Question
What do you think of the desperation tactics people are resorting to on LinkedIn to beg others to help them land a job? (I’ve seen offers of cash for job leads!) Does this work? What’s the cleanest way to do this (without looking bad!)?
Nick’s Reply
Early in my Silicon Valley headhunting career, I was passing through an office suite when a singing gorilla appeared. A desperate, unemployed engineer was using a clever tactic to get his resume noticed. He hired a delivery guy dressed as a singing gorilla to deliver a box of pizza to managers he hoped would interview him. Taped atop the box was his resume.
I never learned whether it worked, but that was one very funny gorilla.
Doing tricks to land a job
The purpose of this column is to highlight some of the unbelievable tricks job seekers are playing on themselves so they can pretend someone’s going to find them a job.
What I’d like is your take on these efforts to dress up excuse after clever excuse for how to avoid doing the hard work to find a good job: carefully picking the few right employers and demonstrating to them how you’ll do the job profitably if they hire you.
Desperation Road
Frustrated, frazzled job seekers are keenly aware that what they’re doing to find their next job is not very effective. In fact, what they experience is captured in a complaint attributed to Lewis Carroll: “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.”
This website is abundant with readers’ stories of endless failures in their job searches. The common refrain is, “I keep applying to more and more jobs, but I can’t get hired.”
That’s why they come here. Because we lay bare the foibles of our broken employment system. We all know that this system is almost purely reliant on staggering quantities of job listings and accompanying fire-hose-style job applications. Employers have created a Sisyphean digital road to All The Jobs that people race along faster and harder — only to find at the end of it a stinking dump waiting to swallow them up and spit them back out.
And in utter desperation they have to run that road again and again and again, because it seems there’s no choice.
Gone down the wrong road
The answer to this hamster-on-a-treadmill quandary is found in a Turkish saying: “No matter how far you have gone down the wrong road, turn back.”
Job seekers just don’t want to turn back. They believe they’ve invested too much to stop now. But that Turkish wisdom is the best advice they’ll ever get.
Rather than question their painfully held belief that some process, some expert, some database or some A .I. is going to help them land a job, they keep running the same road, but each time dressed in some new kind of gorilla suit they’ve been told will make a difference.
They know they’re on the wrong job-hunting road but they won’t turn back.
“Weirdly creative” tactics
A recent Washington Post column reports that “Desperate for jobs, people try new social media tactics to stand out”. The article says “job seekers are getting weirdly creative to land their next jobs.”
They’re not deploying singing gorillas, but they’ve learned to beg like a dog on social media. What we’re seeing more and more is that these social media tricks aren’t working well.
At least the singing gorilla was amusing.
I recommend you read the entire WaPo article because I think it will help you keep your eye on the real objective — a new job — no matter what anyone else is doing. Gorilla tactics (and cash offers for job leads) may seem clever. They’re not. I won’t take up space here suggesting better alternatives because you’ll find them throughout Ask The Headhunter. Let’s take a hard look at how far off the path job seekers have gone. The following real-life stories about (NOT) getting a job are from the Washington Post link above.
A good signal?
One job seeker boasts he’s got a “whatever-it-takes mentality.”
He’s offering $3,000 on LinkedIn to anyone that finds him a job, and he hopes this is “…a good signal for a potential employer that I’m proactive, and I’m trying to solve this problem in a creative way.” If I were his potential employer, here’s my first interview question: “Is paying somebody to do your work a signal that you can do this job for me?”
How’s it working for him? He’s got no job offers but seems excited about thinking up more offers he can make to entice others to find him a job.
The recruiter that can’t land a job
A woman uses her LinkedIn page to recruit friends and contacts to find her a job. She lists nine examples of how good she would be at the job she wants, if only somebody could find it and bring it to her.
Her expertise? She’s an “HR-minded recruiter.” She’s got 15 years of experience recruiting, but “she said she’s only landed two interviews out of hundreds of job applications.” No job offers.
Revealing on LinkedIn that you can’t do for yourself what you want a paycheck to do for an employer. Say what?!”
#Desperate to work
A young guy trying to break into cybersecurity thought he’d found a great alternative to actually pursuing jobs he wants. He added a popular “tag” to his LinkedIn profile: #OpenToWork. It didn’t work.
Then he found a better tag: #Desperate. He says that tag “blew up way bigger than I thought…[it] got about half a million views” and brought him over 1,600 followers. He’s applied to 4,500 jobs.
“But he didn’t hear from hiring managers.” He asks his LinkedIn network: “Why is it so hard to get a job?”
(The #Desperate tag seems quite popular. The WaPo reports that another job seeker “still displays it after two months, eight interviews and 500 applications.” She’s had no job offers.)
Honestly waiting to land a job
Then there’s the guy who says he’s going to lose his house if he doesn’t land a job within a month. He’s sharing his plight with his LinkedIn network as honestly as possible because he’s been “feeling invisible after hundreds of applications.” He feels that the more honest he is on his profile, the better. “I just need someone to see this that has an opening that can help me save my house.”
He’s gotten “at least 3,000 comments and messages” and two interviews because, he believes, he’s being so open and honest. But he’s gotten no job.
How much is that singing gorilla?
I’ll say what the WaPo article doesn’t bother to say.
Cut the crap, folks! The problem is that way too many job seekers have learned to avoid actually picking the right employers and actively pursuing jobs they can do to improve a company’s business. (How to do this is really not so mysterious.)
Social media sites have provided people with the company of millions of other job seekers who are “crafting” clever marketing ploys to get other social media users — and a plethora of digital go-fers — to find them a job. This is not networking. It’s wishful thinking. Read that WaPo article carefully. Not one of the clever job seekers in the story reported they found a job.
Maybe better social media tricks could get someone to bring you a new job. Or you could just hire a singing gorilla.
What tricks have you seen job seekers do to get someone else to find them a job? Have gorilla-like social media tactics really become a thing? Do any of the examples of job-hunting tactics described seem useful to you?
NOTE: The Washington Post is a subscription-based news outlet. I cannot guarantee my link to it will work.
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Nick, how could I not put down whatever I was doing and read this latest piece to the very end – I was hooked as soon as I saw the words “singing gorilla.” Your clever headline grabbed me! :-)
Great take as usual. People are knocking themselves out on LinkedIn over those tricks and stunts you cited.
But this looks like the job search equivalent of trying to get your nutrition through junk food, and I hope this fad passes soon, like a bad fad diet.
All the best to you, Nick
–Neil H., Toronto
I followed the link you included that led to your 2017 article where you summarize your job search strategy. While I don’t doubt that it works, I do not now, nor have I ever, possessed the social skills to pull that off. Even less so now, but according to other people my whole life, I have never had the likeability to pull that off.
It definitely underscores that those who say we live in a meritocracy are lying through their teeth, because if that is one of the most, if not the most, effective way to land a job, it is blatantly obvious you don’t have to be the most qualified for the job, you just have to ingratiate yourself to the right people, and be convincing in a job interview.
This also underscores the need for antidiscrimination processes in hiring, because if you are black, as I am, and the people gatekeeping the job are white, there is no guarantee that you will be invited into the social circles of the people who already have the job that you want, and are good at it. There is also no guarantee that if you are lucky enough to get an interview, that you will get the job even if you effectively demonstrate that you are qualified.
Referring to the above article, and the WaPo article you cite, I’d love to hear any takes you may have regarding the macro-level reasons why these individuals feel they have to resort to such measures to land a job. Two of the people are an engineer and a recruiter, two jobs that require a college degree, and one that is a vaunted STEM job. Supposedly we are not in a recession, and journal article after journal article says the data reinforces the idea that a college degree is better than not having a college degree in terms of employment and income. If jobs are plentiful, and these two have the education and experience for what they do, why would they be getting passed over and ignored to the point where they felt they had to resort to such measures? I don’t know about recruiters, but I can’t imagine there are so many engineers, and so few engineering jobs that there aren’t enough for everyone who wants on, since engineering degrees are so hard to attain, and new tech firms, and other firms (like construction and architecture), that would hire engineers, are sprouting up every day, in addition to existing large firms, like Kroger and P&G, to use examples from my hometown.
@Robert: Discrimination in hiring has certainly not ended and I fear it never will. The only real recourse anyone has is to file formal complaints with govt agencies and to file suits. The latter can be very costly. That’s one reason why discrimination continues. What rankles me further is the advent of AI being used in recruiting and hiring. Those selling AI into HR tell us that AI reduces discrimination. That’s bogus. If anything, over-automation in HR makes it easier to discriminate. All it takes is one required video interview with a robot, which is now almost the norm. One look at the candidate (without the employer even having to attend the interview) and bigots and nepotists have what they need to discriminate while pointing to the vendor’s claims that their AI “levels the playing field.” Investigative journalist Hilke Schellmann explains it all in her stunning book, Algorithm. She puts the AI vendors to shame by letting them spill the beans then checking their wild claims with academic researchers in the field.
I’m not going to end discrimination or nepotism with my methods. You’re going to find it in many places and I know you already have. But there are employers that don’t discriminate. It’s worth finding them, though of course you shouldn’t have to. But that’s the world we live in. The methods I teach are based on accountability and skills. When a job seeker is personally recommended, that recommendation makes the referrer accountable for the outcome. Their reputation is on the line. The likelihood of success on the job is thus higher. Of course, the candidate must possess the skills to do the work.
When such accountability and skills go together, good hires get made. That does not eliminate discrimination. But it improves a candidate’s chances of getting hired. That’s all I can suggest. How do we ensure diversity in hiring if we rely on personal referrals? It depends on who a manager gets referrals from. This is not an easy path. But I believe applying blindly to job postings just because your keywords match the job description is a fool’s errand and always will be. The conventional process just doesn’t work. It’s a silly numbers game that HR and HR technology vendors impose on the employment system.
I appreciate and understand your frustration. Job seekers have virtually no control over this highly automated process. Ironically, it hurts employers at least as much — and they’re the ones spending billions on this pervasive system. Then they complain they get too many “wrong” applications and can’t find the right people to hire.
The trouble with my methods is you have to do them. There is no automation. But my methods work and the other upside is, you make new friends in the process. I’d be lying if I suggested there’s a way to do this without meeting and talking to people. And you will still run into discrimination. But when an employer has integrity and hires for skills and talent, you will be ahead of the game. It’s not nepotism and discrimination everywhere. It’s dangerous to assume it is. That’s why I recommend choosing companies wisely and only after getting to know people connected to them. You’ll learn whether they’re right for you, and you’ll also know if they’re bigots or nepotists.
This means you need at least one new skill: being able to talk to people. I try to help a bit with my columns on networking (search “network” on the site) but it may require more from you. I recommend Toastmasters https://www.toastmasters.org/ and local resources that will help you learn to communicate effectively and without anguish (try your local library to get local recommendations). There’s just no way past the need to talk with people who do the kind of work you want to do in the companies where you want to do it.
The mainstream alternative is to keep doing what HR tells you to do. Then you’re facing the double-whammy of stupid AI technology in addition to employers’ biases. So please, consider working on your “social skills.” They’re just as important when getting the right job as well as when doing it.
Good candidates get passed over — even by unbiased employers — because the hiring technology dumbs down the hiring process. False negatives and false positives will hurt you more than anything but biases. You just have to give an employer good reasons to consider you — better reasons than what they find in a database.
We need to get hiring managers to expand their networks. Give them bonuses based on how many women who can code or similar meetings they have had
Anyone who has worked with useless people who fail up knows it isn’t a meritocracy. See bighead in silicon valley
Many years ago I was directing a ski school at a southern New Hampshire ski area that was within commuting distance of Boston. One of my part-time instructors, a senior at a local college, got my permission to look for interview leads among our customers. He would stand at the line for the double chairlift and look for people (usually men) who he felt “looked like executives” and who were riding alone. He would approach them, ask to ride with them, and almost immediately begin a conversation to see where they worked and whether they were a manager. He would tell them about his education and internships he had done and, before the end of the ride, would give them a copy of his resume for reference. Yes, he actually scheduled an interview and got a position at a large Boston financial institution using this technique of trapping managers on the chairlift.
I love this story because it shows someone practicing their ‘elevator speech.’
I was always told that – in life and in love – desperation is never a good look. And neither is an overenthusiastic sales pitch.
Reminds me of a television commercial for A&W Root Beer…one of my absolute favorites.
https://youtu.be/tMe3WDmxBEI
@Garp: That’s not a fantasy. It happens too often.
I saw the video, and I remember the commercial. I’m surprised they got away with cursing on TV.