Here’s a technique that many clients have used successfully to land interviews. A prerequisite is that you have a list of target organizations ready that your network contacts may have heard of. The idea is that you don’t have time to email every single person individually in your hopefully very broad network of 200+. So to save you time, send an e-mail out to a large portion of your network – say 100 of the 200 people to whom you want to reach out.
The people who would receive this message are perhaps those you think are less likely to come through for you, or those who you don’t know well enough to put on the spot with an email request sent just to them. Often, family, friends, your dentist, acquaintances, or those outside of your profession or industry might fall into this category.
Details of the email:
- The subject line could be something like: “Your help requested”.
- An example of the e-mail intro (feel free to change/personalize): “Hi all, as some of you may know I’m starting to explore a transition to a new VP of Marketing role within Pharma and Biotech, and am writing to ask for your help. I would greatly appreciate a 10-15 minute conversation with mid to upper-level (Director or above) contacts you might have in any of the organizations listed below (or similar companies). In our conversation, I would not be asking for a job, but rather would ask your contact about how the company is organized and where my skillset could be a fit down the road.”
- Then put your pitch here, with 3-6 bullet points listing your accomplishments. Keep in mind that this is an email they might forward to one of their contacts.
- Close by re-iterating the ask, and also consider offering to help them: “And, if I can introduce you to anyone in my network, please let me know.”
- At the bottom of the e-mail, list all the organizations you are interested in. This list of organizations is key, because the list will help to remind the e-mail recipients of people they know in these organizations.
- Make sure to blind copy all the email recipients!
This email works because 1) you don’t attach your resume – doing so screams “please hire me,” while your strategy with this email is to get meetings with the “right” people – those who can hire you or may know of hiring leaders – regardless of whether there’s an opening now, 2) you make it clear you won’t put your network’s contacts on the spot by asking for a job, 3) you include a powerful pitch that can substitute for a resume, and 4) you show appreciation, and even offer to help them
A client of mine took this approach when including her neighbor, who she didn’t know well but whose email address she happened to have, in a similar mass email. It turns out that this neighbor’s husband’s brother’s wife worked for the CFO of a large global media company where she was looking to land finance executive role. She ended up getting an interview with the CFO.
I have many similar stories. In fact, there’s a whole science around the power of “weak ties” (Google it) that says the people you least expect are the ones who often come through for you.
It can be tempting to attribute a long job search to factors beyond your control. The factors that I hear jobseekers mention include age, experience (i.e. over- or under-qualified), resume gaps, weight, ethnic background, gender, or some other physical feature. While, at times, these factors and biases do cause problems for job-seekers, nine times out of ten I see that the problem is actually in their job-search strategy or execution.
LinkedIn Just Got More Useful for Business Marketing
by Robert Hellmann • Building a Business, Social Media
If you market your (or your employer’s) business or organization using social media, and you are open to using Hootsuite as your social media organizer, you need to know about this useful new LinkedIn-related feature.