More Lessons from Our Case Study of Steve

Remember Steve, the guy who landed his job after a immense amount of trial and error? If you’re joining us without the other pieces of this puzzle, I highly recommend reading Part I and Part II from our case study of Steve, the high-achieving project manager whose story is all too familiar when it comes to effective (and not-so-effective) job search strategies.

How we’re going to go over the core tactics from Steve story, so that you can go out and replicate his results:

Tactic I: Reach out to both Internal and External Recruiters

At this point I think it’s fair to acknowledge that I’m a recruiter and so I’m inherently biased. I freely admit that. However, I still believe wholeheartedly in the power of both internal and external recruiters to turbocharge your search. It’s their job to access the information on job opportunities that you just can’t get anywhere else; and as we saw in our story, Steve found that to be true as well. (Confused about what “internal” vs. “external” recruiter means? Check out this handy guide.)

As Steve explained it:

“I was successful with connections that were one or two degrees of separation from a job opportunity, or when an internal recruiter had enough interest in my resume that they called me to screen me.”

Perhaps most importantly, however, it shows that a relationship with the right recruiter can make all the difference. Which leads us to our next lesson.

Tactic II: The Right Recruiter Relationship Will Take You Far.

Think about the final recruiter Steve worked with: while the first two interviews he set Steve up with didn’t go anywhere, the third one landed him a great job. This was all because Steve built up a relationship with an external recruiter in his niche, and he kept Steve in mind as new roles came up. And now that the two have a great relationship, Steve now has someone to call now when he’s ready for the next stage in his career. So make sure to stay connected and amicable with whoever it is that helps you land your position.

If you can build solid relationships with external recruiters who work in your niche, you’ll be first in line when they think of interesting and lucrative opportunities.

Moreover, during your job search, you’ll have a powerful advocate who can mean the difference between banging your head against a wall forever and landing an awesome job.

Tactic III: It’s About Your Network…AND Your Network’s Network

Steve’s story shows us that talking to people in your network can lead you to recruiters (internal, external and both), who can then become part of your network in turn. Second, if you continually build and maintain a robust network, it proves to be invaluable during your current search and in future searches as well.

Steve took a very deliberate approach to leveraging his network throughout the course of his job search:

• He looked at who worked at the target companies where he wanted interviews.
• Then reached out to the closest connection he could find and asked for an introduction to someone at the company (or asked them to put in a good word with the hiring manager.)
• At every point, he tried to create a bridge between himself and the company he wanted to work for, and this is a brilliant strategy. (And by the way, this strategy is just scraping the surface of what we cover in the Dream Job Toolkit).

The closest connection at any given stage of his search varied, including:

• Friends
• Acquaintances
• Former colleagues
• Former bosses
• Mentors

“The impersonal one-way communications of email and submitting applications online hasn’t worked for me,” Steve says.

“Whenever I’ve been able to touch a human and communicate with them, I’ve been able to land a job.”

There’s a reason why Steve worked so hard to find people he had some familiarity with. It was a kind of insurance policy, so that when he reached out, there was a much lower chance they’d ignore his request, or back-burner it until it was too late.

Although Steve did continue to spend time on the public market, his previous experience ensured that he also continued to prioritize his network. While not everyone he spoke with could – or would – help him champion his cause with the companies he wanted to work for, enough people did that it was well worth it. The most valuable contacts, he says, were people who put him in touch with internal and external recruiters, who then did the real legwork of finding jobs and helping him apply to them. (Important side note: Steve always sent a personalized thank-you note to everyone who helped him in his search, helping him keep his network strong.)

This job search cemented for Steve what he’d known right out of college: Network matters. He recalls learning this lesson when applying for his very first job, in fact:

“I remember sitting in the career services office waiting to be interviewed on campus by some company. There was a guy who struck up a conversation with me and it turned out he was a hiring manager. He invited me to submit a resume and visit the company, and I ended up getting that job.”

Overall, Steve’s experience during this latest round of job seeking taught him that a powerful network is one that can help him get a job. Luckily, a properly executed job search can significantly expand your network, making your next search easier and hopefully even quicker.

“This experience really forced me to look at my entire network and start contacting people,” Steve said. And those people were generally open to hearing from him, which makes him think he could have leveraged his network even more. “I think my lesson for next time is to work my network harder, spend more time with the networking than on applying to public job postings. That seemed to be a waste of time and was very disappointing.”

Tactic IV: Asking for Advice (Not Asking for a Job) Can Get You Far

Now that he’s older and wiser, he has a few more strategies to add to the bag, and is determined to put them to even better use next time around.

“I took the tactic of finding public job postings, then finding out who worked for those companies and who the hiring manager was, then asking them to put me in touch.” This, by the way, happens to describe part of what I teach in the Dream Job Toolkit.

Steve went even further with this thought:

“Going forward, I will always use my network to access those hiring managers, even if I just approach it as an informational interview. If you can get the information, you can pique interest.”

Asking for information and advice, as opposed to outrightly asking for a job, is another one tactic in our toolbox for the Smart Job Search. But even cooler, you can snag my FREE course, Dream Job Toolkit, because that will give you some basics on this tactic.

To the point: conversations make a huge difference: if you can talk to a real person at the company you want to work for, you have a much better chance of getting an opportunity to open up.

Tactic V: Use LinkedIn To Generate Interest

Steve has been benefiting from a well-rounded LinkedIn profile for years. In fact, he received his last job when a colleague from 20 years prior found his profile on LinkedIn and called him about the position, thinking he was perfect. This provided good motivation to keep his LinkedIn profile up-to-date and consistently nurture his connections, which are now quite robust.

In retrospect, though, he wonders if he couldn’t have used his LinkedIn profile to even better advantage in the form of more posting or blogging. As he puts it:

“I was part of the Job Seeker Premium Group on LinkedIn. There’s a forum where I posted about getting a job and the lessons I learned, and I got thousands of looks on that. If you do more of those kinds of postings, you might get thousands of looks from internal and external recruiters. When I was feeling discouraged and felt like nothing was working, I would do these intelligent and helpful posts that were helpful to the rest of the community. They got me noticed and even caught the eye of recruiters. That is definitely a tactic I am going to follow next time I’m looking for an even better position.”

Social media, specifically LinkedIn, is an incredible resource for finding the next job of your dreams. Steve’s example scratches the surface of how
you can use it to your utmost advantage. We go over this as well in my free course, Dream Job Toolkit.