Making referrals a strategy for getting your dream job

For job seekers, it is often whom they know, not just what they know, that can help land that coveted role.

According to Edric Lin, Country Director of referral-based online job portal, Wanted, few people even bother with referrals at all, which is quite a shame. He points out that referrals often add "a different dimension of colour" to the actual job application. "Referrals have a very human touch to them, because it relies on networking and human interaction, which is facilitated on our online platform," he adds.

Reposted an excerpt above from The Business Times article published on Aug 11, 2018 by Vivien Shiao.

At HubSpot, almost 50% of our new hires made globally come from referrals this year. We have 2,441 employees as of Aug 2018. If you think about that, for every 2 candidates we interview, 1 of them knows someone working in HubSpot and champions for them internally.

My career through referrals

When I'd returned to Singapore from San Francisco to complete my final semester at National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2015, I was privileged to already have secured a full-time job at Nanigans, a Facebook Marketing Partner.

Back in 2014, I was on the National University of Singapore's Overseas Program in Silicon Valley, pursuing a year-long digital marketing internship experience at a startup in the Valley. We were using Nanigans' software to manage our Facebook advertising campaigns. I was enamoured by the idea of having access to some of Asia' largest Facebook advertisers through working at Nanigans and decided early on that I wanted to work at Nanigans post graduation. Upon the final months in my internship, I reached out to our then Nanigans Account Director in the San Francisco office to put me in touch with a hiring manager in Nanigans Singapore office.

With some amount of luck, I'd secured a job at Nanigans Singapore 6 months before I'd graduated from NUS. It was the first company that I interviewed with, and the only company I considered. On hindsight, it might not have been the smartest idea to have my eggs in the same basket, but that was how much trust I had in the power of referrals.

Fast forward 3 years later, I'd dabbled a lot in Facebook ads for advertisers across the spectrum from founding team startups to large venture-backed companies and along the way, helped Facebook earn hundreds of millions of dollars from my clients' ad spend. I was itching to build my knowledge in a different area within the digital marketing stack. I'd always told my friends who are outside of the tech industry that this is how I see someone being a valuable digital marketer today -- there's 3 areas that you can be really good at: paid social, paid search, and inbound marketing.

It became very clear to me that there were 2 companies who were best-in-class at paid search and inbound marketing - Google and HubSpot, respectively. The gears in my brain started whirring and I was strategising on how best I can set myself up for success if I wanted to land a job at either one of those companies.

How to prepare yourself to get the job you want at the company you love

I'll just put it upfront - The process is not easy, but the rewards are stupendous. It is a very methodical process of covering all grounds. I was inspired by Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, specifically the part on how you can prepare for anything in life. During his training at NASA, he explained how astronaut trainees were put through very rigorous preparations on how to handle every single possibility. If we think about it, most of the times when we are afraid of something, it's usually the fear of unknown. To counter that, NASA dreams up of every situation that an astronaut will possibly be put in, have the trainee go through the experience, learn how to deal with it, and then optimise on that experience. The result is each trainee can execute with confidence on all kinds of crises as they come up, simply because they have done it a thousand times before.

Whenever I conduct any Facebook Ads workshop, there's always an important segment I include - how to differentiate a good plan from a bad plan.

“If you don't know where you want to go, then it doesn't matter which path you take.” ― Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

Advertisers I'd worked with who come to me and tell me they'll want to start investing in Facebook Ads and "see how it goes" are usually the ones who end up not going anywhere. Similarly, over the years when I speak with some peers who are trying to get their dream jobs, I'd ask how do you go about preparing? They tell me they'll see how it goes.

I cannot grapple and come to terms with the fact that if someone has a dream job at a dream company -- dream meaning you need it so badly and will do anything to get it -- but he can afford to leave it to chance, chances of potentially failing. That doesn't sound like he wanted it all that much, does it?

Google has most of what you need to know

My best friend during my research process is Google.com. I combed through everything that I can get my hands on. From the latest news about the company to Glassdoor reviews, financial statements to anecdotal Medium write ups, LinkedIn searches on who's in the company and what their backgrounds are like to drawing up what I perceive the organisation structure to be, the role, and how I fit into the whole picture.

There is so much that you can get just by studying publicly available information. I ask myself, do I see this company innovating in the long term? Do I believe that these leaders have had a record of executing and making good business decisions? Am I able to make valuable contributions to this company? Do I want to work with these people on the team that I am interested in? Am I excited about the work that entails? How does this help me advance my career goals? What next after I spend a couple of years in that role?

Making referrals work hard for you

Once I had a good sense of all these answers, I proceeded to act on them. I reached out to my first-degree connections who are in Google / HubSpot. I dropped cold LinkedIn messages to people on my future direct team to invite them for a chat and learn what they do / care about. The response rate is 50% - and that's completely fine. Sometimes people don't even bother replying, but you aren't hedging everything on that. I ensured that there were multiple touch points to my efforts, because I knew not all would yield results.

I was interested to continue advancing my account management skills, and acquire knowledge in SEM. I knew a friend who was in that same role I was interested in at Google, I asked if his team was hiring, and if he could refer me. At the same time, I reached out to another friend, Dave Fallarme, who was working at HubSpot's Marketing team, and asked if he could share more about the Customer Success role. He went one step further (sometimes your friends are more helpful than you think they are), he told me that he can connect me with someone on the Customer Success team, and she is in the same role that I was applying for. That's referral working its magic at its best.

Prior to getting interviews

At this point, I knew that my career could branch out in either way - being really good at paid search or inbound marketing - both I am super excited about. So I'd done a lot of research at the macro level for the industry and company, and at the micro level for the team and the role. When the interview process started, I studied how best I can ace those interviews. I'd been interviewing from time to time during the last 3 years at Nanigans even though I wasn't actively looking for a new role just yet, simply to know what my worth is, and how I can continue to refine my skills to match what the market needs. This allowed me to have a good sense of self-awareness with aspects of the interview process that I wasn't confident in.

I started mapping out questions that I found trouble answering and had to prepare for, there wasn't room for 'see how it goes' for these questions. It could be different for you, but mine were "what is your biggest failure?", "tell me about a moment you were most proud of". YouTube is an amazing resource for questions like that. There are a ton of videos by interview consultants / experts sharing best practices on how interviewees should prepare and answer such questions.

Both Google and HubSpot use the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) framework for behavioural questions to guide interviewees in their responses. I used that to prepare my responses in every possible question (that I can think of) that could be asked. Again, Google was my best friend. I dug up all the questions that past interviewees of that role put up (whether it's on Glassdoor, LinkedIn or Medium), and compiled them in a Word doc. I put my responses down in the STAR framework and curated specific aspects of my past work experience that could help me shine for each specific role that I was interviewing for. Also, I looked up who my interviewers could be and studied their motivations, interests, background, and any interesting pieces that they had previously written about. I crafted my responses to seek relevance to whom I'm speaking to.

The last part, I formulated questions that I wanted to ask about the company's direction / business, their take on a specific topic, their challenges, and how they deal with them - these come much more easily when you did the first part of the macro research, you start uncovering things that aren't publicly available. To me, it's an intellectual exercise of piecing jigsaw puzzles of a company's health (numbers), potential, leadership team, and people you are going to be working with. You want to ask them to the right people during your interview process. At the end, it helps you make an informed choice if this is where you believe you can grow the most, while helping a company you believe will be a great company for the long term, grow.

Getting your foot into the door

All that I described about the interview process preparation is for naught, if you don't even receive the first email or phone call from a recruiter in your target company to say that they are interested to start the process with you. That's why referrals become so important. When you've done all your homework, you want to reach out to your connections, speak to people who's in the know, let them know of your interest, and then follow up with zealousness. Let people feel your passion. They will help you champion harder internally for you. Good luck and all the best in getting your next dream job!

HubSpot Honored As One Of The Best Places To Work in 2018, A Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award Winner. If you are interested to work at HubSpot, drop me a LinkedIn message, let's chat.