Networking

I’m sure you’ve heard many times by now that applying directly to jobs or spamming recruiters with resumes is not the ideal approach, and that networking is the best way to find a job. And while I agree about the importance of networking, I think the case for it may be a bit overstated.

First of all, how many people do you personally know who got their jobs through networking? You probably know a few, but I’ll bet most of your acquaintances got their jobs through more ‘traditional’ methods. I believe this is the case because landing tech jobs, at least for individual contributors, is still less about whom you know and more about what you know (or at least, how well you interview).

In most cases when your friend refers you to their company your resume lands in HR’s resume queue, at which point you’ll be treated like any other candidate. Your friend might provide words of praise for your skills, but you’ll still have to back that up in the interview. So in the end the only difference is that if you’re hired your friend will probably get a referral bonus that they’ll refuse to share with you.

Still, having a good network means you can learn about jobs that are not widely advertised, and for which the hiring company is being quiet and selective. For this purpose I recommend LinkedIn, the largest electronic networking site / professional social network. Make sure you connect with all your current and past co-workers and any other tech people you know. And if you get an invitation from a recruiter, don’t turn it down just because you don’t know the person. The power of LinkedIn is that the more contacts you have, the more valuable the network becomes to you.

In fact LinkedIn is the closest thing you can get to a job search without actually doing an active search. It’s no secret that many recruiters use LinkedIn primarily to find candidates, and that most people are there in turn to be seen for new opportunities. And LinkedIn is free to candidates -- unless you need to contact strangers for some reason, in which case you’ll need a premium account. But I’ve personally never needed that feature.