Looking for a Job Is Tough

One piece of advice I usually give is to avoid applying to jobs through company’s career websites or LinkedIn. Instead, tap your social network: see if there is someone you know/have worked with who either works at the company you’re interested in or is connected to it someone (as an advisor, investor, personal friend of someone in a leadership position) and ask them for a warm intro. Social proof gives you an advantage over the legion of anonymous online applicants.

> Instead, tap your social network

Do you have experience with doing this in a way that doesn't come across as desperate or too forward? How close do you need to be with this network? Is Linkedin connection enough, or would you only do this approach with people you've worked with?

If I get such a request from someone I don't know, I will direct them to the public job board.

I'm very happy to refer and vouch for someone that I've actually worked with (and look forward to working with again), but I'm not vouching for some random stranger...

Ideally people you've worked with or at least know of you and your work so they can give a positive internal recommendation. "He follows me on X" isn't much of an endorsement if that's all the person can say about you.

In my experience, even internal referrals barely give you an edge these days unless the referrer is quite high in the company org.

Of course things can change rapidly; perhaps the influx of ai-produced applications may bring this practice back.

I'll review resumes of any referrals from my network. Usually provide tips or areas they need to show more substance in. I won't submit any network referral to my company's internal recruiter unless they stand out and fit a need.

The proximity to my network doesn't need to be strong, but your resume does.

I like to think of it more as being intentional, and less as desperate/too forward. You want to know what you're looking for and, just as important, what you're not looking for.

In terms of reaching out, here are some things I did when I was job hunting:

1. The classic referral

Find the job post and work backwards from there (e.g., is there somebody I know (1st connection) or somebody who knows somebody I know (2nd connection) on LinkedIn who works at the company?).

If I knew the 1st connection, I'd reach out and ask if they were comfortable referring me.

2. The forwardable email

If it was a 2nd connection, I'd reach out with a forwardable email (https://also.roybahat.com/introductions-and-the-forward-intr...) and ask if they'd be able to forward an email and make an intro if they received a positive response.

3. Job hunting as an occasion

I made time to catch up with good friends. It felt energizing to get the moral support, with the added bonus that sometimes they knew people working at companies looking to hire. For example I would eventually get a job offer from Figma and that was because a good friend's partner worked there and was glad to refer me. I hadn't even heard of the opportunity before we talked.

4. The weak ties

I also made time to catch up with people I didn't know that well. There's some research on "weak ties" that suggest that people who you don't know well probably are exposed to a very different network to you, and will come across very different opportunities. The convo would be an opportunity for us to catch up and I'd talk about being open to job opportunities.

I hope this helps!

Internal referrals won’t necessarily give you an edge, but they definitely nearly guarantee at least getting into the door.

At our company the (unwritten) policy is anyone who is referred internally will always get at least 1 shot at an interview even if the resume would been have otherwise been rejected. The bar isn’t lowered on merit, though.

> Instead, tap your social network

social network might not be great for someone who just broke out of their underclass social network to try make it big.

This advice assumes you have such a network anyway.

Ah yes, in the grand tradition of meritocracy, competition, and capitalism: “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”.

To be clear, I’m not saying you’re wrong: in a distorted market it’s absolutely about who you know and get on with. So it’s nothing personal that your (astute) observation irks me.

I just can’t see advice like this without feeling a little tick: I’ve been in this business for more than twenty years, and there have been downturns certainly in that time, but I’ve never seen it so firmly in the iron grip of monopoly and nepotism with such predictably grim results for the software outcomes.

And don’t get me started on the party line that “the economy is doing great”.

Yep. Several months ago I leaned on a friend for a referral. This person is relatively well known in his industry. He’s written books and has spoke at a lot of conferences, and been interviewed by a lot of outlets. I got a personal referral from him, and I didn’t even get a phone call with a recruiter. Crazy.

"Hey, $FRIEND! I hope you've been well; long time, no talk. I see you're at $COMPANY now. I'd like to join. Can you intro me to the hiring manager?"

is how I've done it.

Worst case, you get ghosted. Best case, you get an interview.

Unfortunately, it’s not really advice so much as reality. The truth of it is, if you know someone, you have a much better chance.

Yeah, that’s a good point. I often ask my network for help, and it gets results. But still, I think I get more feedback when applying through the careers page.

This is really great advice. Thank you!

My previous job search in 2019 yielded 2 FAANG offers, 1 exec role at a $2B public company, and an "almost" from another Seattle-based big tech company.

This September, I finished up a 10 month job search (had a job that was going nowhere, so looked for another) In that time, I started with careful analysis of each role, custom resume building, and applying to one or two jobs a week. When that yielded no results after a few months, I crafted a few resumes to match the broad categories of roles that I saw that were good matches and started applying in bulk. That yielded much better result in terms of actual human contact.

I did also leverage my LinkedIn network, and that yielded lots of nice reconnections with past coworkers, but zero job opportunities. The one reach out that led to anything was to the manager for the FAANG job I rejected in 2019 (always say no very nicely!). That manager made it to VP in that timeframe, and a VP recommendation to the recruiting team WILL get you in the door to talk to someone. Of course, a multi-month process resulted in a kafka-esque situation where the team that wanted me got laid off and that killed the entire process. Oh well.

In the end, I'd sent out over 300 applications, had a few dozen recruiter calls, and 7 full loops (4 offers, one of which was a lowball and 3 that all happened at the same time). Ironically, the job I ended up taking came as an inbound opportunity via LinkedIn from a recruiter at the company.

The good news seemed to be that by the August timeframe, activity had really picked up. The same resumes started getting a lot more traction.

There's still a lot of luck of the draw.

It certainly helps if the person is the hiring manager or some skip-level of the hiring manager as opposed to just an industry "name."

> tap your social network

People have been saying that since I was in school in the 90's. I've never found it to be helpful. In fact, even back in the days when there were still jobs to be had, by far the worst jobs I ever held were the ones I was referred into. The reason was pretty obvious at the time - the person who referred me in had to "talk me up" so I was starting in a position where I could only disappoint. The "cold applications" didn't have huge expectations, so when I turned out to be good at what I was doing, they were happy to see it.

not sure i agree, i went to school in the 90's as well, and out of 9 jobs I have held since, 4 came through cold-applications and 5 through referrals. referrals imo have a better chance of success particularly if you are a senior engineer, and you could have a bigger eco-system of referrers. I would also like to add that with more experience, you need to build bigger referrer networks which help in this whole process.

i try to help anyone i know (with referrals) as i have personally seen the anxiety, stress, and emotional roller-coaster that accompany the job hunt.

I totally agree with going directly to company websites.