Dan Richards is a serial founder and former public company CEO, and an award-winning member of the marketing faculty at the Rotman School of Management, where he oversees the credit course associated with MBA student internships.
Talk to recent college and university graduates as I often do and you’ll hear complaints about the job market. Some grads talk about months of hard work without results, sending hundreds of job applications with either curt rejections or no response at all.
That’s backed by Statistics Canada data showing youth unemployment of 14 per cent, up significantly from the recent past. And it’s not just Canada where new grads are facing tough times landing first jobs – many U.S. graduates face similar frustration. One contributor to a hiring slowdown in the past 18 months are layoffs by the technology, consulting and banking sectors, as CEOs talk about postpandemic over hiring and the need to make cuts and pause hiring as a result. Another factor is caution, owing to uncertainty around interest rates and renewed speculation about a recession.
The return of ‘who you know’
While it’s easy to feel badly for frustrated job seekers, spare some sympathy for company recruiters, who face a deluge of applications for every job posting. Sifting through large volumes of applications is not a new challenge, but it’s been heightened by some graduates who’ve started to use ChatGPT, automated bots and shortcuts like LinkedIn’s “easy apply” button to indiscriminately spew out thousands of applications.
One response for many companies is to filter candidates by using recommendations from employees, often paying a bonus if someone is hired as a result of a referral. The Wall Street Journal recently described this under the headline “Landing a Job Is All About Who You Know (Again).” Indeed, two different founders of mid-sized tech firms told me that because of the volume of responses to postings, they no longer put roles on their public websites and rely entirely on internal referrals.
An internal referral can move your application to the top of the pile and significantly increases the odds that it gets a serious look. Research shows that recruiters spend less than a minute looking at the average resume – but a referral will typically lead to a closer look and increase the likelihood of an interview. A referral can also predispose an offer, by reducing the risk of a hiring mistake.
So how do you tap into the power of internal referrals? The answer is to reach out to people who work for target companies, asking to meet to get their advice and their help. This kind of networking may feel uncomfortable at first, but is an essential complement to cold applications to postings. There are two steps to an effective networking conversation – making the ask and then having an effective conversation.
Making the Ask
In one of the courses I teach, students make five reach outs each week to ask for a meeting. Here’s what students have learned about maximizing the odds of a positive response:
- Identify 10 to 20 target companies. By the time a job is posted, it’s often too late to reach out. Ideally, make the ask before a role is made public.
- Look for commonality. Most successful managers get more requests to meet than they can accommodate. Do research on LinkedIn to find something in common with the person you are approaching – the same university, an ethnic heritage in common or a shared interest.
- LinkedIn is the most common way to reach out, but some students have found it more effective to send an e-mail. There are a number of free websites that will let you find the typical e-mail path for a company and from there you can figure out the person’s e-mail address based on their name.
- In your ask, show you’ve done your research on the company and the individual. And make your ask short and to the point and ensure it’s reasonable. Asking for 20 to 30 minutes to seek someone’s advice, either in person or via Zoom, is normally about right.
Having an Effective Conversation
- Start by thanking the person you’re talking to. Then ask well researched questions that show you’ve done your homework. Questions can fall into three categories – key trends that are facing the company and the industry, lessons the person you’re talking to has learned in their career and advice they’d offer to someone in your situation. If there’s an open role you’re interested in, ask their views on how best to apply.
- Research shows that follow-up questions such as “Tell me more about that” show you’re listening and are the most powerful response to an answer to your question.
- Conclude the conversation with a three pronged approach:
- Say thank you and play back the most important things you’ve taken away and what you’re going to do as a result.
- Ask if there are one or two other people they’d suggest you talk to.
- Ask if they’d be willing to forward your resume to the hiring manager should there be a relevant role.
- Don’t forget to send a thank you e-mail afterward, reiterating what you learned.
- Once you’ve had a conversation, let the person you met with know when you’ve applied for relevant roles at their company.
Many graduates hesitate to reach out because of the fear of being rejected. Let’s be clear – no matter the approach, you won’t hear back from most of the people you approach. In fact, getting one out of five people to agree to meet would be above average, one in 10 is more typical. Two things to remember. First, everyone is busy so don’t take the lack of response personally. Dave Jones is the president of Sun Life Health; in a conversation this summer with Rotman’s Dean Susan Christoffersen, he said “When I don’t respond to a request to meet, I’m not saying no to you, I am saying no to your request.”
And second, in the words Wayne Gretzky, “You miss 100 per cent of the shots you don’t take.” By creating internal advocates at target employers, you set yourself apart and significantly increase the chances of finding your first job.
This column is part of Globe Careers’ Leadership Lab series, where executives and experts share their views and advice about the world of work. Find all Leadership Lab stories at tgam.ca/leadershiplab and guidelines for how to contribute to the column here.