Thank you! Whenever I see an extraordinarily broad claim I immediately go looking for references.
Imo the article has been referenced well even if the references are mostly second hand; it repeats claims made by other articles which may also be repeating claims made by others.
To me, the key fact that I wanted to check in on was this
> Up to 70% of employees received their current company position through networking.
The reference for this probably comes from a 2017 linkedin survey[1] which polled 15,905 linkedin members in 2016 and received this as one of their answers
> ... 70 percent of people in 2016 were hired at a company where they had a connection
I find that this kind of stands at odds with the words "received their current company position *through* networking." That makes it sound like the networking was the reason they were able to get the job. The linkedin statement makes it seem like that's just how they may have found out about the job. I won't accuse the article of directly saying what I'm assuming it means. But I also think the rewording changes the meaning too much for me.
Wherever I have worked, whenever there's been a job opening I have forwarded it to friends who might be interested. For the ones who got into the job, they had a connection, but that had absolutely zero weight on whether they got hired or not. I was just a more efficient job board promoter.
Not to take away from everything in the article but I definitely would encourage people to break any numbers they find interesting down into what they might actually mean by visiting the sources and trying to read into the claims fully.
n=1, but I've never gotten a job without networking. It didn't matter how well I did at school, or how well I was evaluated at my previous jobs. I couldn't even get IT jobs for less than minimum wage at times, it was truly ridiculous.
I spent a lot of time studying and not networking in university; my family was (and is) mostly asocial (the prototypical hard working first generation immigrant), and no one really clued me in. I didn't get that important context until years later (thank you internet)
Living without a network in a foreign city, I managed to move from tiny 1000$/month contracts to consulting gigs then to a bigco. Every step was accomplished by meeting people, and solving problems, and then having them tell other people about me (and a blog article that weirdly went viral in the small space I was in). This might sound like an RPG, but it was not fun and the constant terror about missing rent was something I'm glad to have moved past. I don't recommend this at all, I'm way behind someone who got hired out of school by a friend at a BigCo.
As a result, I have a lot of sympathy for people without a network and I try to evaluate them fairly when I hire people. Sadly, without a prior relationship, it's hard for the evaluator and the evaluated to really know what to make of each other. It's always going to be easier to hire someone you know or someone a friend vouches for, as you will have the ability to have trust each other from the beginning.
Knowing the right people at the right time seems almost like a super power for getting your career going. I've gotten all my jobs by referral/invitation and everyone I then tried to refer myself also ended up getting hired straight away.
Now that's a totally useless sample size, but when I see people on here mention having sent hundreds of applications with no response, it just feels like I got super lucky somehow or they're doing something wrong.
I started growing a small network by doing some hobby programming during uni, being pretty good at it, joining communities and being active there, helping people with their problems, etc. Purely online connections with people I never met in real life, that others kept telling me are worthless. In the end getting those connections seems to have been the most important thing I've ever done, because they reached out to me when their companies were looking to hire.
A referral from the right person makes even old boundaries like being on the wrong continent meaningless. Just work remotely then, the company will figure something out... since you were recommended by someone they already trust, they're going to be far more willing to invest some extra resources.
According to some guys informal LinkedIn survey of 3000 respondents "most of whom are in staff or management roles", had to go 3 links deep to find it.
Edit: and it's "critical jobs", some term that guy came up with, not all jobs.
It's hilarious to me when HR at all corporations go on about bias, diversity etc. in recruiting and meanwhile when the corporation needs a new exec they always just find another white guy from Stanford/Ivy League.
Networking, and leveraging pre-existing work relationships into jobs, is not a skill that's exclusive to white guys from Stanford/Ivy League. It could be just as effective between two friends from a Step dancing group in Brooklyn who also happened to go to a coding bootcamp together.
My experience in job hunting (my resume is swiss cheese, full of gaps, nothing particularly impressive) matches this. Give a good presentation at a conference, go to a language meetup, chat to some engineers directly and you can often skip technical screening. Most of the times I don't even need a resume, or the resume is a formality after the decision.
Anecdotally, I've never gotten a single offer through a cold application. I've only gotten a couple of interviews that way. Every job I've ever gotten has either been through my network, or through a recruiter or a university job fair (which are arguably network-adjacent)
...which sucks for people trying to break into the field
Anecdotally, I get replies/confirmations/hear anything at all to around 35% of applications for advertised roles. The strike rate for cold contacting people is higher.
I’ve sat on interview boards at a Fortune 100 company for at least 100 positions. We’ve never hired anyone based on their network. To the best of my knowledge, we’ve never even interviewed anyone that knew anybody at the company. Maybe the positions we were filling were unique.
Never? That’s interesting. I don’t know the hiring percentages but I would say at least 30% of the interview loops I’ve been on at a FAANG have been with someone who was referred in from a person on my team or who had another connection in. I haven’t done 100 interviews (maybe lifetime total I have, but not in tech), but it’s a solid 40 or 50. Again, the person who gets the job isn’t always someone who has a connection to the team — I would say except in rare circumstances, their chances are no better than anyone else’s — but there are usually at least two people per loop who were referred in through their network.
Even in my own experience, I’ve had only one job as an adult that I didn’t have some sort of connection at or where my network wasn’t part of why I was recruited (so even if I didn’t know people hiring me personally, they knew of me). Now, my career has largely been in roles where I’m publicly visible (and that visibility is part of the job), so I won’t try to attach that to anyone else — but even for a non-public facing role, I would still leverage my network first and foremost I think.
I don’t think it’s so much that knowing someone guarantees you’ll get the job, but I do think it makes it much more likely you’ll get to the first or second stage of an interview.
In general, the big advantage of going in network is the much higher chance of passing interviews vs the random person off the street that hands you their resume. I've seen this done all the time in fortune 100 companies, but it only really works if you aren't hiring so much your network is depleted. Even when the interviewing team is not aware of the reference, there's just a higher success rate, as the worst candidates just don't get recommended.
Still, positions change. I've had to do full interview rounds after strong recommendations, and I've been hired by SMS in 10 minutes, salary negotiation included. One size doesn't it all.
I would speculate that roles which are filled through networking never get to the posting / interview stage. If that were the case it would make sense that being involved with interview boards would lead to seeing very few candidates getting a position through their network.
I can guarantee you right now I could send a few emails out and tell former coworkers who are now managers or former managers who have moved on that I’m looking for a job and someone would find a position for me or worse case hire me as a consultant.
I am no special snowflake but I keep my network strong.
It might not have been a direct hire because there was a connection in the company but I bet that most of the interviewees found out about the position because they had someone in their network tell them about it and gave them tips on how to get the job.
Maybe the positions were a bit junior? There are some big companies that hire a lot from school, and then are up and out. It's not necessarily bad, its just a particular thing.
I know this "blog" is probably hokum, but in my experience, the power of having a good network is incredible. I've been in tech for a decade, and only had a peoper whiteboard interview for my very first role, and have been able to leverage my network to get roles at some dream companies without having to go through the "invert a linkedlist"/"design a parking lot" type of interviews, with great pay raises, role hikes, and increased responsibilities.
Us engineers love complaining about the interview process, but then do NOTHING to display skill outside of a resume (and trust me, the amount of lying that happens in resumes is incredible).
In a more reasonable timeline, there wouldn't be such a heavy reliance on relying upon human relationships just to survive. Familiarity biases shouldn't be used as justification for hiring someone.
Why is there not a movement within companies to stop spending so much on mass recruiting and interviewing? Doesnt it cost them thousands of dollars per candidate if they go through multiple rounds?
As per my CEO, it's ok to do endless interviews to find that one good candidate. It doesn't make sense to me but hey it's not my money. One of our engineering managers was complaining that they had to do 80 interviews to hire one candidate. Colossal waste of time and money. No wonder these companies are still not profitable.
The idea is that bringing on a wrong candidate will cause more damage than missing a right one.
There's definitely a balance to strike, some companies would rather bring on everyone and find out who sinks and who swims, others hate firing and will do virtually anything to avoid hiring someone who needs to be let go.
not my expertise but a few thousand dollars seems like a pretty minor cost if you are going to end up paying them 75k a year plus benefits. the amount they spend on training will also be a few thousand.
if it cost them a few thousand dollars to expand pool so they hire someone 20% better then that seems worth it.
I've always stayed away from referrals. It puts additional pressure on the new job relationship working out and puts you in a more difficult spot to start. Part of your reputation is the person who referred you (good or bad). Plus it limits your circle of discovery of finding rare one of a kind jobs that are outside of your circle where most of them exist.
In contrast to what most people are saying here - almost all of my jobs have been from replying to recruiting emails or applying to jobs and not via network.
My first job out of college was via someone I knew from a non-tech interest (friend of several of my friends who graduated earlier) and I soon discovered that while the cultural fit was good for that non-tech interest at that time, it wasn't for me professionally. It broke some connection with my friend group and my past.
I think I also like having a mental reset between jobs where I don't have to keep carrying the past with me, although maybe that will change next go around.
Related - also don't like telling people i got a new job for awhile in case it doesn't work out. Was very uncomfortable.
In jobs where downside risk is much worse than upside risk (i.e. doing it poorly can be catastrophic, but doing it exceptionally well doesn't get you much), then it entirely makes sense to hire from trusted networks. If you're hiring for example an ombudsman for employee grievances, this person could cost your company billions of dollars if they fuck it up, but aren't going to make you any more profitable by succeeding. So the best move is to find the person with the lowest risk of fucking it up, not the person with the highest expected value.
[+] [-] ian0|2 years ago|reply
- "Business Pundit. “25 Best Places to Network""
- "Undercover recruiter. “Why Employee Referrals are the Best Source of Hire”
.. and a bunch of corporate blogs.
[+] [-] nstart|2 years ago|reply
Imo the article has been referenced well even if the references are mostly second hand; it repeats claims made by other articles which may also be repeating claims made by others.
To me, the key fact that I wanted to check in on was this
> Up to 70% of employees received their current company position through networking.
The reference for this probably comes from a 2017 linkedin survey[1] which polled 15,905 linkedin members in 2016 and received this as one of their answers
> ... 70 percent of people in 2016 were hired at a company where they had a connection
I find that this kind of stands at odds with the words "received their current company position *through* networking." That makes it sound like the networking was the reason they were able to get the job. The linkedin statement makes it seem like that's just how they may have found out about the job. I won't accuse the article of directly saying what I'm assuming it means. But I also think the rewording changes the meaning too much for me.
Wherever I have worked, whenever there's been a job opening I have forwarded it to friends who might be interested. For the ones who got into the job, they had a connection, but that had absolutely zero weight on whether they got hired or not. I was just a more efficient job board promoter.
Not to take away from everything in the article but I definitely would encourage people to break any numbers they find interesting down into what they might actually mean by visiting the sources and trying to read into the claims fully.
[1]: https://news.linkedin.com/2017/6/eighty-percent-of-professio...
[+] [-] willcipriano|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] badcppdev|2 years ago|reply
Ok. Not 100% sure of the statistical validity here.
[+] [-] jbm|2 years ago|reply
I spent a lot of time studying and not networking in university; my family was (and is) mostly asocial (the prototypical hard working first generation immigrant), and no one really clued me in. I didn't get that important context until years later (thank you internet)
Living without a network in a foreign city, I managed to move from tiny 1000$/month contracts to consulting gigs then to a bigco. Every step was accomplished by meeting people, and solving problems, and then having them tell other people about me (and a blog article that weirdly went viral in the small space I was in). This might sound like an RPG, but it was not fun and the constant terror about missing rent was something I'm glad to have moved past. I don't recommend this at all, I'm way behind someone who got hired out of school by a friend at a BigCo.
As a result, I have a lot of sympathy for people without a network and I try to evaluate them fairly when I hire people. Sadly, without a prior relationship, it's hard for the evaluator and the evaluated to really know what to make of each other. It's always going to be easier to hire someone you know or someone a friend vouches for, as you will have the ability to have trust each other from the beginning.
So yeah. Tough problem. I don't have a solution.
[+] [-] andersa|2 years ago|reply
Now that's a totally useless sample size, but when I see people on here mention having sent hundreds of applications with no response, it just feels like I got super lucky somehow or they're doing something wrong.
I started growing a small network by doing some hobby programming during uni, being pretty good at it, joining communities and being active there, helping people with their problems, etc. Purely online connections with people I never met in real life, that others kept telling me are worthless. In the end getting those connections seems to have been the most important thing I've ever done, because they reached out to me when their companies were looking to hire.
A referral from the right person makes even old boundaries like being on the wrong continent meaningless. Just work remotely then, the company will figure something out... since you were recommended by someone they already trust, they're going to be far more willing to invest some extra resources.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] willcipriano|2 years ago|reply
Edit: and it's "critical jobs", some term that guy came up with, not all jobs.
Idiots.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-survey-reveals-85-all-job...
[+] [-] questime|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TechBro8615|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thijsvandien|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomrod|2 years ago|reply
But most of them were McKinsey or Booz.
[+] [-] atleastoptimal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annie_muss|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brundolf|2 years ago|reply
...which sucks for people trying to break into the field
[+] [-] blitzar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irrational|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] filmgirlcw|2 years ago|reply
Even in my own experience, I’ve had only one job as an adult that I didn’t have some sort of connection at or where my network wasn’t part of why I was recruited (so even if I didn’t know people hiring me personally, they knew of me). Now, my career has largely been in roles where I’m publicly visible (and that visibility is part of the job), so I won’t try to attach that to anyone else — but even for a non-public facing role, I would still leverage my network first and foremost I think.
I don’t think it’s so much that knowing someone guarantees you’ll get the job, but I do think it makes it much more likely you’ll get to the first or second stage of an interview.
[+] [-] hibikir|2 years ago|reply
Still, positions change. I've had to do full interview rounds after strong recommendations, and I've been hired by SMS in 10 minutes, salary negotiation included. One size doesn't it all.
[+] [-] bnj|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icedchai|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarface74|2 years ago|reply
I am no special snowflake but I keep my network strong.
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] georgeecollins|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madmax108|2 years ago|reply
Us engineers love complaining about the interview process, but then do NOTHING to display skill outside of a resume (and trust me, the amount of lying that happens in resumes is incredible).
[+] [-] x-complexity|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pkdpic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway2729|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeroxp|2 years ago|reply
There's definitely a balance to strike, some companies would rather bring on everyone and find out who sinks and who swims, others hate firing and will do virtually anything to avoid hiring someone who needs to be let go.
[+] [-] fasthands9|2 years ago|reply
if it cost them a few thousand dollars to expand pool so they hire someone 20% better then that seems worth it.
[+] [-] blitzar|2 years ago|reply
Referred employees outperformed non-referred.
[+] [-] dboreham|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://youtu.be/6rq0RXRnWJU?t=7
[+] [-] yobbo|2 years ago|reply
Not in cash terms. The recruiters/interviewers' salaries are "sunk costs" anyway.
[+] [-] ipaddr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway343435|2 years ago|reply
My first job out of college was via someone I knew from a non-tech interest (friend of several of my friends who graduated earlier) and I soon discovered that while the cultural fit was good for that non-tech interest at that time, it wasn't for me professionally. It broke some connection with my friend group and my past.
I think I also like having a mental reset between jobs where I don't have to keep carrying the past with me, although maybe that will change next go around.
Related - also don't like telling people i got a new job for awhile in case it doesn't work out. Was very uncomfortable.
[+] [-] squokko|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oreally|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WheelsAtLarge|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewstuart|2 years ago|reply
20 years recruiting tells me it’s not true.
[+] [-] ReDeiPirati|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffrallen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cozzyd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrower2|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaptheimpaler|2 years ago|reply