Who are the right people to connect with?

[EngWiPy]

Hello,

Who are the right people to connect with to improve my chances in landing a job? It was suggested to connect with recruiters, but aren't recruiters HR people? My background isn't directly related to the field I am interested in, and I am afraid that the HR has a strict guidelines to follow in filtering applicants, and won't see how I can fit.

Thanks in advance for any feedback

 

[Vanadium 50]

Who are the right people to connect with to improve my chances in landing a job?

What kind of job? What's your background? What are your goals? As it is, your question is far, far. far too vague to be answered.

 

[EngWiPy]

What kind of job? What's your background? What are your goals? As it is, your question is far, far. far too vague to be answered.

My background is EE with specialization in tele/wireless communications, and interested in the field of Data Science.

 

[Dale]

Who are the right people to connect with to improve my chances in landing a job? It was suggested to connect with recruiters, but aren't recruiters HR people?

The recruiters don’t have any jobs, the hiring managers do. Connect with the hiring managers. I just recently finished hiring two people, and both of them were introduced to me through internal colleagues or external partners, not the recruiters.

 

[Vanadium 50]

My background is EE with specialization in tele/wireless communications, and interested in the field of Data Science.

So you're going to make us squeeze it out of you one bit at a time? That's your choice, but if you ask a non-specific question, you're going to get non-specific answers.

 

[CrysPhys]

Hello,

Who are the right people to connect with to improve my chances in landing a job? It was suggested to connect with recruiters, but aren't recruiters HR people? My background isn't directly related to the field I am interested in, and I am afraid that the HR has a strict guidelines to follow in filtering applicants, and won't see how I can fit.

Thanks in advance for any feedback

First, I want to confirm what you mean by the term "recruiter", in particular whether the Canadian usage is different from the US usage. In the US, a professional recruiter typically works for a recruitment agency or firm. Some companies with job openings will engage a recruitment agency to seek out and screen candidates. A recruiter gets paid by a company if the company hires a candidate referred by the recruiter. As I wrote in a previous response, companies generally don't pay recruiters to fill positions for newbies.

Then there are direct employees of a company who serve a recruitment function. They include both HR personnel and technical staff. They formally adopt a "recruiter" designation under particular circumstances: for example, as a company representative at a job fair in conjunction with a professional conference, trade show, or on-campus recruiting. Many large companies have technical staff that serve as recruiters to targetted major universities; a recruiter to a particular target university is typically an alumnus who keeps in touch with the professors to be on the lookout for promising talent (typically grad students about to complete their PhDs).

So, in your case, a recruiter who works for a recruitment agency or a company's HR department won't be of much value. But if companies send technical staff as recruiters to your previous universities, it would be worthwhile seeking them out.

But the best connections are to the hiring managers; or to connections who eventually can get your resume to, or can get you an introduction to, hiring managers. I see a disturbing trend in which people simply send out shotgun invitations to connect to others on LinkedIn, and an even more disturbing trend in which people accept such invitations ... as if there's some status in having a large number of random connections per se.

But the most valuable connections are through a chain of people with actual personal connections. I'll give you two examples.

I serve as a volunteer mentor. One grad student (about to finish school) had sent out mucho resumes, had gotten no responses, and was really frustrated. I asked her to send me a copy of her resume to critique. The file she sent me also had an attached cover letter. Serendipitously, the cover letter was addressed to a colleague of mine ... a classmate from grad school. I called up my former classmate to catch up ... and by the way inquired about the grad student. He told me that he had been busy, and had a stack of resumes somewhere. Anyway, at my nudging, he did eventually interview the grad student, and ending up giving her a job offer. I also revised her resume, sent them out to former colleagues, and called them up. That resulted in three other interviews, each with a subsequent job offer. It was the grad student's own educational background and competencies that landed her the job offers, but it was my personal intervention that got her foot in the door.

One of my biggest career shifts was clearing out of R&D (in the aftermath of the InterNet Bubble Burst in the early 2000's) and becoming a patent agent. I first got in touch with 'Alice', a retired patent attorney who used to work at my company and who had been part of my lunch group. Alice told me to get in touch with 'Bob', was was a current patent attorney at my company. So I called Bob: "I'm a friend of Alice, and she recommended that I speak to you to get advice on transitioning to a career as a patent agent." Bob: "Hey, how's ol' Alice doing? Why don't you drop by my office, and I'll see what I can do." So Bob tells me of a patent attorney 'Charlie' who used to work at the company, but left to start his own firm. I then call Charlie: "I just spoke to Bob, and he recommended that I speak to you to get advice on transitioning to a career as a patent agent." Charlie: "Hey, how's ol' Bob doing? ..." That call eventually led to an interview, a job offer, and the launch of (yet another) new career. It was my own educational and professional background, experience, competencies, and skills that landed me the job, but the personal connections that got my foot in the door.

 

[symbolipoint]

The recruiters don’t have any jobs, the hiring managers do. Connect with the hiring managers. I just recently finished hiring two people, and both of them were introduced to me through internal colleagues or external partners, not the recruiters.

That, for many job-seekers, mostly for first time jobs or second time jobs. People often know of people they worked with or who were with companies they worked for. Sometimes that is a way a job-seeker becomes known and is seen as hireable. People who know of you can become LIKE references, even if you formally did not ask them to be. Some company managers really do look for connections - any kind of connection - whether of location, schools attended, relevant experiences, and also in people you might have mutually knew or met. My first job after graduating? Several personnel of the company were from the same location as I, and by chance, a bit of my academic research experience was relevant just by accident.

Recruiters are informally called "headhunters" for a reason. They like to call up companies and try to reach to talk to people who are working and find out if they may be talented and therefore be a fit for some client company of the recruiter. The candidate would best need to be experienced before he is someone to be matched for a position with the client companies.

 

[Chris Riccard]

Depending on your skill level they have placement recruiters that get paid big bucks for talented people. You can find a high paying job if you're in an in demand field. The internet is expecialy helpful in making contacts if you know where to look.
Ha this has already been said.

 

[EngWiPy]

Is it normal to get messages from recruiters on LinkedIn without reaching out? It happened with me once, and the person who contacted me (after some search) seemed legit (from a recruiting agency with profiles and Internet presence ... etc), but I felt a little suspicious.

 

[Locrian]

If you have skills in demand, it's very common to be contacted by recruiters. Sometimes they're even good ones.

But I think it's important that we all keep in mind what the qualifications are to become a recruiter: you must look in the mirror and say "hey, I'm going to be recruiter!"

Requirements like that result in a lot of variance in quality.

 

[CrysPhys]

Is it normal to get messages from recruiters on LinkedIn without reaching out? It happened with me once, and the person who contacted me (after some search) seemed legit (from a recruiting agency with profiles and Internet presence ... etc), but I felt a little suspicious.

Yes, this is quite common these days. Recruiters search LinkedIn profiles looking for suitable matches. This is more common for potential candidates with experience, less common with newbies. However, some recruiters like to simply augment their number of Connections.

 

[EngWiPy]

She didn't follow up with me, I don't know why, maybe because I am newbie in the field she contacted me for, but I took her message with a grain of salt from the beginning.

 

[pi-r8]

Maybe this is too obvious, but have you tried just asking the people you already know (who have jobs)? They don't have to be managers. There's a good chance they'll know if their company is hiring, what they're looking for (not necessarily the same as the listed qualifications for the job), and sometimes there's even a process for them to recommend people they know.

It seems weird to me to try to connect with random managers on LinkedIn that you've never met in real life. The people who would accept that connection are mostly going to be the worst sort of headhunter, the ones who are just as desperate for candidates as you are for a job. If you're obviously sending out connection requests *just* so you can apply for a job people will see through that, or just not bother to even look at your message. There's a process for that... you send in a job application.

It's kind of like that Grouch Marx joke- "I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members". The kind of person who hangs out all day on LinkedIn or any similar site, and accepts connections from some random student that they've never met in real life, is probably not the kind of person who can really help you get a job.

 

[EngWiPy]

I feel weird about it as well to connect to strange people on LinkedIn, but what other options do I have? There are some meetups groups for AI and data science, and joined some to participate in them soon. The people I know and have jobs in Canada in the industry are very few, and didn't help beyond having a look at my resume (or showing it to someone they know to give me feedback) and wish me luck.