Friends Help Friends Find Jobs: Getting In The Door

Monster, HotJobs, CareerBuilder, Dice, SimplyHired, etc. etc. are all great but when the rubber hits the road, it’s friends that will help you beyond all other sources when it comes to finding you a new job. I’m switching jobs in a few weeks and this is all possible because of the referrals from my friends. Having a friend on the “inside” helps you get into the door, helps you navigate the interview process, and gives you, hopefully, their honest opinion of what it’s like to work there. All three parts are critical because while the job may pay better, the work environment may not be a good fit. This article will just talk about my experiences getting in the door.

Getting In The Door

If you imagine that a publicized job for which you are qualified candidate, now imagine that your resume enters the same database as 10,000 other equally qualified candidates… what separates you from everyone else? That fancy paper you printed your resume on certainly won’t differentiate you. What separates at least one of those 10,000 candidates is how he or she entered the database, likely as a referral. At that point it’s basically luck that will get you an interview because that company won’t interview 10,000 candidates, or even 100. Having been referred, perhaps by someone who has even talked to the hiring manager and able to give a honest opinion of you, gives you a huge advantage. Now imagine a non-publicized job for which you are a qualified candidate, if your friend refers you then you’re competing with far less than 10,000 candidates thus giving you another leg up.

Many companies treat referral candidates much differently than candidates they’ve discovered on their own through their hiring process (visiting colleges, scouring resume listing sites) because they have at least one trusted source, the employee, vouching for that candidate.

When I started looking for a job, I mentioned it to a few of my friends, one of which had recently left my current company and began working at my future company. He offered to submit my resume into their system (he does get a $1500 referral bonus if I stay for 90 days, but he’s not the type of guy that would only do it for the money, that’s just the icing) and within a week or two I had a phone interview. Another one of my friends, who also left my current company for a consulting gig, also referred me to a software company in the local area because he worked with them before. The contact netted me another interview a few weeks later as well.

So, in the few weeks I was looking for a job, the only two interviews (I’d been hit up by headhunters via email multiple times, it seems like everyone is) I ever went on were direct the result of referrals from friends.

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