Many a job hunter has asked in frustration, “Why can’t I just talk to someone in authority to show what a great fit I would be for the job?”
The reality is that department heads and other hiring authorities have administrative assistants and human resource departments to shield them from random people attempting to go around a well-defined hiring process to get their ear.
[See: 25 Best Business Jobs for 2017.]
And these days, the gatekeeping function is often expanded to include applicant tracking systems. In order to even submit your resume online, you’ll often have to provide answers to such questions as your salary requirements before you can even begin a conversation with an initial HR screener. The gateway to landing a new job can easily seem to get ever more automated and more difficult to pass through!
Still, there are some very reasonable things you can do to get around and through the human and robotic gatekeepers. But, just as employers have rearranged the process, you need to have the smarts not to simply follow the path that they lay out for you. Some things require you to outsmart the system before you ever even enter it!
Consider the following:
Find a mutual connection to run interference for you. This is one of the benefits of informational interviewing, when at the end you say, “Who else do you think I should speak with?” Once you have one or more names you’re in business!
You can follow up: “Would you be kind enough to call Mr. Jones and ask him to give me a bit of his time?” If you can’t get this, you can always fall back and ask, “When I call, may I use your name?”
This way, when you get the gatekeeper on the phone you have a justifiable reason to say something appropriate like, “Ms. Smith and your boss spoke about me, and he is expecting my call.” You might alternatively say, when it is true, “Ms. Smith suggested that he and I have a conversation. I’m calling to follow up on that.”
[See: 7 Ways to Crush a Phone Interview.]
Contact hiring managers and key players directly through LinkedIn. One of the great functions of LinkedIn is that you can conduct searches to find people in the departments of companies in which you are interested. You can also learn who posted the jobs in which you have an interest.
If you find that you are a second- or third-degree connection with a contact of interest, look through their profile to find what groups they have joined, and apply to join some of the same groups. By default, once you have a group in common you’ll be able to send a message directly to the person unless he or she has specifically turned off the ability to be contacted this way. Remember, however, that busy, non-job-hunting people rarely check their LinkedIn messages with the same frequency that they check their regular email. If you don’t get a response you shouldn’t read too much into it. And you should certainly avoid frequent follow-ups that will portray you as a desperate stalker rather than a potential star candidate.
[See: 25 Best Jobs That Don’t Require a College Degree.]
Activate your alumni networks. Another often overlooked way to network your way into a company and to specific people is to utilize your alumni networks. Contact both the career services and alumni offices of your college and graduate schools to find out if they have a career networking series of events in your city. If they do, then go!
Oftentimes you’ll find people who know the people you want to know, or people in the field you want to enter and they would be happy to make an introduction.
More often than you might imagine, people you meet at these events are themselves looking to hire or pick up an employee referral bonus from their company if they can find and recommend talented individuals who are not already known to the company and are subsequently hired. Use this knowledge to your advantage.
Happy hunting!
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3 Ways for Job Hunters to Get Past Gatekeepers originally appeared on usnews.com
