The One Thing Your Career Needs (That’s Not a Resume)

What’s the top thing for your career beyond a great resume and profile? A warm intro. In this market, there are more talented lawyers than good jobs, so the best way to stand out is to have someone within the company walk your resume in to the hiring manager and vouch for you. (The ideal is to get both, but just having your resume in front of the right person is a win!)

I like the points made in this recent article on the warm intro:

• For every corporate job posting, an average of 250 people apply (per Glassdoor), but only 4-6 people get interviews. That 4-6 number sounds right for in-house interviews.
• How do you beat the line of people applying? Learn about the job before anyone else and “show up before there is one.” Because so many people are looking, “having someone who can show your resume to a recruiter or hiring manager and help you stand out” is “worth its weight in gold.”
• How do you learn about jobs first? Identify companies that could use your skills, then find people within the company to connect with (and ideally help). Talk to them about company needs, and be impressive/personable so they remember you when something does open up. The article suggests you “contact people who might be at your level within an organization and ask questions such as, ‘How do you like your job?’ ‘How do you like the organization?’ and ‘How did you get to where you did?’”
• Asking “How did you get to where you did” is my top choice for in-house legal networking purposes. I agree that “you don’t want to say, ‘I want a job,’ because if you’re getting to them early, there’s no job yet.” The best practice for lawyers is to ask for “advice, insight, recommendations, and referrals.” Especially in California, networking is soft. Pushy job seekers turn people off.

The takeaway: Start networking and making connections inside key companies long before you need a job (“You don’t go to fix the roof when it’s raining”). I agree that “a warm introduction is always the best way to go about a job search” and “if you wait until you see a job post before contacting an employer, …. you might already be too late.”