Gone are the days when hiring managers were impressed by cold messages on LinkedIn. With over a billion users on the platform, it’s perhaps unsurprising that overwhelmed recruiters are increasingly ignoring messages from strangers.
That’s why recent graduate Basant Shenouda has gone back to basics, combining the knowledge offered by social media platforms with a good, old-fashioned handshake.
After graduating from the University of Bonn—one of Germany’s top universities—in 2019, she spent six months scouring recruiters’ private messages and applying for jobs online before realizing she needed to do something drastic to cut through the noise.
“It’s becoming harder and harder to reach a hiring manager, even virtually—which used to be a more unconventional method,” says Egyptian native Gen Zer. Luck. “It’s incredibly difficult to get your name out there.”
After six months of trying to virtually connect with recruiters on LinkedIn, she changed her strategy and used the platform to see what conferences they were posting about so she could reach them directly with her networking efforts.
One event in particular stood out: Rockstars of Online Marketing in Hamburg. “This is a really famous marketing and sales conference in Germany,” recalls Shenouda.
“I was a marketing graduate and wanted to go into sales, so it was just the perfect place to be with the kind of decision makers I wanted to target,” she explains. “People even flew in from the US, so it was a good opportunity to network.”
With this in mind, Shenouda volunteered to wash glasses at the conference to get free entry, and traveled more than six hours from Cologne to Hamburg by train with a stack of resumes in hand.
During breaks at the conference, Shenouda presented her resume to 30 to 40 people, figuring she was looking for feedback on it while hoping her bold approach would impress at least one hiring manager. And after a six-month hiring process, it paid off.
“I was one of the few graduates at the conference, so it was full of opportunities for me,” adds the 27-year-old. “I reviewed my resume, made a lot of personal contacts (and it was much more effective than networking) and applied for a couple of jobs.”
One of those positions was in the sales graduate program at LinkedIn, where Shenouda still works, 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 fine. But it’s a matter of building resilience,” she advises unemployed graduates.
“You need to keep re-evaluating your process so that every no brings you closer to the next yes.”
Target employers who rejected you
There’s a lot to be said for being in the right place at the right time, but Shenouda took a more targeted approach than just hoping to stumble upon her future employer.
Not only did she list the conferences that hiring managers from her dream employers were going to attend, but she also met face-to-face with those who had rejected her offers online—a LinkedIn recruiter was one of them.
“I received feedback from all the companies that turned me down, which allowed me to reapply and receive job offers,” says Shenouda.
“It really helped me understand how I can better differentiate my applications and what gaps I need to fill in order to get past the final interviews.
“Traditionally, people don’t reapply, people don’t keep trying, people don’t keep reaching out to people and they keep maintaining relationships.
“They [the recruiter] I thought these were really good skills to transfer into sales, so that’s what I ended up doing.”
How to turn networking into a job offer
Even if you’ve done your best to make sure you show up in every place where hiring managers are, it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll actually get any leads.
Shenouda says she showed her resume to about 200 recruiters at several conferences before she got lucky.
Here are some tips she’s learned along the way to take networking from just chatting into something more tangible, like an interview or job offer:
1. Impact of conversation
Don’t worry if praising strangers doesn’t come naturally to you. “I used to be very bad at networking,” Shenouda recalls. Her biggest piece of advice? Discussion of indicators.
“Now I know how to get someone’s attention,” she says, adding that it’s like “having a conversation about influence rather than just saying, ‘I want a job.’
Recalling the elevator pitch that landed her her current position, Generation Zer says she talked about her victories during a previous internship at Intel.
Likewise, don’t be afraid to outline what you want after speaking with a recruiter.
“The specific question I always ask is if they can recommend me (for a job) or if they have any references based on my resume or my past experience interviewing with the company,” adds Shenouda.
2. Listen
Want to know what metrics will stand out to the hiring manager at your dream job? Ask them.
“Always keep your attention on the other person,” Shenouda says.
It may seem counterintuitive to use the few minutes you have to address a recruiter’s needs, but it’s a surefire way to tailor your message to exactly what they’re looking for.
“If they say they’re looking for people who can do something like a specific project, make sure you speak that language,” Shenouda advises.
3. Develop friendships
Even those who have the power to hire employees are ultimately still people with lives outside of work.
While getting straight to the point can be beneficial in the short term, for long-term alliances it is better to build meaningful connections.
“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 connecting with people you meet on social media while your face and name are still fresh in their minds, but don’t be strangers.
Shenouda still keeps in touch with a Facebook recruiter she met at a career event seven years ago and bonded over their shared affinity for weightlifting.
“The key to any career success is always the relationships you have, so I have always prioritized making connections outside of the traditional job search method.”