How to Find Your Next Job Opportunity by Networking from Home

Almost 85% of jobs are found through networking. Referrals make a huge difference in a job search. The Muse confirms: “Only 7% of job applicants get an employee referral, yet referrals account for 40% of all hires.” Now get this: About 70% of jobs aren’t even listed on job sites. This means you have to know someone to even to know a company may be interested in hiring.

Whether you’re sheltering-in-place because of the coronavirus pandemic and need to find a new job, trying to climb the ladder at the company you’re already at while raising small children, or know the value of networking but dislike going to networking events, networking from home could boost your chances of landing your dream job.

Come into It with the Right Mindset

The word “network” has the power to send chills down many people’s spines. For some, the notion of networking seems slimy, as if you’re trying to butter someone up to extort something out of them. For others, you might be afraid you’re bothering someone. Many introverts find initiating small talk in the beginning stages of getting to know someone draining. It’s understandable to have negative feelings associated with networking, but let’s discuss a shift in mindset.

Networking is about building relationships. Positive relationships are mutually beneficial and even enjoyable. When you network, therefore, go in with the mindset that you are reaching out to help solve a problem for someone.

For example, there is a significant skills gap in manufacturing, so perhaps you are able to personally fill a job position that has been open for months. Or, maybe you know that the person you’re reaching out to doesn’t have any open positions at their company, but you’re interested in forming a better relationship with them that can pay off later on. You can build some goodwill and perhaps be considered for future openings if you remember their college-aged daughter is studying engineering, and so you call simply to let them know that your company is currently looking for interns and that you’d be happy to put in a good word for her.

Personally Reach out to People

If there’s been a bright side to stay-at-home mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that people are checking in on loved ones, friends, and even neighbors; colleagues are getting to know each other better through virtual happy hours; and random people you haven’t spoken to in months — years? — are suddenly come out of the woodwork because they’ve apparently finished binge-watching everything under the sun. Hopefully, going forward, we will all continue to strengthen these ties and look out for one another.

There’s a deep desire in all of us, even the most introverted, to form social bonds and to feel known. When you’re coming from a genuine place of desiring to reconnect with someone or wanting to get to know someone new, even if it’s mostly because of your passion for the industry, most people will be more than willing to connect. The key, though, is to be just as invested in getting to know them and helping them as you are in helping yourself climb the career ladder.

Whom Should You Reach out to?

Anybody and everybody! A few people you may want to connect with are mentors, former professors, current and former colleagues (don’t forget those in human resources!), people you’ve done business with (e.g., vendors, contractors), people you’ve exchanged business cards with at conferences, and people you’d like to get to know.

It makes good sense to reach out particularly to potential hiring managers. In fact, you might think it’s a waste of time to contact one of your former vendors. However, that vendor likely works with other companies and people similar to you, and they may know if a key player there recently vacated the very job you want.

How Should You Contact Them?

The truth is that everyone has preferences in how they like to communicate, but also even if you reach out to them in their preferred manner they sometimes respond better, or at least faster, in a different manner. Also, you may feel most confident reaching out one way, but the person you’re contacting may be totally unresponsive to that method. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here.

Your best bet is to do a little homework and rely on your existing knowledge from previous conversations and intuition. Cold calls can be really great for people you already personally know or who use the phone a lot in their line of work, such as colleagues, human resource managers, and vendors.

Emails, on the other hand, could lead to a phone call if you tell your contact why you would like to speak to them on the phone and give them a time frame that lets them know you won’t be taking up too much of their time. Offer them a few suggested time slots from which they can choose as the time you’ll be calling them. Some people may prefer to keep the conversation going via email, and as long as you’re able to maintain a solid connection with them that way, you can keep the relationship going through writing.

Messages through LinkedIn can be great for general check-ins with people in the industry. Sliding into someone’s direct messages through a social media platform like Facebook or Instagram is not advised. If you’re of a younger generation and are contacting someone of a younger generation who works in a tech field or works in social media marketing, perhaps it’s more acceptable in certain contexts, but overall it’s not as professional, so unless you already know the person well, stick to more traditional communication methods.

Start a Newsletter

If you want to reach many of your contacts at the same time, a newsletter is an advantageous way to get in front of them while staying home. Newsletters are great because they’re personal and personalized — you can write a little more informally than you would on a website, for example, and an email marketing platform can input the subscriber’s name.

While you may want to include some personal touches — such as Album I’m Listening to This Week or Funny Thing My Kid Said — overall, your newsletter should have a theme that pertains to your career or the career you’re looking to transition into. You’ll want to position yourself as an industry leader, someone who has exclusive, insider information to share just with your subscribers.

Choose an email marketing platform — one popular one is Mailchimp — and get people to subscribe. The newsletter should have a standard template and be compatible with different platforms your subscribers may use. Also, make sure you’re legally compliant: you should always offer a way for subscribers to unsubscribe.

Start a Website

If you want to appear professional, you should have your own website. It doesn’t need to be fancy, but it should at least be a single landing page containing who you are, your area of expertise, noteworthy accomplishments, what you can offer to clients, and your contact information.

If you can build it out with several menu bar items even better. Consider including the following pages:

• About — Provide a clear and concise biography.
• Testimonials — Ask a few clients to send in a sentence or two about why they enjoyed working with you.
• Call to Action — Tell readers what you want from them, whether it’s to contact you for a free quote or to sign up for your newsletter.

To draw people to your website and to keep them continually returning, you’ll need a portion of your website devoted to a blog. While the website is static, the blog should be regularly updated. A blog is an opportunity for you to really showcase your knowledge, offering tips, tricks, hacks, advice, trends, stories from the field, and tutorials related to your career. Interviewing other industry insiders for your blog is a particularly useful way to network as it builds your relationship with the interviewee — it’s an easy way to initiate a conversation with someone new whom you admire but always felt like you needed a good excuse to contact — and it will likely bring new traffic to your website due to SEO and the interviewee sharing the interview with their network.

Make sure to include a subscribe button so readers get an alert whenever you publish a new entry.

As with all forms of networking, try to think of ways that blogging can be mutually beneficial. This means not only providing useful content to your readers but also engaging with them in your comments section and on their own blogs. Find other blogs related to your career passions and leave comments on those sites.

Be Active on Social Media

“73% of recruiters have hired a candidate through social media. And 93% of recruiters review a candidate’s social profile before making a decision,” reports Ziprecruiter.

A word of caution: not all social media sites are right for professional networking. Facebook, for instance, tends to be a more intimate social media site best reserved for family and friends, as people often share personal photos of their families and political views. If you want to be active professionally on Facebook, instead of “friending” someone, setting up a business page or moderating a group is an excellent way to grow your business on Facebook. Get to know a social media platform and check out how other professionals are capitalizing on it before you use it to network.

The main social media site you want to be on professionally is LinkedIn, which is specifically geared toward business professionals. Don’t just post your name and resume and then wait for someone to randomly find and contact you. To get the most out of LinkedIn, you need to put some work into it.

Here are a few quick tips for getting noticed on LinkedIn:

• Create a killer profile, adding keywords to your headline.
• Use a professional — or at least professional-looking — headshot.
• Regularly post engaging content related to your field and work.
• Engage with other people’s content, generously.
• Ask professional contacts to give you testimonials and endorse you — start by doing the same for them!
• Join LinkedIn groups related to your field and offer helpful resources and advice.
• Add contacts, always sending a personalized note along with the request.
• Initiate conversations through messages — perhaps mention something you liked about an article they just posted to show you care about their content.

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