ads per campaign, so each angle gets an equal shot.
the pattern: linkedin's automated features are built to spend your budget. manual control is built to lower your cost per client.
step 4: launch the 5 angles
1. "you may already qualify"
tell them the credentials already on their profile might meet the bar. curiosity does the rest.
example: "your linkedin profile may already qualify you for a us green card."
2. "stop the wrong path"
call out the hours they're wasting researching the wrong option, then point to the path built for their qualifications.
example: "stop researching the wrong green card options. there are pathways built for your qualifications."
3. employer independence
speak to the fear of their future depending on one company. position the self-petition route as taking back control.
example: "stop waiting for your employer to decide your immigration future."
4. who + outcome − obstacle
name the audience, name the result, remove the thing they believe blocks them.
example: "we help stem professionals secure us green cards without employer sponsorship."
5. plain eligibility check
no cleverness. one clear action with a low-commitment first step.
example: "see if you already qualify."
launch all five, rotated evenly. once each has real data, cut the losers and replace them with new versions of the winners.
step 5: give every ad somewhere to go
ad → landing page → form → booked consultation
1. never send paid traffic to your homepage. every ad clicks through to a dedicated landing page that continues the exact promise of the ad. if the ad says "see if you already qualify," the page has to deliver that, not a generic "about our firm."
2. the page does two jobs. more information (who qualifies, how the process works, what proof you have) and a form: name, email and a couple of qualifying questions so your team isn't chasing dead leads.
3. one page, one action. no navigation menu, no links to five other pages. the only thing to do is read and fill in the form.
4. non-fillers aren't wasted. anyone who visits but doesn't submit goes into a website retargeting audience and gets picked back up by the thought leadership and retargeting ads.
step 6: watch these four numbers
1. dwell time: aim for 4 to 5+ seconds. that's how long your ad stays on someone's screen before they scroll past or click. linkedin counts it once at least half the ad is visible. the feed average is under 3 seconds, so clearing 4 to 5 means your creative is holding attention.
2. ctr: 0.5% is the floor. linkedin single-image ads average roughly 0.44% to 0.65% platform-wide. with angles this specific, and audiences in regions that click more, 0.8% to 1.3% is realistic. if leads are coming in at a lower ctr, don't panic. leads outrank clicks, and sometimes that's just the dynamic of the audience.
3. cost per valid lead before cpc. judge in this order: cost per valid lead, then cost per lead, then cost per click. a higher cpc is fine when the leads are real. optimizing for cheap clicks is how you fill a pipeline with noise.
4. reach and penetration. aim to reach roughly 6,000 to 8,000 people inside your audience, and keep pushing the penetration number up. the goal is to become a known name inside a defined pool, not to lightly graze a huge one.
to wrap it up:
1. run thought leadership and direct response side by side
2. pick the person with linkedin's own filters, nothing automated
3. turn off every setting that spends your budget for you
4. launch five angles, rotate evenly, cut the losers
5. send every ad to a page that keeps the ad's promise
6. judge on cost per valid lead, not cheap clicks
a visa is a high-trust decision. this whole setup is built around one idea: by the time your ad asks for a consultation, they should already know your name.
if you’re thinking about expanding your seo, here’s how i’d do it
blog.pavago.co/outsource-seo…
Needing visa sponsorship is the job-hunting version of being short and broke on Hinge.
Doesn't matter how good you are. One checkbox and you're swiped left.
If you only hire locally, you're doing the same thing. You're just filtering by zip code instead of visa.
Big companies stopped doing this years ago. It's why they've got offices all over the world.
Here's what that filter costs you. A-players in America go for upwards of a $100K a year. If your budget isn't there, you're stuck choosing between B and C players.
Meanwhile there are A-players all over the world you're swiping left on just because they don't live near you.
@HirePavago exists because @carkerpox decided to turn that filter off one day.
His growth was capped, so he hired a Pakistani google ads specialist
Turns out, it worked.
So we made it way easier for every SMB to do the same. You search vetted remote talent, watch their video interviews, and book the ones you like straight in the app.
Our mission is to get a million people hired around the world, and make sure no SMB has its growth capped by hiring. You've got bigger problems to solve.
If you want to grow, stop swiping left on A-players over a zip code.
Browsing's free: pavago(dot)co
Found a new outbound signal. Here's the email:
Hey {{first_name}}, saw you breathed just now.
In my experience, breathing founders end up needing to hire. Which usually means recruiters, job boards, and weeks of interviewing people who ghost you.
Pavago skips all of that. You search vetted remote talent, watch their video interviews, and book the ones you like straight in the app. You could be interviewing someone today.
Normally this is where I'd ask for 15 mins. But there's no call, no demo, and you never have to talk to me. It's fully self serve
It's pavago(dot)co
%signature%
Your recruiter probably doesn't understand the role you're hiring for.
I know because I've been on the other end of their pitch.
A while back, a recruiter reached out about a founding growth role at a YC-backed startup.
On paper, it sounded like my kind of role. Then I got on a call with the founder, and it turned out what he actually wanted was someone to chase enterprise clients and run events.
I've never run an event in my life. I'm a digital growth guy, I live in the tracking and the data. We both figured out pretty quickly I wasn't his person, which meant the recruiter had just wasted his time and mine.
And that wasn't a one-off. A fair number of recruiters have reached out to me over the last year and a half for growth and GTM roles. A few were genuinely sharp, but if I'm honest, I'd say about 8 in 10 didn't really know what growth or GTM involves.
Which always left me wondering: if you don't understand the role, how are you deciding who's worth putting in front of the founder?
Think about how it usually goes. You know exactly who you want. You explain it to a recruiter, who turns it into their own version, then pitches a third version to people like me.
Every handoff loses a bit of context, so the first few rounds of candidates miss. That's three or four weeks of your time gone, and you still can't tell if the recruiter even got the brief.
It's a game of telephone, and you're paying for it.
That's a big part of what we're fixing with @HirePavago. You type in exactly who you need, or just paste your JD, and in under a minute you're looking at matched people who are actively looking for work. Nobody in the middle translating.
And eventually, you'll probably be able to just talk to the app, brain dump everything in your head, and let it do the matching.
Because nobody understands the role better than the person hiring for it. Hiring should start there.
Adeel retweeted
Customer service searches on Pavago nearly tripled in 4 weeks. Developer searches fell by 40%.
Since launch:
• Customer service: 4% → 11% of all searches
• Bookkeeping and finance: 8% → 13%
• Developers: 14% → 8%
Small business owners aren’t hiring offshore to build product. They’re buying back their inbox, their books and their support queue.
If you run a small team, the first hire that pays for itself is usually the one answering the phone.
It makes me wonder about how early we really are in the AI race. Are real US SMBs--the bedrock of the economy even thinking about agentic task management?
Or are they still thinking about their first Offshore VA who knows how to log into Chatgpt for them?
Hard to say. My gut tells me that X is the bleeding edge of the bleeding edge, but also in a world of AI for everything, people are feeling an unfulfilled promise to some extent--real meaningful, needle-moving work is still done by great people.
Adeel retweeted
When a Pavago user invites a candidate to an interview, the invite is accepted within an hour 31% of the time.
From every interview booked on Pavago since launch:
• 31% booked within 1 hour
• 52% within 4 hours
• 79% within a day
Interestingly, candidates have an 86% show up rate to interviews. Companies? 74%.
A few things this has made me think about--
1. We are all about removing friction. When our users have a low friction experience, the behavior compounds. Users who have a single showed up to interview on average invite 2x more than those who don't.
2. We battle a trust barrier--because of how terrible the existing hiring paradigm is, people generally feel that interviewing is a high-friction event. We see a lot of users stop at the interview stage despite obviously being a big fan of a candidate. When asked why, the general response is "Interviews are a real pain." But, the reality is that under our Pavago system, interviews should be used far more not less than under the previous paradigm. When a client can log in, review matched candidates for 15 minutes, invite 3 to interviews, have 1 of those 3 accept within the hour, the second within the day, then have both of them show up, interviewing becomes a positive not a negative experience.
Curious if any of this data surprised you? Anything else I can share that would be useful?
i've spent $500k on linkedin ads, mostly on scrappy budgets. b2b, saas, recruiting and marketing agencies, consulting, law firms.
this is one of my favorite plays for leads and demos.
the play in short: run thought leadership ads to your icp for 30 to 40 days, then retarget everyone who engaged with message ads.
the thought leadership ads are about mind space. you might get some leads direct from those, but you'll probs "lose money up front." you get it back once the message ads kick in. that's the main sauce.
here are the steps.
step 1: build the list
i usually go for companies first, then use linkedin's native filters to segment out the kind of people i want.
scrape a list of your icp companies: linkedin company page url, company name, location. upload it and wait ~2 days for it to populate. then filter by roles and seniority. cheapest, best way i know to target.
the goal is to find the best companies you think are a fit for your service, plus any other cohort you want to test.
step 2: clean the list
clean it like you would in any lead tool. what i exclude always depends on the goal and the type of people i'm targeting. there's more i'll exclude, but these three are mandatory for me:
1. expats
2. job seekers and people open to education (if i'm targeting ceos/founders)
3. job functions and company sizes that don't fit
step 3: size it
everyone has an opinion on audience size. mine is roughly 30k to 60k, max under 120k. i've also had campaigns work at 250k+ on native filters without a list. again, test what works for you.
i'd recommend starting with a 60k audience of your top preferred companies.
then do the maths with your budget. you want frequency (how many times each person sees you) and penetration (how much of your list you actually reach).
if you have $2k a month and a 200k list, the maths just don't add up. you won't get the frequency or the penetration you want. you might get some leads, but you're setting yourself up to fail, because b2b is about staying in mind.
some people on your list won't be active either, so keep an eye on that. not too narrow, not too broad.
step 4: set up the campaign
1. objective: brand awareness vs engagement. ba usually reaches more people, but for me engagement has led to better quality. test it, but i'd start with engagement.
2. manual bid. i usually start 20% under the recommended. linkedin loves asking for a lot of money.
3. max delivery off
4. audience expansion off
5. linkedin audience network off
6. utms on everything. linkedin isn't great at attribution, so this is how you know which content is working. make sure your website is capturing them with cookies and hidden fields.
step 5: make the content
thought leadership ads are ads from individuals at your company. basically posts from someone's personal profile that you boost as ads.
for @HirePavago, i use @carkerpox's account and mine. we have posts boosted to our icp right now.
boosting content from your personal page used to be one of the cheapest plays on linkedin. this year, landing page clicks got a lot more expensive, plus there's mass ai slop on everyone's feed. so you have to be more creative, genuine and valuable.
your post should feel like you're giving away something insanely valuable. something people would pay for. that doesn't mean you need a lead magnet, and 100% no "comment X for the guide."
the post should just be a joy to read for your icp.
it should also be talking about your product or service, either directly or indirectly.
and maybe the most important thing: the hook has to stop the scroll. there's so much ai slop on linkedin that a safe hook dies.
for pavago i ran "i might have to fire the best marketer in my company in 2 months." the reason: Parker supports arsenal, i support city. that got people to stop and read like "wtf?"
but the post was really about the talent you can find offshore, and the fact that they're actual humans who share similar experiences to you lol. the hook gets them reading, the post gets the message out, and next time they see you they think "i've seen this guy somewhere."
another one from my account: if I crush growth, @carkerpox is going to buy me a porsche. that hook got people to engage. it didn't bring us lead flow, but it definitely bought us eyeballs and a good retargeting audience that later turned into leads.
for a coaching client who helps men keep business and home life from bleeding into each other: "have you ever gone home and had no idea how to act with your family or wife?" then the post covers the problems he solves.
you don't have to go viral on these, but they still have to be your top work.
step 6: run them
1. post organically and let it sit 2 to 3 days
2. i usually start with 5 to 6 thought leadership posts in the campaign, then increase or decrease depending on what i'm seeing
3. put a landing page link in the post. you'll get leads straight from it (edit your post when you’re ready to boost)
4. test image vs text vs video
5. aim for a minimum 10% ctr. that's my floor.
does that mean i turn off everything below 10%? there are exceptions. some have a lower ctr but they're printing in engagement, dwell time, maybe leads. i keep those on. you have to make a judgment call.
if a post is getting 4% ctr and people are spending 2 to 3 seconds on it, it's not doing the job. turn it off.
keep new content coming in so it stays fresh. i add 2 to 3 posts every week and turn off the non-performers. you keep showing up to the same people, but you're always bringing something new.
step 7: retarget with message ads
first 30 days, 100% of budget on thought leadership ads.
at day 30 to 35, build a retargeting audience of your single image ad engagers + website visitors. using video? add 50%+ viewers.
move 20 to 30% of budget to message ads and see if they start working. they land at the top of the inbox and they're cheap.
the theory: after a month of seeing you, people are more likely to click your profile and actually read the message because there's some familiarity. this is where you pitch your service or a lead magnet and get them to fill out their details.
some use gift cards, some just pitch, some have a lead magnet. that's something you need to figure out.
from one of my campaigns for a mid-market security compliance company: the thought leadership ads barely got leads. message ads brought in around 30. both campaigns combined, about $120 per qualified prospect.
why it works
not every b2b buyer is in market right now, so you need to keep showing up. a good product might capture some existing demand on your first run. but linkedin is strongest at creating demand. it has the best targeting accuracy out there.
to wrap it up:
1. build a tight list of your best-fit companies
2. set the campaign up so linkedin doesn't eat your budget
3. run your best content as thought leadership ads for 30 to 40 days
4. retarget everyone who engaged with message ads
if you try it, give it the full 60 days before you judge it. the first month will probably look like it's costing you money. that's expected.
this is one of my plays. plenty of others work and plenty don't, so test it. but this one's been useful across a lot of different setups for me.
and of course i’d high recommend getting an expert to run your marketing campaigns @HirePavago helps with that.