Help! I keep applying to jobs and can't get a response!

Everyday, people are posting "Help! I applied to 100 jobs and didn't get one response. What can I do differently?"

The answer is always networking. Did you honestly network as much as you could have? 

Did you network with someone in the company that is NOT in HR or recruiting? Someone who works there could be incentivized to bring in talent and get a finder's fee.

Did you network with the hiring manager? They're the ones who will actually tell you the real skinny, not just what's on the job description.

Did you network with a competitor? They can tell you what the company is good at, where they need help, where the industry is going. Did you attend an industry conference?  Few people think to do this.

What about volunteering for an industry conference? When I was looking for a job, I volunteered with the Wall Street industry group FIX Trading Community or FIX Protocol, helped organize a conference (brought my event planning chops), and then I worked the door, handing out name tags. Why hand out name tags, instead of hang out by the bar? Because the front desk is the ONLY spot where you get to see EVERYONE. Or more appropriately, everyone gets to see YOU. From that, I got invited to several other smaller networking events with clients and competitors. And once I found a job, I continued to volunteer for FIX and industry groups, and grew my personal brand even further.

Did you network with someone who was mentioned in an article about the company or industry? People who are quoted in articles usually only get one or two sentences published. They, of course, have much more to say. Even fewer will do this. 

Did you network with a reporter who may have written about the company or the industry? Reporters know a lot more than you know. They are usually under a constraint (words, time) and don't write everything they find out. They write about what the article is supposed to be about. Plus, they have something that few people have - home email addresses and cell phone numbers for industry leaders. Reporters are a treasure of information, that NOBODY thinks of.

Unless you did most of these #networking strategies, stop complaining about the responses you didn't get.

Take control of your career. Looking for a jobs is sales.

Applying blindly puts you into a pile with 200 other candidates across #Linkedin, #Indeed, #ZipRecruiter, and the company's Careers Page.

Applying blindly is merely feeding you a dopamine kick. "Yay! I did something by pushing a button."

That is called the Opium of Action (a term I learned from my former boss, Michel Finzi). You think you're doing something, but it's nothing new, and will likely produce no results.

You know it, and I know it. 

Networking takes time and effort. And you never know who will be there to help you, but like the lottery slogan says, "You gotta be in it to win it!"

If you don't like my approach, fine. See what ChatGPT will do for you. Sure, that's easy to use. But guess what? Everyone else is using it too. Best of luck to you.

EQ over IQ.

Empathy is UNDEFEATED.

#career #interviewing #layoffs #job #hiring #recruiters #chatgpt #applyforjob