The Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
An essential skill in the job search process is networking with industry people. Even when I interviewed with Google and Facebook, I connected with folks working in that company, and they gave me important tips on how to handle the interview process. Networking helps in multiple ways:
These references are impressive and make you stand out from other applicants because very few applicants go through the effort of connecting with insiders in their target company.
The most critical group you want to consider reaching out to are people with whom there is some professional or educational connection. For example, if there are people you know from your alma mater, they will probably respond to your note. The two best mediums to connect with people are through direct email or LinkedIn. The best way to connect with people is to meet them in professional networking sessions, job fairs, and campus networking events. If you get a business card from that person and you email the person later, that is the best way to connect with people. They know you, and you know them; this is the ideal networking scenario. Sometimes, you can find people’s direct emails through a Google search. I have found the email IDs of the CEOs of multiple big tech companies this way. Another way is to look at websites which collate information about company executives. For example, if you want to contact John Barry at XYZ company, the website would list the email ID as either j***@xyz.com or j*****@xyz.com. You can guess that the first email id is mostly john@xyz.com. The second email id is either johnba@xyz.com or jbarry@xyz.com. Most companies have a similar format, so if you know the number of letters, you can guess the combination of first and last names in the email id.
When you reach out on Linkedin, most people respond when you belong to the same alma mater or have some connection. For example, if you are from IIT Palakkad and connect with another IIT Palakkad alumni, there is a high chance they would respond on Linkedin. If the person is from another IIT, there is still a group connection to the IIT brand name. Hence, even an alum from IIT Bombay or Kharagpur will sense a kinship that will make them respond to a request from IIT Palakkad. I suggest caution that most people are not very active on Linkedin, especially if they are working full time. The success rate of getting a response on Linkedin is around 10-20%. If someone you absolutely want to connect with does not respond, do not take the issue personally. The world is not always about you. The person on the other end could be going through all sorts of problems: they could be on a last mile race to finish a project, they may have taken a vacation and decided not to check the internet, they may have fallen ill or had an accident, they may be facing some personal emergency, they may be laid off and many others. Always give people the benefit of the doubt and assume good intent. If someone has yet to respond to you, try sending them a reminder after 2-3 weeks. If they still do not respond, send them a final reminder after another 2-3 weeks. You need to drop this case and move on to another person if your target person does not respond by then. They may not be comfortable for some reason, and you need to respect that privacy.
Things get more complicated if you do not have any connection with somebody working in the company. Create a list of people you want to talk with. Recruiters rarely have the time to speak with candidates. You want to target senior managers, directors, or VPs working in your target company. Reach out to them on Linkedin by adding an introductory note that clarifies who you are, why you are reaching out, and what you are looking for. About 10-15 % of people on Linkedin are OK with responding to whoever messages them and do not care about common connections or the applicant’s background. For example, I always respond to whoever messages me on Linkedin. Knowing that the response rate on Linkedin is 20-30% and around half of that number respond to everyone, the role of alma mater and connect is probably overestimated. An enthusiastic person who reaches out to dozens of people (even with zero common connections) will be more successful than a person who reaches out to a few select people with strong common connections. The most enthusiastic person will always win out in this networking game.
A sample note should look like this:
Dear Ms. Rita John,
I’m a final year XYZ School of Engineering student interested in working in Manufacturing. For a couple of years, I’ve been following the success of Tata Motors, and your LinkedIn profile impressed me. I particularly liked your LinkedIn posts on engineering design.
If you ever have 20 or so minutes, I’d love to hear more about how you started working in the field and what skills you believe are most relevant to the profession.
Thank you so much,
Tina Sharma
A couple of things stand out here:
1) You show etiquette by adding a Ms and the full name. The first name alone may come across as presumptuous.
2) You explicitly say who you are and show that you are not randomly connecting with people. You have done some homework, like following the person on social media and reading their posts.
3) You are not asking for a job directly; you are asking for a chat to learn more about the company. Many employees are uneasy if they get a note from an unknown applicant saying they are looking for a referral. Referrals involve the employee writing 2-3 paragraphs about how well they know the person and how much they feel the applicant is a good fit for the job. Because the employee has no idea of the applicant, they can only recommend that person if there is a personal connection. A face-to-face meeting is the best; if that does not work, at least a video conferencing call is important to be considered seriously.
When the employee sets up a time for the meeting, you want to take the meeting seriously. It is as good as a first-round interview. At the end of the meeting, you get a good sense of who the person is and if you want to take the conversation forward. If the conversation was good, asking the employee for a job referral to the company makes sense. You should be ready with the homework and research if your target job posting is available on the company website and what the job ID is. If there is no job posting on the company website, taking the referral forward meaningfully will be almost impossible. If the employee forwards your resume directly to the recruiter, nothing will happen, and your resume ends up inside a black hole. It is another thing if the CEO or CXO forwards the resume to the recruiter. Hence, if you are targeting startups, you should connect with the most senior person. Those people are always looking for the best talent, and recruiting is a significant chunk of their job.
Sometimes, the person who talks to you may not be recruiting anyone in his team. However, they could forward you to the recruiter or another team where they feel you could be a better match. You may need to follow up with this person and jog their memory 1-2 months later to check where things are. So, networking is challenging. There is no guarantee that anything will happen. If a job applicant applies directly on the corporate website, their chances of getting to the interview process are 1-2%, and that number jumps to 30-40% if you have a referral. There is no guarantee that you will get an interview call with a referral; your chances of not making it to the next level are still 60-70%.
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