Reach out to your network

A job search only lasting two weeks? Seems like a divine miracle in today's job market, but it's exactly what happened to one of my job seekers.

My job seeker was a project coordinator in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, and he'd been part of a layoff that affected 15 employees at his company. The evening he was laid off, he signed up for my standard resume package. He opted to swap out the cover letter for the LinkedIn profile rewrite. Seven days later, his resume and profile were ready to go.

His original plan was to start applying to jobs right away. He was aiming for New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. I checked his network, and I noticed he had a lot of connections concentrated in these areas.

"Are you planning to tell your network about your job search?" I asked him. "You have a lot of people here who work at the companies you're aiming for."

"Yeah, but I don't really know any of them," he replied. "They're connections, but we've never actually spoken."

But he was open to my suggestion that we reach out to these people. I created several templates for him to copy/paste into a DM, to introduce himself to his network and let them know he was job hunting. Out of what he estimates to be 100 messages, roughly 40 people responded. Many asked for his resume, and a few invited him to jump on the phone.

Exactly 14 days after he was laid off, he signed an offer letter with a company located in the Boston outskirts.

He told me he was blown away by the generosity of the people in his network. He couldn't believe how helpful and friendly everyone had been towards him. And that's why I wanted to share this post today: you never know who's already in your corner, ready to give you a hand in your job search. Don't be afraid to reach out to your network.

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