How I got a job offer for a position that didn’t exist.
An alternative path to finding a job that will still support your career growth.
It is time to consider a less mainstream approaches to landing your next internship. It might be worthwhile to consider a return strategy to a company you’ve previously interned at, but advocate to put yourself in a new position; a position with tasks, responsibilities and deliverables will keep you on track with your career plans and what you want to learn.
More than once, managers, HR recruiters, and influential leaders in the companies I’ve worked for have all preached that “if a company really loves you, they’ll make space for you”.
Now is the time for to tap into your network relationships, and have your character, work ethic, and star impression secure you a job. Here’s my story and steps about how I’ve taken initiative to create my own career opportunity at the first place I ever interned, two years later.
Just over a year ago, I was on the hunt for my first product management job, and without specific PM experience, I targeted a company, whom I’d previously worked for, to try and create the internship I wanted in an environment that I I knew I’d thrive in. In a few easy steps, here’s how I successfully advocated for a job I wanted and got the company to say yes.
TL;DR
- Wrote the job description of the position I wanted
- Strategically reached out to my network in the company
- Followed up, profusely
Write your own Job Description
The best way for a company to determine how you might add value to the team, is by spelling it out for them in a job description.
Do your research
Scour job hunt engines like Linkedin, Glassdoor, internal student job boards (like WaterlooWorks), or even googling Sample Job Descriptions for X to inspire a list of daily tasks and responsibilities expected in the position you are looking for. These are resources catered to HR or hiring managers looking for someone who can help them, which is a great starting point for exactly how you can hone into what you can do to help your team.
What worked for me is copying and pasting whole job descriptions, and sorting bullet points into themes I recognized.
For an APM position
- quantitative analysis experience
- qualitative research experience
- stakeholder communication
- design fundamentals (prototyping, wire framing, mockups, customer empathy maps)
- product delivery experience
- project management skills
Be cognizant of skills you have that the company will want to tap into, but find a way to incorporate tasks/responsibilities/deliverables you want to own and learn from which would be important to your growth. What ABC skills does the company want which you can provide, but also what opportunity do you want to develop XYZ skills?
Like any decently written job description, 5–9 bullets points should be sufficient.
Use what you know about their Org
To really show how I understood the company (and would be on the fast track to onboarding and finding fit in my team) I reflected on what I knew about the company’s design/product/engineering org landscape when I was previously there to see if this was something a specific that I could really give value-add to.
Look at their full time job board
Is there a team that is looking for a full time, where you might be able to help ease load and do the work even though you’re an intern?
Strategically reach out to your network
I wanted to put my best foot forward with the people in my network that are most likely in a position to get approval for a new intern position. However, I still needed to understand the internal climate of the company, so I had to think carefully about who I reached out to and when.
First I reached out to full time individuals I knew, some managers and full-time folks to get a pulse on the company and the org, their current hiring, and if they had any ideas on who I might want to reach out to, or any window of opportunity I should tap into.
Then, with all my ducks in a row, I reached out to VPs and Senior VPs (and tried emailing a CMO but never got an answer) about if they would consider a position for me. I had my into email, resume, cover letter, and job description of my of the job that I wanted.
Follow up, profusely
If you really want something, you have to really show up for it. Not every job you apply to will be the one you’re really gunning for. For those highly desired opportunities, go full throttle on pursuing it.
Knowing the org and the culture of this company, I really saw returning back to this company as a great growth opportunity for my career and personal development. Ideally, it was checking off nearly all my boxes. I know, I’m asking a lot because they didn’t have a position for me, but I know my value and potential was worth a company’s long term investment; and I was looking at this company as a long term place to grow into my career.
I was persistent on reaching out to a VP I’d developed a mentee/mentorship relationship with during my time at the company previously. I emailed her once a week, and got no replies for 5 weeks. In the fourth week, getting nervous that I was never going to hear back, I dug my heels in deeper and messaged other contacts in the company as well, trying to get someone to respond to me. From what I could tell, word got around I had bugged enough people about a job, and I got her to agree to a coffee meeting. When the day came for that meeting, I was so nervous about having emailed so many times, and also feeling a little embarrassed about whether or not she felt that me reaching out to other people in the company to bug her was irritating. Was she just being polite? At least I got the meeting, it’s on me to make it worth both our time.
Keep following up.
Remember what the company gets out of hiring you
- Your rapport with teams and within the company culture are already known
- Onboarding remotely will be easier if you’re already familiar with the company
What you should be getting out of returning
- You already know the work culture is a great place to grow, you already know mentors or who you want to forge new relationship with to learn from
- Already familiar with the product/service/org and development flow
It is important to understand the motivations of each of your career moves. If you don’t I highly suggest you try writing them out, and ranking which ones as the most important to you.
When she came out to meet me in the office lobby for our coffee meeting, I said hello and immediately started apologizing for all the emails I’d been sending. She smiled and told me, “You have to be persistent to get what you want. Let’s hope we can find an arrangement to reward that”.
If you enjoyed this article and found some nugget of information useful, give this some claps 👏👏👏👏 and follow me, Azalea Sutanto Phangsoa, to make sure you catch the next article!
