Gone are the times when hiring managers were impressed by cold messages on LinkedIn. With greater than a billion users on the platform, it’s perhaps no surprise that overworked recruiters are increasingly ignoring messages from strangers.
That’s why recent graduate Basant Shenouda went back to basics, combining the insights that social media platforms provide with good old-fashioned handshaking.
After graduating in 2019 from the University of Bonn – one in all Germany’s top universities – she spent six months slipping into recruiters’ DMs and applying for jobs online before realizing she needed to take drastic measures to chop through the noise suppress.
“It is becoming increasingly difficult to reach the hiring manager, even virtually – which used to be a rather unconventional method,” says the Egyptian-born Generation Zer Assets. “It’s incredibly hard to put yourself out there.”
After six months of attempting to virtually connect with recruiters on LinkedIn, she modified her strategy and used the platform to see what conferences they were posting to direct her networking efforts on to them.
One event specifically stood out: Online Marketing Rockstars in Hamburg. “It’s a really well-known marketing and sales conference in Germany,” remembers Shenouda.
“I have a degree in marketing and wanted to get into sales. So it was exactly the right place for the decision-makers I wanted to address,” she explains. “People came from as far away as the US, so it was a good networking opportunity.”
That’s why Shenouda volunteered to scrub glasses on the conference to be able to get free entry, traveling over six hours by train from Cologne to Hamburg with a stack of resumes in hand.
During her breaks on the conference, Shenouda put her resume in front of 30 to 40 faces on the premise that she was in search of feedback on it—while secretly hoping that her daring approach would only impress a hiring manager. And after a six-month hiring process, it paid off.
“I was one of the few graduates of the conference and so it offered a lot of opportunities for me,” adds the 27-year-old. “I got visibility into my resume, built a lot of personal relationships (which was far more effective than online networking), and boosted my application for a few jobs.”
One of those positions was within the sales graduate program at LinkedIn, where Shenouda still works today, three years later, as an implementation consultant in Dublin, Ireland.
“When you graduate, you think everyone will say yes to you and everything will be okay. But it’s about building resilience,” she advises unemployed graduates.
“You need to keep reevaluating your process so that each no brings you closer to the next yes.”
Talk to the employers who rejected you
There’s something to be said for being in the precise place at the precise time, but Shenouda took a more deliberate approach than simply hoping to cross paths along with her future employer.
Not only did she create a success list of conferences that her dream employers’ hiring managers would attend, she also met face-to-face with those that had rejected her advances online—including the LinkedIn recruiter.
“I received feedback from all the companies that declined, so I was able to reapply and receive job offers,” says Shenouda.
“It really gave me lots of insight into how I can higher differentiate my applications and what gaps I want to fill to make sure I get through the ultimate rounds of interviews.
“Traditionally, people don’t reapply, people don’t keep trying and keep approaching people and keep maintaining a relationship.
“She [the recruiter] I believed these can be really good, transferable skills for sales, and that’s what I ended up doing.”
How to Turn Networking right into a Job Offer
Even if you happen to’ve made every effort to make sure that you show up in any respect the places hiring managers are, that is no guarantee that you’re going to actually get leads.
Shenouda says she showed her resume to about 200 recruiters at just a few conferences before getting lucky.
Here are some suggestions she’s learned to remodel networking from just chit-chat into something more tangible like an interview or a proposal:
1. Talk in regards to the impact
Don’t worry if it doesn’t come naturally to indicate off to strangers. “I used to be really bad at networking,” Shenouda remembers. Your biggest tip? Conversation metrics.
“Now I know how to get someone’s attention,” she says, adding that it’s like “talking about impact as a substitute of just saying, ‘I need a job.’
Looking back on the elevator pitch that got her into her current role, Gen Zer says she talked about her successes during a previous internship at Intel.
Also, don’t be afraid to elucidate what you would like after chatting with a recruiter.
“I always asked the specific question: whether they could recommend me (for a position) or whether they had any feedback based on my resume or my previous interview experiences with the company,” Shenouda adds.
2. Listen
Would you prefer to know which key figures will be a focus for the HR manager in your dream job? Ask her.
“Always focus your elevator pitch on the other person,” says Shenouda.
It may sound counterintuitive to make use of the couple of minutes you’ve to pitch to attract attention to the recruiter’s needs – however it’s a surefire strategy to tailor your message to precisely what they’re searching for.
“If they say they’re looking for people who can accomplish something like a specific project, make sure you speak that language,” advises Shenouda.
3. Maintain friendships
Even those that have hiring power are ultimately individuals who have lives outside of labor.
While getting straight to work could also be helpful within the short term, forging meaningful connections is healthier for long-term alliances.
“It’s not just about networking,” Shenouda notes. “It’s about making friends because that’s how you get people to support you.”
That’s why she recommends reaching out to the people you’ve got met on social media while your face and name are still fresh of their minds—but do not be a stranger.
Shenouda remains to be in contact with a Facebook recruiter she met at a profession event seven years ago and bonded with over their shared affinity for weightlifting.
“The key to any professional success is always the relationships you have – that’s why I’ve always prioritized networking over the traditional job search method.”
