Cold-calling works: how to get a job without a single online application
How I got 4 product manager job offers after one month of searching
My job search results
I got 4 job offers after I spent one month searching for a job. I spent 95% of my effort on cold outreaches, for reasons I’ll explain below.
To get to this result, I reached out to 35 hiring managers per week, for two weeks, and spent the remaining weeks meeting up and interviewing. Results: reached out to 71 directors and VPs of product on LinkedIn, got responses from 33, and did 26 coffee chats. Disclaimer: I did this full-time, because I was on sabbatical between my startup -> the next opportunity.
Included in this post are my methods, my rationale + mental frameworks to avoid burnout or disillusionment :) This is my process step by step, and certainly not the only viable job process. However, if you’ve been struggling to get job interviews, let alone job offers, it’s time to try this method.
How to actually get your foot in the door
Table your online applications
The online application is a hopeless blackhole that you will likely NOT hear back from, at least not in the timeline that you prefer. Your hope is that you deposit your resume, get an email from a recruiter to schedule a phone screen, get passed onto a hiring manager, find your way into the on site…and get a job offer. Most people (like me) get blocked in the resume depot, before any human contact.
Get coffee with hiring managers and skip the automated resume screen
Ok this is the primary secret sauce of this essay that generally results in a 35% outreach -> coffee chat rate. If you want to skip past automated resume screens, potentially skip past phone screens, and display your true strengths & personality to a key decision maker in the hiring process…here’s what to do:
1. Identify decision makers on LinkedIn: Remember those companies you found who are hiring for the role you want? Go use LinkedIn to find the decision makers at each company that are in your field. Do not be timid. If you’re looking to be a PM like I was, go find the VP or Director of Product. They are thinking about hiring the most. The same goes for any job role — use “director”, “head”, or “vp” as your key search words!
Tip1: I don’t recommend going for companies that don’t have an explicit role open. Unless you have a dream and are willing to make a handcrafted approach, in which case, check out my friend Dan Friedman’s post on Shoot for the Job you Can’t Get.
Tip2: org leaders will always be more responsive to your outreach than individual contributors. It’s their job. You’re not playing it safe by reaching out to a sr. product manager instead of a product director — you’re really just ensuring you don’t get anyone’s time of day :)
2. Develop a 300 character or less blurb to introduce yourself & ask a stranger to coffee — LinkedIn has a max character limit for their Connection requests. The general structure of this blurb is 1. Why you’re reaching out, 2. Who you are, 3. Your clear ask
You might feel tempted to overly personalize each of your messages — this is a time suck and I don’t recommend it. Instead, craft one or two great messages and use them at scale.
3. ‘Connect’ and ‘Add a note’: Time for outreach! You might be thinking — I don’t have an InMail account -_- …how am I supposed to message this stranger without spending $$? Fret not. You can add a message to any connection request that you send on LinkedIn…for free, and unlimited! This is where the 300 char. limit comes in — refine your message to get a higher connection rate.
4. Batch your research: For process efficiency, save their LinkedIn profiles into your spreadsheet. For higher probability of getting in contact with that company, find 2–3 people per company and reach out simultaneously. Usually 1 out of the 3 people from that company will actually respond.
5. Get responses and determine your conversion rate
I started getting 2–3 responses after I sent out a batch of 12 connection requests and immediately felt less anxious. As soon I discovered the conversion rates in my own funnel, I felt like I had control over this numbers game and stopped taking the ignored and ghosted messages so personally— how many coffee chats do you want? Oh, 15? Then go reach out to 50 people.
If you find the % of your invitations that result in LinkedIn Connections is less than 40%, make some edits to your blurb before you send out your next wave of outreaches.
6. Schedule coffee (preferable) or a phone call
Once you get the decision maker to spend some time with you, you are in the process of getting your foot in the door. This isn’t an automatic home run, and you should be preparing questions about them and about the company. You should also have a 2 minute pitch ready about yourself. I’ll write a post on this in the future — Subscribe so you get notified.
Some basic tips of scheduling meetings with busy/important people:
- Suggest specific days and big time windows first. Don’t ask them to suggest — what a pain for them! Feel free to use Calendly or MeetingBird to expedite this process.
- Pick a place that’s really close to their office. They’re gonna cancel on you (they’re busy!) if they have to commute whatsoever. Most companies list their address on Google Maps.
7. Keep track of your outreach in a dashboard. You should generally know “how things are going” with your job search. Here’s the dashboard I made in Google Sheets to track my own search.
I hope this was helpful. I’ll be writing a few more posts on 1. What to talk about in your coffee chats, 2. How to choose a company that matches your criteria, 3. Tactics to avoid job search burnout. Subscribe so I can notify you via email!
If you have any follow up questions, just email me at michelle.lu@clever.com (that’s where I ended up! I love it :)
Lastly, please keep in mind that your worth is not defined by which job you acquire, or which powerful person decides to give you a chance.
Thanks to Dan Friedman (dfrieds.com) for helping me through many drafts!
