Networking: the trick to maximise the effectiveness of job-seeking

Every time we see someone bagging a great opportunity, our first tendency is to look at their profile, we analyse it and try to compare with ourselves, most of the times you will see that your preparation is no less than theirs, yet they bagged the opportunity, you too could've but you never got the opportunity.

It can be depressing to find out that you had left no corners in your preparation but you won't get opportunity to showcase it, in an ideal world you should get the opportunity, but in practical world there is competition, while the number of good candidates is still small, we can't stop it from drowning in pool of applicants.

Getting Noticed

To get noticed in practical world all you need is a way to get a real human, recruiter or HR to at least consider your profile. We may think every person applying to job gets their profile seen, but thats not the case and that's only when you apply.

Recruiters know it's a hassle to find good people, they too don't want to throw away majority of applications simply because of quantity but with online job openings you can't distinguish what's good and what's bad.

Onus lies on applicant to put extra efforts to make the recruiter know he is more serious and suited for role than others.

Creating your online presence

'Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.'

Do not misinterpret it to believe it's wrong to share your progress publicly, it's the right way, the quote only frowns upon celebrating early, in your progress you will have ups and downs, share your small wins with people, share learnings from your mistakes, this way you will create an online presence and people will recognise you as the guy who shared his journey, they've seen you grow and it's a great indicator that you are hardworking.

As opposed to someone who did everything but kept to himself, he is hoping to confine his achievements to margins of his resume, only letting recruiter see it, but when the time comes recruiter will try to find candidates they remember seeing over long-term, efforts aren't wasted but they also don't translate linearly with access to opportunities.

Stand out of crowd

When you see a job opening you notice there are 100+ applicants already, you would have felt deterred and demotivated as you don't feel confident about standing out among such crowd, and you are right, same profile may not get shortlisted because of quantity of applicants even though most were not good enough either, they only block actual good applicants from ever reaching human hands.

There is a way to skip this pile of applicants, the mere fact that you would be putting extra effort for this job opening already puts you ahead of crowd. This way is not isolated from what we discussed so far, you need a job referral, most people think job referral is only applicable to people you know personally, or family. That's not true at all, some people also find it bad to bother people to help you, trust me it bothers no one and it's not 1-sided help, if you succeed in getting job they do get a bonus for referring you.

As it must be obvious, they get bonus only if you get selected, so even before the actual interview there is another person you need to convince that you can clear the interview process, this is where previous step comes to play, if you have an online presence you have a lot to showcase your skills rather than just your resume, person referring you is more confident about your skills and would be willing to bet on you.

Mind you, job referral is no shortcut, you won't get VIP treatment with it, but it also ensures that you will be judged by actual human than some ATS filtering you out. Bar is same for you, preparation and presentation should not have any shortcomings, a referral will give you the best possible shot you should have.

Cold Messaging

Till now we only discussed ways to apply to job, apart from job referrals recruiters also use another way to limit number of applicants they need to consider. They simply don't announce about opening publicly, these are called internal openings.

Only employees of those companies are aware of it, and referral is only way to apply, Unlike previous step you would never find out about opening if some employee doesn't tell you, and it's unlikely that they will personally tell you, again, onus lies on you to ask them about it.

Even if they were not willing to refer, if you inquire and express your interest they would want to refer you for it given your skills are suitable.

Sometimes there may not be job openings at all but recruiters like to keep potential hires in network, having an online presence helps you getting contacted by them, they will keep you in their list of potential hires and when opportunity comes, they will be the one contacting you, it is why it's so useful to post your achievements online.

I won't go into all the 'cold email templates', there are enough guides for it and even better is to be authentic, recruiters know every template that exists and would be refreshing to see someone being original.

Finding these employees and recruiters can be challenging, but if you use LinkedIn effectively you can build connections so you don't need to when it's too late.

Conclusion

Since the beginning, I have put emphasis that networking maximises your chances, ie. it will help you get opportunities that you should ideally be getting, it won't however make you instantly successful with low efforts. There is a reason why everyone doesn't simply use it to get every opportunity, because your upper limit is still bounded by your preparation, But once you have given your 100% to prepare, there is good reason to use networking and getting to showcase what you have prepared for, Good luck.