How to Find a Job: Honest Advice from a Seasoned Recruiter

7 min readOct 3, 2022

As a professional recruiter working for Martyn Bassett Associates for over 20 years, I regularly have individuals approach me who need help trying to find a job.

Occasionally, the professions of these individuals are not tech or product-focused, so my ability to help them through our organization is significantly reduced. For those candidates I cannot directly help find a new position, the best advice I can share is a holistic perspective of how to go about finding a job.

Interestingly, contacting recruiters is often not the most effective place to begin. So where do you start?

It’s Not Going To Be Easy

Before I outline the framework of how to find a job, I want to acknowledge a few things; for many people, this is not going to be easy.

Here are some of the many situations candidates can find themselves in that can prove challenging when trying to land their next role:

If you have always been handpicked by people you know to follow them into an opportunity, you may have never been in a situation where you have to find opportunities, much less compete against other candidates for the role.
If you have worked for one employer for more than 5 years, your resume is most likely outdated in its content, format and how modern resumes outline the narrative of a career.
If you are trying to reinvent your career from one industry or role into another, this is one of the most challenging undertakings, despite your best efforts to sell transferable skills.
If you have been a Consultant/Freelancer for many years and are trying to find a full-time or permanent role and are hitting roadblocks on either the income (consultant fees often exceed that of full-time compensation) or the perception you’re a flight risk since you haven’t committed to one employer for a period of time.
If you are a new grad with zero real-world experience trying to navigate what we have all had to navigate: “Every job requires experience, but how do I get the experience if no one hires me?”
If you are a newcomer to a country and navigating the market, learning the language, transforming your resume to communicate your narrative in a way that reflects the market you are now in. I.e., Europeans often have 10-page resumes with personal information that we would never include on a North American resume, such as your marital status and information about their children.

If you find yourself in one of the categories above, finding full-time employment is going to be an uphill battle, and the harsh but true reality is sometimes dreams need to wait.

The Harsh Job Hunting Reality

Unless you are highly specialized, finding employment is a balancing act between pursuing the job of your dreams versus the job someone will be willing to hire you to do.

Financial responsibilities, including debt, transportation and commuting limitations, limited childcare resources, or personal support, are all profoundly personal factors that may contribute to whether you must accept or decline an opportunity.

This is serious stuff, and for some people, the dream needs to be a dream a bit longer while some more practical things take precedence. I’m reminded of this often when people approach me with dreams of getting into product management at a tech company when they don’t work for a tech company.

My advice to someone who works in an industry other than tech is to focus less on applying only for Product Manager roles but more on getting hired into a tech company in whatever capacity you can add value. Customer Success, Sales, Marketing, Engineering… Every Product Manager has an entry point into product, and it’s usually through one of those roles. So start somewhere and begin adding value to a tech company while learning the industry.

If you hold out for your dream role of getting hired as a Product Manager as your first tech role, you may find yourself holding out longer than your peers who made it a priority to get a foot into the door of the tech industry ahead of you.

Filling The Funnel

Not only is finding a job difficult, but it also takes time. It may even take more time than you expected.

Candidates I’ve engaged with who approach the process pragmatically tend to have a better attitude towards achieving an outcome and overall better results. These candidates refer to the process as a ‘funnel” — you must continually fill it with opportunities and leads to close one.

Where you begin may not be where you end up as the leads in the funnel advance or sunset. Putting all your hopes into one opportunity or one interview cycle increases the likelihood you will not find a job. Always remember, that for every opportunity you are interviewing for, you are one of many candidates the client is interviewing.

To increase your likelihood of success:

Fill your opportunity funnel and hold loosely to each lead and opportunity you hear about and engage with.
Remember, only one person gets a job, while everyone else they interviewed does not. Do not take it personally.
Keep moving forward and keep filling your funnel.
Try the three-legged stool approach.

The Three-Legged Stool

Now let’s talk about how to find a job. Finding a job is best described as a 3-legged stool. An effective job search requires 3 processes running concurrently.

1. Contact everyone you know who has influence or is a stakeholder

Personal networks are still the number one way people get hired. People make incorrect assumptions all the time, so don’t assume people heard you are available or that people see on LinkedIn that you are ‘open to opportunities.’ Don’t assume people will remember you when someone asks them who they would recommend for an opportunity. Unless you’re top of mind, people will not likely remember.

Start contacting every employer, partner, and stakeholder you’ve worked for and with. Alert them to the fact that you are open to having discovery calls and meetings about opportunities where you can add value and help them achieve their outcomes.

Most importantly, note the language I used above. I didn’t focus on you and the job you need — I focused on the company and the person they need to hire. Positioning yourself as an available asset to the company reframes your value.

2. Apply to employers but focus on the hiring leader who owns the problem/open role

The second, more common way most people find a job is through identifying the stakeholder who owns the hiring problem and contacting them directly. Not liking/commenting on the LinkedIn post, but actually getting to the heart of the human-being decision maker. The person who knows the dream they are architecting over the long road and connecting/selling them on your value. This increases the likelihood of getting noticed and being considered.

An employer/stakeholder might think about a role they want to hire for and expedite it if they met someone they felt was a strong fit. This is the hidden job market where roles are not even public yet but live in the minds of the people who run companies.

3. Contacting a Recruiter

Did you know most people never get a job through a recruiter? It’s true. This is because Recruiters are engaged to find people for jobs, not find jobs for people.

While more upmarket Recruiters work on executive-level and retained searches, most do not. Contingency Recruiters generally do not invest the time in calls and discussions with candidates they can’t immediately place as their job is about speed vs. niche.

When selecting a Recruiter to contact, take the time to research their practice area:

Do they work in the industry you are pursuing?
Do they recruit for your role or want to be hired?
Do they generate/share content demonstrating they are knowledgeable/ a thought leader in the industry?

Aligning your skillset with what they have been engaged to find increases your chances of working with them.

Sharing your resume and contact info in your first reach out saves time. Make it easy for them to understand your experiences and book a call without going back and forth. Create a frictionless experience if you are the one reaching out to them.

Also, don’t be surprised if you do not align with their current searches. Searches are often very specific if a search firm has been engaged to fill it. Timing is everything; you never know when your skillset will align, and when you’ll get the call.

Takeaways

Finding a job takes effort and grit, especially if you are in a situation where you need to find one ASAP. As someone who recruits day-in-day-out, my advice:

Keep your head up
Your job funnel filled
And an open mind to opportunities

If you or someone you know needs resources to help them find a job, here is a list of resources we offer that we hope you find helpful:

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Author:

Heidi Ram is the Head of Product Practice at Martyn Bassett Associates. She has been a recruiter for the company for 20 years. During that time, she has been instrumental in shaping the evolution of the business, while building high-performing teams for some of the firm’s most valued clients.

Heidi is regarded as a thought leader and trusted advisor in the Toronto Product Management and Design community when it comes to industry insights, recruitment trends, salaries and the current talent landscape. Furthermore, Heidi is a board member of the Toronto Product Management Association (TPMA).