Thank you! Whenever I see an extraordinarily broad claim I immediately go looking for references.
Imo the article has been referenced well even if the references are mostly second hand; it repeats claims made by other articles which may also be repeating claims made by others.
To me, the key fact that I wanted to check in on was this
> Up to 70% of employees received their current company position through networking.
The reference for this probably comes from a 2017 linkedin survey[1] which polled 15,905 linkedin members in 2016 and received this as one of their answers
> ... 70 percent of people in 2016 were hired at a company where they had a connection
I find that this kind of stands at odds with the words "received their current company position *through* networking." That makes it sound like the networking was the reason they were able to get the job. The linkedin statement makes it seem like that's just how they may have found out about the job. I won't accuse the article of directly saying what I'm assuming it means. But I also think the rewording changes the meaning too much for me.
Wherever I have worked, whenever there's been a job opening I have forwarded it to friends who might be interested. For the ones who got into the job, they had a connection, but that had absolutely zero weight on whether they got hired or not. I was just a more efficient job board promoter.
Not to take away from everything in the article but I definitely would encourage people to break any numbers they find interesting down into what they might actually mean by visiting the sources and trying to read into the claims fully.
I'm calling bullshit on the "zero weight on whether they got hired or not".
Referrals from bad employees don't mean anything, but referrals from good employees do. All of the interview hoops that people jump through and still the most consistently reliable way to hire a good employee is to have a referral from an existing good employee.
I never referred them in the sense where I made a recommendation for them or mentioned that I had asked them to apply. I just pointed them to the job. The statement that they have a connection at the workplace would still be true in the cases where they were hired.
Also, just in case it’s helpful, the zero weight statement was related to the folks I connected with. Not referrals in general.
Basically, as your comment reveals to me, there’s a lot of nuance here and the article generalizes it away into a statement that doesn’t feel accurate.
Since it was a LinkedIn poll, it might have been interpreted as "had a connection in LinkedIn that worked at the company". Which can mean a lot of things, including being "connected" to somebody you've never even had an internet conversation with, didn't cite when applying for the job, etc.
n=1, but I've never gotten a job without networking. It didn't matter how well I did at school, or how well I was evaluated at my previous jobs. I couldn't even get IT jobs for less than minimum wage at times, it was truly ridiculous.
I spent a lot of time studying and not networking in university; my family was (and is) mostly asocial (the prototypical hard working first generation immigrant), and no one really clued me in. I didn't get that important context until years later (thank you internet)
Living without a network in a foreign city, I managed to move from tiny 1000$/month contracts to consulting gigs then to a bigco. Every step was accomplished by meeting people, and solving problems, and then having them tell other people about me (and a blog article that weirdly went viral in the small space I was in). This might sound like an RPG, but it was not fun and the constant terror about missing rent was something I'm glad to have moved past. I don't recommend this at all, I'm way behind someone who got hired out of school by a friend at a BigCo.
As a result, I have a lot of sympathy for people without a network and I try to evaluate them fairly when I hire people. Sadly, without a prior relationship, it's hard for the evaluator and the evaluated to really know what to make of each other. It's always going to be easier to hire someone you know or someone a friend vouches for, as you will have the ability to have trust each other from the beginning.
I've had ~10 jobs in my career so far. 1 was via my network; the others were all just me searching.
But that said, networking makes it far easier. I've seen people be brought in even when an interview panel was meh, because they had worked with the hiring manager before (and to be fair they were fine, just bad at interviewing), as well as people bypass parts of the process due to their knowing people. And, certainly, people getting landing interview loops (and getting put in the front of the queue) all because of a referral/networking.
First 10 year of my career(am now close to my 25 years into my career). Yup searching and hustling. After that during good economic times I get pinged/called with job offers. During down turns the only jobs came through my own network.
During downturns the more sure opportunities are through my network, definitely. But I've still landed jobs during them just from searching (I've been lucky enough to avoid layoffs during downturns, so job changes have always been my own decision).
Even as a senior developer I used to get messages from Canadian recruiters asking me if I'd work for 18 dollars an hour. To this day I keep a screenshot to amuse me.
As much as I would like to blog I am not so keen about sharing my personal life stories and past on the internet. And most personal tech blogs which help people get their next job is just that.
I like my privacy and I am not very social either. But I do like to connect with people and talk tech. Any tips how I could leverage the social media and blogging without really sharing much of my personal life? Am I looking at the wrong blogs for inspiration and ideas?
In my case I didn't blog about my personal life; I was living in Tokyo at the time and wrote a blog about seeing people at (Japanese large company) rebuilding everything from scratch and serious cases of NIH. It hit Hacker News and Slashdot Japan, and it also introduced me to a few people in the local Ruby community (which translated to other opportunities, which - many years later - culminated with my previous job at Heroku/Salesforce).
I don't think social media matters as much as being seen as someone who does things when you are in a real social situation. One handshake from an interesting person, like, say, Paul McMahon (who cofounded Doorkeeper and worked on Ruby) or Patio11, felt more important to me than 10k social media likes. (I purposely picked people who had nothing to do with my work career)
I don't know how applicable any of this is, especially with the invasion of nerd spaces by bullies. However, there are always people who need skilled coworkers, and finding sincere places to show these skills will always be helpful.
I guess here too quality matters over quantity. Publish less, network less but make sure its relevant and valuable.
With so much noise in the field currently, its hard to know if you too are part of it and finding the right platform/places to make sure you are providing value thats appreciated.
You don't have to blog to grow or manage your professional network.
Set a reminder, once a week, to look at your LinkedIn. Ping someone you actually know, just to say hi. This keeps you fresh in their minds as someone who does X, and is still alive.
Finally, if you want to expand your network, just ask these same people if they know anyone else doing X and then send them a hello.
Very low-effort and direct contact is 100x more powerful than a blog post anyway!
Also, n = 1, but I think I got a few jobs early in my career through application, got head hunted midway through a bit and then at the end its all networking. At a certain level of experience, if they want someone really senior it is often because the situation is a disaster and they hope you will be able to turn it around. If things are going OK, they will promote from within. For me, for a long time now, the only good positions are from someone who worked with me and then recommended me.
Meanwhile, I've had 9 since I was 11 years old (am in my 40s) and I only ever got that first job via networking, which subsequently paid me under the table at less than minimum wage (but nothing that an early-morning-while-nobody-is-around fibbing on the timesheet couldn't fix). I make it a point to NOT go to places I know that I have friends and colleagues at, because I don't want the dynamic to be weird.
I posted a bit about what I did above, but I don't think I am a good person to learn from. Every single bit of my trip to now seems to be predicated on divine intervention or unbelievable luck, depending on what you believe.
One thing that I did, which I felt helped a lot, was running a board game group in Tokyo. It was not a minor endeavor in retrospect; I had to get a bigger apartment/house, I cooked, and I didn't charge money; I even paid for advertising on FB and Google. However, as a result, I met a lot of interesting people and met a lot of people from backgrounds normally wouldn't (IT of course, but media, manga/animation, caretaking, Soka Gakkai (!), politics, etc..)
However, I really did only do it to play board games, it wasn't a scheme to improve my work prospects. I didn't count the costs when doing it, since I considered them important to my mental health. This also created an organic way for me to get to know people from work better ("Hey, do you want to drop by and play some games with my friends?")
I'm not the OP or the parent post's author; however, pre-covid I'd give the usual answer of just join meetups, attend in person, follow the gang to the neighborhood bar or coffee or wherever they go, make friends, birds of a feather, etc. Post-covid, that scene seems non-existent to me. Being an introvert, it was certainly not a game I understood intuitively, outside of the fact that the groups were so small in my city as to be harmless to someone like me with the social skills of a loner. FWIW though, every single gig I've had for twenty years was among friends-of-friends with a common thread, typically art, music, science (OS, PL, DB), or culture (motos, bikes, skateboards).
What on earth is “the gang”. No where I’ve ever worked has there been some mob that followed each other to the same place after work. Mostly people just go on about their own lives after work. I’ve met and connected with many people at bars, coffee shops, and other hangout spots, never regarding work or tech and we usually live in completely different worlds, but that’s never lead to anything besides a pleasant conversation at best.
As for tech meetups, it’s admittedly been quite a while since I’ve gone to those, but in my past experience they were filled to the brim with entry level people with the same idea.
Agree. Had to work part-time jobs for two years before I could get a contractor to give me a minimum wage IT job. Yes, I am a first generation immigrant, but I guess covid had a lot more to add to my story than yours.
i’ve worked exclusively at large companies (5k+ employees) my whole career. Got all jobs without a referral. It’s tough but very doable! A good resume helps more than most people realize.
Knowing the right people at the right time seems almost like a super power for getting your career going. I've gotten all my jobs by referral/invitation and everyone I then tried to refer myself also ended up getting hired straight away.
Now that's a totally useless sample size, but when I see people on here mention having sent hundreds of applications with no response, it just feels like I got super lucky somehow or they're doing something wrong.
I started growing a small network by doing some hobby programming during uni, being pretty good at it, joining communities and being active there, helping people with their problems, etc. Purely online connections with people I never met in real life, that others kept telling me are worthless. In the end getting those connections seems to have been the most important thing I've ever done, because they reached out to me when their companies were looking to hire.
A referral from the right person makes even old boundaries like being on the wrong continent meaningless. Just work remotely then, the company will figure something out... since you were recommended by someone they already trust, they're going to be far more willing to invest some extra resources.
According to some guys informal LinkedIn survey of 3000 respondents "most of whom are in staff or management roles", had to go 3 links deep to find it.
Edit: and it's "critical jobs", some term that guy came up with, not all jobs.
It's hilarious to me when HR at all corporations go on about bias, diversity etc. in recruiting and meanwhile when the corporation needs a new exec they always just find another white guy from Stanford/Ivy League.
Networking, and leveraging pre-existing work relationships into jobs, is not a skill that's exclusive to white guys from Stanford/Ivy League. It could be just as effective between two friends from a Step dancing group in Brooklyn who also happened to go to a coding bootcamp together.
This is hilarious, also basically why Chief Diversity Officer is such a degrading position. Like oh crap our executive team looks like this https://www.apple.com/leadership/ we need to hire a non-white person, oh but they aren't suitable for CFO etc. etc.
My experience in job hunting (my resume is swiss cheese, full of gaps, nothing particularly impressive) matches this. Give a good presentation at a conference, go to a language meetup, chat to some engineers directly and you can often skip technical screening. Most of the times I don't even need a resume, or the resume is a formality after the decision.
Anecdotally, I've never gotten a single offer through a cold application. I've only gotten a couple of interviews that way. Every job I've ever gotten has either been through my network, or through a recruiter or a university job fair (which are arguably network-adjacent)
...which sucks for people trying to break into the field
Anecdotally, I get replies/confirmations/hear anything at all to around 35% of applications for advertised roles. The strike rate for cold contacting people is higher.
I’ve sat on interview boards at a Fortune 100 company for at least 100 positions. We’ve never hired anyone based on their network. To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never even interviewed anyone that knew anybody at the company. Maybe the positions we were filling were unique.
Never? That’s interesting. I don’t know the hiring percentages but I would say at least 30% of the interview loops I’ve been on at a FAANG have been with someone who was referred in from a person on my team or who had another connection in. I haven’t done 100 interviews (maybe lifetime total I have, but not in tech), but it’s a solid 40 or 50. Again, the person who gets the job isn’t always someone who has a connection to the team — I would say except in rare circumstances, their chances are no better than anyone else’s — but there are usually at least two people per loop who were referred in through their network.
Even in my own experience, I’ve had only one job as an adult that I didn’t have some sort of connection at or where my network wasn’t part of why I was recruited (so even if I didn’t know people hiring me personally, they knew of me). Now, my career has largely been in roles where I’m publicly visible (and that visibility is part of the job), so I won’t try to attach that to anyone else — but even for a non-public facing role, I would still leverage my network first and foremost I think.
I don’t think it’s so much that knowing someone guarantees you’ll get the job, but I do think it makes it much more likely you’ll get to the first or second stage of an interview.
In general, the big advantage of going in network is the much higher chance of passing interviews vs the random person off the street that hands you their resume. I've seen this done all the time in fortune 100 companies, but it only really works if you aren't hiring so much your network is depleted. Even when the interviewing team is not aware of the reference, there's just a higher success rate, as the worst candidates just don't get recommended.
Still, positions change. I've had to do full interview rounds after strong recommendations, and I've been hired by SMS in 10 minutes, salary negotiation included. One size doesn't it all.
I would speculate that roles which are filled through networking never get to the posting / interview stage. If that were the case it would make sense that being involved with interview boards would lead to seeing very few candidates getting a position through their network.
Oh, this is 100% true. Or if they do have a posting, it’ll be for legal reasons only but the person they are hiring has always been planned from the beginning.
I think you'd use referrals to decide if someone should pass the first stage, as HR and resume review are a broad filter. Once you're at the interview panel, you vote based on how the interviews went. If you tell the interviewers that "this is so-and-so's friend" then you could get nepotism instead of an informed hire. I think it's possible that there were many referrals, but that information wasn't shared outside an initial screening because it was no longer helpful.
I can guarantee you right now I could send a few emails out and tell former coworkers who are now managers or former managers who have moved on that I’m looking for a job and someone would find a position for me or worse case hire me as a consultant.
I am no special snowflake but I keep my network strong.
It might not have been a direct hire because there was a connection in the company but I bet that most of the interviewees found out about the position because they had someone in their network tell them about it and gave them tips on how to get the job.
Maybe the positions were a bit junior? There are some big companies that hire a lot from school, and then are up and out. It's not necessarily bad, its just a particular thing.
I know this "blog" is probably hokum, but in my experience, the power of having a good network is incredible. I've been in tech for a decade, and only had a peoper whiteboard interview for my very first role, and have been able to leverage my network to get roles at some dream companies without having to go through the "invert a linkedlist"/"design a parking lot" type of interviews, with great pay raises, role hikes, and increased responsibilities.
Us engineers love complaining about the interview process, but then do NOTHING to display skill outside of a resume (and trust me, the amount of lying that happens in resumes is incredible).
In a more reasonable timeline, there wouldn't be such a heavy reliance on relying upon human relationships just to survive. Familiarity biases shouldn't be used as justification for hiring someone.
Why is there not a movement within companies to stop spending so much on mass recruiting and interviewing? Doesnt it cost them thousands of dollars per candidate if they go through multiple rounds?
As per my CEO, it's ok to do endless interviews to find that one good candidate. It doesn't make sense to me but hey it's not my money. One of our engineering managers was complaining that they had to do 80 interviews to hire one candidate. Colossal waste of time and money. No wonder these companies are still not profitable.
The idea is that bringing on a wrong candidate will cause more damage than missing a right one.
There's definitely a balance to strike, some companies would rather bring on everyone and find out who sinks and who swims, others hate firing and will do virtually anything to avoid hiring someone who needs to be let go.
not my expertise but a few thousand dollars seems like a pretty minor cost if you are going to end up paying them 75k a year plus benefits. the amount they spend on training will also be a few thousand.
if it cost them a few thousand dollars to expand pool so they hire someone 20% better then that seems worth it.
I've always stayed away from referrals. It puts additional pressure on the new job relationship working out and puts you in a more difficult spot to start. Part of your reputation is the person who referred you (good or bad). Plus it limits your circle of discovery of finding rare one of a kind jobs that are outside of your circle where most of them exist.
In contrast to what most people are saying here - almost all of my jobs have been from replying to recruiting emails or applying to jobs and not via network.
My first job out of college was via someone I knew from a non-tech interest (friend of several of my friends who graduated earlier) and I soon discovered that while the cultural fit was good for that non-tech interest at that time, it wasn't for me professionally. It broke some connection with my friend group and my past.
I think I also like having a mental reset between jobs where I don't have to keep carrying the past with me, although maybe that will change next go around.
Related - also don't like telling people i got a new job for awhile in case it doesn't work out. Was very uncomfortable.
In jobs where downside risk is much worse than upside risk (i.e. doing it poorly can be catastrophic, but doing it exceptionally well doesn't get you much), then it entirely makes sense to hire from trusted networks. If you're hiring for example an ombudsman for employee grievances, this person could cost your company billions of dollars if they fuck it up, but aren't going to make you any more profitable by succeeding. So the best move is to find the person with the lowest risk of fucking it up, not the person with the highest expected value.
- "Business Pundit. “25 Best Places to Network""
- "Undercover recruiter. “Why Employee Referrals are the Best Source of Hire”
.. and a bunch of corporate blogs.