There is No Fairy Job Mother

Unless you are a secret prince with both immense wealth and amnesia — in which case, congratulations on escaping from your holiday romance movie! — losing your job comes with a certain amount of anxiety.

The best way to combat that anxiety is by doing, but what happens when doing “everything right”, the way we’ve been told for so long, no longer…actually…works? You know you’re supposed to apply to jobs that are a good fit, with a tailored cover letter, and send a note to the hiring manager. See if anyone in your network has a connection to the company.

But you’ve been doing that for months, only to get ghosted or auto-rejected less than a minute after applying.

What’s the Definition of Insanity, Again?

It’s clear that the system is broken on every possible level: applicants are playing a numbers game because you can’t get hired if you never apply, but you also know the chances of getting hired from a random LinkedIn job post are slim to none when Easy Apply results in hundreds of applications raining down on the hiring manager within the first 24 hours (or less).

Recruiters and hiring managers don’t have time to evaluate every application fairly, so they have to outsource at least the initial review to automated systems. Human evaluators can look beyond keywords at the total package of skills being presented; the systems only know how to filter as they’ve been told. Culture fit? They don’t know her.

You don’t have time to tailor your resume and cover letter for every single job, so you use the robots for that. To actually get a job, you need to interact with a human who can assess your skills, experience, and general ability to fill the role they have open. (That elusive “culture fit” too.)

Instead, everyone is stuck in a robotic feedback loop — and worse, you don’t even know who is doing what at which point in the process. The actual human people who are best equipped to decide if you’re the right fit for a job need the best chance to actually get to meet with and talk to you.

That’s why you’re being told to network.

Not all Networking Moves the Needle

Everyone is networking right now, especially in the wake of continued layoffs in the tech sector. That makes it harder to stand out; you need to present yourself intentionally with the exact value you have to offer. This isn’t the time to use a “gotta catch ‘em all” approach to collecting business cards and saying you’re “open to anything” because you’re scared of missing any opportunity. Understand what it is that organizations need in this market and how your precise experience and skills match that — then tell the right people about it.

That means getting in front of them.

Companies have to sift through the hundreds of applications they’re getting and narrow them down to a manageable number for humans to evaluate. The best chance of your resume making it into the pile is to magically match every keyword the first round robots are looking for, or to have a referral from inside the company or elsewhere in your network.

Networking doesn’t come naturally to everyone, unless they are a born salesperson or secret royalty from a small, fictional European nation. Part of the problem is how we think about traditional networking; it can be awkward to keep a conversation flowing or to know how or when to bring up what you do without sounding forced or tacky.

Instead, think about it as an opportunity to do some information-gathering. If you’re just there to find out what’s out there in the market and make some warm connections, it lowers the stakes and helps you show up curious instead of self-conscious.

Telling yourself you need to find the right person in the room to talk to puts too much pressure on the situation. Just try to get a good conversation going and practice articulating who you are, what you’ve done, and what you want to do based on what you’ve discussed.

The traditional way can have you feeling weird and desperate to let a near-stranger know you Need A Job, Can You Start Right Now?? (And you wouldn’t propose on the first date…right? Do not answer this if you are any character from a holiday romance.) Convincing someone you’ve just met that you’re the person for a particular job and that they should help you get it is a tricky skill to master. Most people you meet do want to be helpful, but they have their own life that takes priority — and that’s if they haven’t been burned in the past by a promising candidate whose referral turned out to be a mistake.

A lot of networking advice swings wildly between telling you to basically stalk the people set to attend an event so you can corner them and give them your pitch, or to just “show up and be yourself” and let serendipity take care of it.

Strategic networking is neither of those things; it’s thoughtful and intentional without making anyone on the receiving end wonder if they should get a restraining order against you, and it’s also more than trusting luck to provide for you.

What Strategic Networking is — and Isn’t

Just blurting out “I need a job!” feels cathartic, but most people can’t help with anything that vague. They’ll be polite and supportive at best, but you’re looking for a job that doesn’t bring on intense waves of The Sunday Scaries every week.

Strategic Networking is, first of all, understanding how the things you can do can help an industry, a company, or a specific hiring manager. Instead of “I see you’re hiring in marketing; I have a lot of experience [starts reciting entire resume starting from college]” think more along the lines of “You work at X? I just saw your job post for a marketing operations manager! I did that for X company for 3 years and really loved the god’s-eye view of all the projects. I’d love to do that again for a team with a good dynamic.”

That’s a clear, succinct way of letting someone know you have the experience they’re looking for, are interested in the open role, and are likely to be a good culture fit. It’s smart to be targeted about the kind of companies you want to work for and the kind of role you want to pursue. It doesn’t have to be limited to the industry you most recently worked in, but you should be able to draw a clear relationship between the skills you used in that industry and the one you want to move to.

Beyond directly pitching yourself, you can also use this approach to discover an upcoming role that might not be posted yet, or help someone realize that what you do is something they need to hire for in the near future.

Still need help with the specifics? We’ve got you.

How? Here’s a quick exercise

Like the previous example, think “I want to work for X company, doing Y, solving Z problem. I did Y at my last company, solving Q problem, which is closely related to Z.” (If nothing else, this approach might get you a guest spot on Sesame Street doing an alphabet segment.)

If you don’t know how to get there, start by asking yourself:

1. What are you passionate about? Not “what does your resume say”, but the parts of any job you enjoyed and looked forward to, even if they weren’t the original description.
2. Turn it into a statement like the above. Practice saying it to anyone who will listen helpfully — friends, old coworkers, mentors, your partner, or your dog — before you take it out to networking events.
3. Find some natural, conversational connections for it. The more you practice, the more it will flow, and the more connections you’ll find for discussion.

It almost always feels awkward until it doesn’t. You’re not doing a pushy sales pitch; instead of saying I Do This For Work, Let’s Talk About The Weather Now, Please, you’re saying what you’d like to be doing for work and giving everyone else the opportunity to say, “Oh, hey! I have a friend who’s hiring for that, actually!”.

This is Your Elevator Pitch

The best thing you can do in presenting yourself for a job is articulating the needs of companies in a specific industry that they might not even realize. That’s where exploring opportunities in industries other than the one you’ve always worked in can be beneficial; you can bring in a new perspective and model for solving problems.

The key is getting that story to the right people, either by putting yourself out there where they’re likely to be or by getting an introduction through your existing network. Sometimes it’s playing a weird corporate version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except it’s a woman named Janet who’s hiring for your dream job.

When you get that introduction, if you're able to say, "I think this company needs Y, because I’ve seen it work at [past experience]. Not only can I do Y [insert proven track record summary here], but I like what this company is doing and am passionate about the space," that will take you much further than “I need one job, any job please”.

This is your elevator pitch: who you are, what you’ve done, and what you’d like to do. You need to be comfortable delivering this succinctly, tailoring it slightly to whoever you’re talking to.

This Will Get You to the Next Level

Stop spending hours doing things that feel productive (like hitting “Easy Apply” on LinkedIn ten times a day) and start investing in yourself by engaging in the kind of strategic networking that will actually move the needle on your job hunt and get you where you want to go in your career.

Putting some of your job search time toward this approach is a more effective strategy in the long run.

If you need help, we’re here too.