hey everyone this is self-made millennial I'm Madeleine man today we're gonna be talking about how to get a job interview without networking as you've probably heard networking is the number one way to get a great job through your connections you can find amazing jobs that aren't even posted online but so many of you are sick of hearing that you say I don't know anyone who works at these companies that I want to work for what do I do to make sure these hiring managers see my resume this is such a common complaint I hear from
a lot of people early in their careers as well as people who are moving to a new place so in this video I'm gonna give you the two steps to get an interview at a company where you don't know anyone few people do these two steps so if you do you're really setting yourself up for a much higher probability of getting that interview step 1 tailor your job application so you see a job online and you decide to apply let me tell you what we are seeing from our side as recruiters we see tons of
resumes of people who are just completely unqualified or there's a lot more people who are semi qualified for the role but the resume and cover letter is kind of generic and could fit a lot of different companies and roles I call this job seeker strategy the resumes spray this is where candidates spray an entire job board full of similar roles with the same resume and cover letter their strategy is that the more resumes they send out the more likely they are to get an interview you should know that this method is very obvious on the
recruiter side this generic resume spray is so common that if you can be better than this then you will have a way better chance than most of those people using that tactic so what can you do to tailor your application the most important thing that you need if you're applying to somewhere where you don't know anyone is you have to be qualified what does being qualified mean that means that when you're reading the job description you must at least have four of every five requirements that's 80% make sure you have at least 80% of the
skills they're asking for at least then study the Job Description carefully these roles that you will be applying for they'll be very different in different ways and you have to be able to recognize that you'll want to tailor your resume to specific roles most recruiters just read your first bullet point as a scan your resume for that first eight second scan make sure your first bullet point is the most relevant to the job you're applying for that is going to change depending on which role you're going for so make sure you put your most relevant
most compelling bullet point first for every past job an example of tailoring a resume would be such as if I enter the job market now I work in people operations which has a lot of different facets and two of those include recruiting and HR so if I was to apply to a job today some of them might be completely focused on recruiting and others might be completely focused on HR for your recruiting role most of the bullet points on my resume would be referring to talent acquisition things that I've accomplished for the HR it focused
more on lint employee engagement and development both resumes would be true accounts of experience I've had but they're tailored to exactly the skills that they're looking for in the job description if you're applying for a smaller company make sure you include a cover letter that quickly goes over wire into that company and what skills you bring to the table that customized answer will really highly increase the odds that you will get that interview okay great so your application is immaculate and customized to each role you've written cover letters and you're feeling really good so now
is step two you have to establish a second point of contact so now that you have written such an amazing resume and cover letter we need to make sure it is seen my advice is to shoot a quick message to someone who works for the company or the hiring manager to let them know you the first way to do it is to go on LinkedIn and search for the company search for current employees and look for someone who is a second-degree connection to you if you have a second-degree connection that's great reach out to them
message them tell them how you know the mutual contact that you have let them know that you're interested in working for the same company as them and ask them how they're enjoying it what's the culture like and any advice they have so here's an example of a message I sent to someone at a company that I was applying to who is a second-degree connection I'm really interested in joining the people operations team at your company and I was wondering if you'd be able to chat with me for a few minutes about your experience there or
possibly point me in the direction of someone closer to my field I thought I'd reach out to you since you know mutual connection and mutual connection so I got lucky and she responded back she let the hiring manager know that I applied and even forwarded my LinkedIn profile to her so I did end up getting this interview probably in great part to her help in making sure that the hiring manager saw my resume but whether or not it works out whether or not you get the interview or not make sure to follow up with the
person there now invest in you they're probably curious about what happened and so I wrote back to her and thanked her and told her the good news this is a life lesson always follow up when someone helps you it's like when you allow someone to merge into your lane when you're driving and they don't do like the wave people are waiting for you to wave back to thank them so this path of going through second degree connections is good at larger companies where the recruiters are just completely swamped so ideally it's with a second degree
connection but honestly it doesn't even matter that much if you don't have any second degree connections look for someone who maybe went to your undergrad or is in a similar organization to you or has an interesting LinkedIn summary or is simply someone who works at that company and you just need some help reaching out to random strangers can actually work of course some of them will ignore you and not help you but just reaching out is really worth it as long as you do it in a pro briea and kind way full of gratitude they
may very well help you the second way to go about this messaging email route is to find the hiring manager do your best to try to figure out who's the hiring manager or recruiter handling that role this is generally a guessing game so you'll have to look at clues from their website or from LinkedIn to charge the cipher who's probably handling the role the goal of reaching out to these extremely busy hiring managers is to just alert them that you exist and that you're very interested be concise don't write an essay because they can easily
just click a profile to learn more about you or go into the applicant tracking system and find your application and read more this is more to just get you on their radar the reason why sending a directed email or LinkedIn message to a hiring manager works is they get tons of resumes every day so when you can put a face to a black and white resume page it really brings it to life and lets them know that you're legitimately interested in this role and you did not just resume spray them this quick customized message the
hiring manager really works he's gotten me interviews it's also worked on me I've given people interviews because they reach out a second way here's an example of a message that I sent a hiring manager after I just applied for a role so I greet her I let her know exactly a position I'm applying for I give a few specific accomplishments that pertain to the job description and then I mentioned something about the company culture that I've noticed from researching them this entire message is three or four sentences so make sure yours is that short as
well and then she responded back and was happy I reached out and I ended up getting the interview I do realize that I'm simplifying this this is not a 100% batting average strategy but this will increase your odds of getting that first interview and that's what it's all about so to review your message should include excitement and interest a quick reference to why that company and a quick reference to wire qualified you may say but Madeleine I have done this before done this a million times and it does not work I'm not getting results and
to that I have three responses first it's true this will not work every time but since it increases your odds I think it's worth it too you may not be qualified for the rules you're applying for definitely reevaluate and number three there may be something wrong with your approach so I get these kinds of messages since I handle a lot of open roles and there's some that intrigue me and some that actually end up hurting them here's an example of what not to do so this person simply copy and pasted their cover letter and I
even blurt it out because it was just such a generic cover letter there was nothing specific to the role and even up top where they say the role this is not even the actual title that was advertised on our site this message emphasizes that he is doing a resume spray all you want to convey in these messages is hey look at me I'm actually qualified I actually read the Job Description I actually know what your company does go look at my resume so here's another example this one is very long and generic in the first
paragraph he says that he's interested in positions as well as the company you know I wish he would have said which position he applied for and why he's interested in the company if you were a little closely at this one you'd notice that there's only one or two sentences in the very middle of this long message that are actually customized to his specific experience the rest of it is fluff about niceties about hey give me a call if you're interested and hope you're doing well the goal is to make every single word matter quickly pique
my interest give me to go look at your resume but this one is just wrong this message is so generic it is a textbook resume spray to review I'm telling you to develop a second point of contact and this will only work if you are qualified for those roles you personalize each message you send based on the person role and company you find the right person to contact which again is a guessing game and you do this can assistant Li at every place you apply so those are the steps to get a job interview at
a place where you know no one a place where your network won't help you please leave more tips in the comments there's so much more to say on this topic and so many different ways to approach it this is a new channel so throw a like on this video that helps a ton and if you want more tips like this coming every week make sure you subscribe to this channel thank you so much for watching keep me updated on how your careers are going and until next time