About 15 years ago, I joined a consulting company and my first project role found me. I started on Monday and on Tuesday I received a call asking me to join a project. I remember being surprised to receive a call on my personal cellphone number (especially since I had just shared it with the company during orientation the day before).
Fast forward about 18 months and it was time to find a new project. I went to my company’s internal job board, found a position that interested me, applied to it, and was brought in for an interview. However, the interviewer told me that the role had already been filled. But he was always open to good talent which is why I was still invited to interview with him. The interview went well and he created a new position for me on the project.
What I didn’t know at the time was that he had already asked my previous manager about me (a background check of sorts). It turns out both managers were very well acquainted with each other, having gone to the same graduate school and worked in the same office for some time.
I found out as my career progressed that this was a fairly common occurrence. When people on my team were looking for new projects, the potential project managers would typically contact me to seek my opinion. Over time, I too found this an effective way to identify great talent for projects or initiatives that I was involved in.
This same concept plays out in external recruiting activities at many companies. There are multiple reasons why companies have employee referral programs that award people financial incentives to refer others in their network (e.g. friends, ex-colleagues, college acquaintances, etc.).
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, “employee referrals continue to be employers’ top source of hires, delivering more than 30 percent of all hires overall in 2016”. This blog post by Firstbird states referral candidates that are referred by existing (or alumni) employees “are 3-4 times more likely to be hired than non-referral candidates”. Lastly, as a referral, you have a 1 in 10 chance of being hired vs. a 1 in 72 chance for non-referred candidates.
It’s not (just) what you know, it’s (also) who you know.
So given this information, what’s a person to do? Well, you could bury your head in the stand and pretend like this doesn’t happen (I don’t recommend this approach). You could get disillusioned about your chances of getting a job without a referral and decide to never apply for another job again (also not recommended). Or you could figure out how to make this information work to your advantage.
Here are some practical tips that I have used to improve the effectiveness of my network.
- Be intentional about developing your network.
- It’s important to cultivate long term relationships. Even if you haven’t been doing this, it’s never too late to start.
- Be intentional about keeping in touch with your network.
- Reach out to individuals in your network periodically. This can be an email exchange, a phone call, a holiday card, or a request/offer to catch up over drinks or a meal, etc.
- Extra tip – Don’t reach out only when you need help!
- Be intentional about assisting those in your network.
- The golden rule definitely applies. You don’t have to be a seasoned veteran to be in a position to help someone.
- Extra tip – When I receive job requests that aren’t a good fit for me, I forward them to people who I think it may interest.
I wish I had known earlier that you don’t go to college just to obtain an education or degree. Or that you don’t go to work just to gain experience or pad your resume. It is just as important to develop and maintain relationships that can be critical to your future.
So, who are you connected to and what will you do about it?
This blog post was previously published as a LinkedIn article.
