Networking as a student

When I was in college I made tons of mistakes while networking and asking for referrals over LinkedIn. After I posted that I had received an off-campus placement at Credit Suisse and during the month of Global Coding Challenge, a lot of students reached out to me asking for advice, referral and help in various things related to interviews and specifically for Credit Suisse.

Today when I am on the other side of the table, I would like to share a few key points and mistakes I saw when students reached out to me.

Most important thing first is to check if the company you are interested in hires new grads or interns off-campus. It can be through career portal applications, drives or hackathons. Few companies only hire through campus for internships or full time roles.

General mistakes students make while reaching out for referral :

1. Asking company employees to find a job for you.
2. No job id mentioned for which you would want to get a referral.
3. No resume attached while asking for referral.
4. Not stating reasons why you are a fit for a role.
5. Informal messages.
6. Asking referral for roles which are not fit for you.

Reaching out for Referral:

Whom?

• Reach out to people who are active on LinkedIn. Open the profile and check the last activity. Better to reach out to people who have some activity in the past week than someone who had an activity last year. Similarly, reaching out to people with 500+ connections is better than reaching out to someone with 50+ connections.

How?

• Go to the career’s site of the company, find a job that matches your profile, take that job id and draft a small formal message stating why you are fit for the role,your small introduction and then attach your resume,and send a proper formal message with that job id.
• Only ask for referrals to roles in which your profile matches the points of basic qualifications. e.g. if you are in third year(2022 grad) and the job id mentions 2021 grad don't ask a referral for this job id. Similarly if you are in final year and the job refers to an internship for students studying in penultimate year(third year), don't ask for a referral for that internship.

Reaching out for advice or help:

Whom?

• Same as for referral, but an additional thing here, it's better to ask doubts to people who are actually in the role you want to achieve and have gone through the same process in which you need help or advice.

How?

• First make sure you have gone through their profile and what posts and activities the person has done. There’s a high chance that you might get the answer to your doubt. Then you can add this post as a reference in your message and ask your concern. Explain them why you want to get advice from them and how their other posts have helped you or how their profile has inspired you.

Additionally, before messaging someone try to first engage with the person through liking, sharing and commenting your thoughts on their post.

There’s no guarantee that every person you message with the above tips will get back to you, but it's always better to try out the best possible way.

If this helped you like, comment and share so this reaches out to as many students as possible and also this increases your activity on LinkedIn, eventually letting people know you are eager to network.

#Referral #Community #Givingback