What Raya's Membership Committee Looks For

Raya asks the members who review applications to imagine they are hosting an intimate dinner party for ten people. With that table in mind, they weigh three things about you: your work, your familiarity with the community, and a hard to describe "something extra". Raya adds that Instagrams, websites and blogs are very helpful in understanding how an applicant sees the world. In other words, the committee is deciding whether you would be a good person to seat at that table.

The frame is worth taking literally, because it tells you what kind of judgment is being made.

Think about what you want from a guest at a small dinner. You want someone who has something to talk about. You want someone who fits with the other people there, or at least knows a few of them. And you want someone who makes the evening better than it would have been without him. Nobody picks dinner guests from a résumé, and nobody wants the guest who spends the night talking about himself.

That is a useful lens for every part of your application. The question behind each piece is whether a stranger, looking at it, would want you at the table.

Work comes first on Raya's list. That does not mean a famous employer or a senior title. It means what you actually do and whether it gives you something to say.

A man who builds things, fixes things, teaches, cooks or runs a small business has plenty to show. The trap is describing your work the way a corporate summary would. "Operations professional" says nothing at a dinner table. "I run the kitchens for three restaurants" says a lot.

a dating coach makes a point about strengths that fits here. Being truly excellent at one thing tends to pay off far more than being average at many. So lead with the one thing you are best at and let it be clearly visible, rather than trying to look well rounded.

The second item is about who you already know. A dinner host feels better about a guest when someone else at the table can speak for him.

This is where existing members who genuinely know you come in. If you have friends, colleagues or people from your world who are already on Raya, your application sits closer to the community than one from a total stranger. If you have none, the other two items carry more of the weight. That is not fatal, but it is worth knowing going in.

Raya calls this one hard to describe, and it means it. There is no checklist for it, which is exactly the point.

The closest you can get is to think about what people remember about you. When a dating coach writes a first message, he scrolls through a woman's page looking for anything unusual he can comment on, because the unusual detail is what sticks. The committee is doing a version of the same thing with you. The man who restores old motorcycles, speaks three languages badly and plays in a weekend football league is memorable. The man with a generic grid of gym selfies and airport lounges is not.

You probably already have a something extra. It is usually the thing your friends mention first when they introduce you.

Raya says your Instagram, website or blog helps it understand how you see the world. That phrase is worth reading slowly. It is not asking how you look. It is asking what you point the camera at.

A grid full of views says you like views. A grid with your work in progress, the people you spend weekends with and the odd thing you are obsessed with says how you actually live. Captions help too, because the reviewer cannot ask you what a photo was.

You do not need a big following for this. You need a few recent posts that answer the committee's three questions without being asked.

Once you are in, the committee steps back and the women on Raya make the same kind of judgment. They are also looking at your work, the people around you and the thing that makes you worth remembering.

That is true on the other dating apps too. A man who can pass Raya's dinner party test tends to do well anywhere, because the test is really about whether your life is interesting to the person looking at it. Getting that right does more for your chances with a woman than any single line you could write.