Connections are magic
They can open doors you didn't know existed.
Sometimes things just come together.
A few weeks ago, I sent an HR professional a LinkedIn message asking her to do an interview for my upcoming book.
I didn’t hear back.
Then a friend randomly ran into this same HR professional in a coffee shop. He struck up a conversation with her, a stranger. Among other things, he started talking to her about me, and how I was looking for work doing writing and editing.
He got her email address, and passed it on to me.
I emailed her, repeating my request for an interview for the book.
We ended up having a pleasant phone conversation, and she will most likely do an interview for the book. Which is great.
Even better, right after I emailed her directly, she sent me an email back asking if I wanted to apply for a temporary position doing copyediting for her company.
Yes, yes I did want to apply.
So I did the online application, and I heard back from someone else in HR the next day, asking me to do a phone screen interview with them.
I did that phone screen interview over Microsoft Teams, and this week I am scheduled have an interview with the hiring manager for the copyediting job.
The phone screen interviewer told me that she got several hundred applications for the temporary copyediting job, so many that they took down the job listing after just a few days.
And she admitted that without hearing from her colleague who alerted her I was applying, my application would likely have been lost in the giant pile.
All of this is great! But it emphasizes the Herculean task it is to apply for jobs these days.
Without an almost unbelievable set of coincidences, I would not have known about the job at all. And even if I had, my chances of getting to the top of the pyramid would have been vanishingly small.
What this story teaches me is that every connection, every conversation, every email matters.
Talk to people. Talk to everyone. Stay in touch. Find a project. Provide value to others in every way you can. That’s how you are going to get hired.
It’s just that simple. And that complicated.
Things have been pretty dark lately. But sometimes things just come together.
I hope they will for you, too.
See you next week.
I’m always looking for feedback on my book project, and for people to interview to be part of it. Let me know what you think.
Would you read this book?
After nearly two years of writing this newsletter, I’m making a big push for the next few months to write a book. The book’s focus is how adopting a student mindset can be a superpower for older job seekers. I wanted to move from just general advice into an exploration of mindset.
Yes. That is the best advice, whatever we are looking for: a relationship, a place to live, a job. Talk to everyone.
My first solar job came about through a series of connections, which I detailed here: https://energycentral.com/c/ec/how-small-seed-planted-energy-central-grew-something-larger. What I didn't say there is that it was a friend who first told me about Energy Central, a site I'd never heard about and that I ended up writing various posts on. And since the end of the story I wrote about there, all the consulting work I've gotten has come through other connections.
This is great news!