Tag Archive for: #JobSearch : Landing a Job Is All About Who You Know (Again).

Nine-hundred eighty-three people applied online for a job posted recently by tech recruiter Rob Tansey. The candidate who got the offer wasn’t one of them.

Tansey, who scouts potential hires for aviation-software maker Veryon, received a half dozen referrals from a woman he knew from past job searches. One of those six quickly became the front-runner. That’s often how Tansey operates: He estimates that just 40% of successful applicants come in cold through his company’s job portal.

She thought to tap her and her colleagues’ networks to fill the role, but she soon reconsidered—even those personal channels have become oversaturated with first- and second-degree connections looking for work.

Employees are “inundated with people asking for their help to navigate into open positions,” she says.

She contracted a staffing agency instead.

Whether using agencies or their own employees, more companies are turning to people to vet prospects.

Laserfiche, a maker of content-management software, has a longstanding employee-referral program and a renewed commitment to contact everyone who is recommended by an employee.

The guaranteed outreach does not ensure an offer, says Vice President of People Jenny Bode, but it is a chance for candidates with unconventional backgrounds to make a case for themselves. With about 400 applicants for a typical opening, that’s an opportunity not afforded to everyone.

Bode values referrals partly because one helped bring her to Laserfiche in 2022. She wasn’t even looking for a job when she heard from a former co-worker she’d kept in touch with.

“She reached out to me and said, ‘I have this position. Do you want to interview for it?’” Bode recalls.

Alison Mincey introduced referral bonuses of up to $2,500 when she became chief human resources officer at the University of Miami in 2022. She estimates one in 10 hires now starts with an employee referral. The program, she says, also helps with retention: Employees are more engaged when their input is valued, and newcomers are more likely to stay and thrive when they already know a co-worker.

A flawed but indispensable system

On Greenhouse’s platform, when employees submit referrals, the software prompts them to “consider referring people from underrepresented backgrounds.”

That can be a challenge. People tend to know—and therefore recommend—people like themselves, says Ruth Thomas, chief of research and insights at PayScale, a compensation-management firm. (PayScale itself has lately doubled its usual share of new hires found through referrals, to 30%.)

Referral networks tend to reinforce demographic imbalances. A PayScale survey of 53,000 workers found that white men land more jobs and bigger raises through referrals than others because they are more likely to be connected to corporate decision makers.

Hiring managers might say, “They were in my club at Princeton, and therefore, they’re a good person,” says John Horton, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and co-author of a recent paper on artificial intelligence in hiring. “If people start to retreat away from an open market, and it happens much through who you know and references, that would be bad.”

Cisco Systems is leaning more heavily on referrals for hiring than it has in the past. But the network-equipment company knows the approach can run counter to diversity efforts, so it also launched an effort to hire more people of color and workers without four-year degrees, says Macy Andrews, vice president of employer branding for people and purpose. That hiring initiative looks to identify candidates with transferable skills rather than mandating college. Cisco so far has made over 100 hires through the initiative.

The company is looking to cut through the online-application morass in other ways as well. Cisco recruiters now visit college campuses with preprinted offer letters, so they can snap up students who make strong impressions.

“There is a bigger point here, which is that the process of sending in résumés and having thousands—sometimes millions—to go through isn’t the wave of the future,” she says.

No connection, no luck

Samuel Joynson, of Venice, Fla., launched a thoroughly modern job hunt after he lost his job when his company went through a reorganization. He enlisted ChatGPT to edit his résumé and draft emails and cover letters.

The language didn’t sound like him—so he changed his approach.

Joynson, 28 years old, switched to writing his own letters and emails, investing about two hours into each application. He also pushed himself to contact everyone he knew at major tech companies including Apple, Google and Microsoft, where he talked to a friend from college. On calls, he asked them about their experiences at the companies, the office environment and remote-work policies.

“I took the approach of making it as human-based as possible,” he says.

Joynson’s old-fashioned strategy paid off. Many conversations led to introductions to other employees within his target companies. He landed a role and started as a senior technical program manager at Microsoft in April.

Francisco Denis recently discovered that connections—or lack thereof—can make all the difference. He says he was a finalist for a project-manager role at Disney but was told by a recruiter that the company decided to hire someone who had worked there in the past and could plug in immediately.

Denis, 40, has applied online for more than 100 jobs this year after moving on from an unsuccessful startup. His efforts have yielded only a handful of interviews, a jarring turn from a couple of years ago, when he was routinely headhunted. He’s pouring energy into networking for the first time in his career, reconnecting with former co-workers at companies he’d like to join. He often shares his résumé and describes his arduous job search to show that he’s not looking for a handout.

Still, even a system that relies on human connections can be gamed. On Fishbowl, an app for workplace venting and career advice, users have started a forum dubbed “Job Referrals!” It has drawn hundreds of thousands of members seeking endorsements from people they don’t know.

“Anyone willing to provide a referral to Amazon?” one user posted.

In lieu of a handshake or business card, another offered an emoji: “Looking for a referral for Spotify, thanks in advance :).”

Bogus referrals could be win-wins for the people who give and receive them. The applicants gain an edge and, if they’re hired, their sponsors might be entitled to referral bonuses.

The companies that extended the offer? They’re left with one more hiring strategy that can’t be trusted.

WSJ.com Authors: Lynn Cook contributed to this article along with Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com and Lindsay Ellis at lindsay.ellis@wsj.com

WSJ.com | May 30, 2024