Leverage Your Network for Career Opportunites

Part II of Own Your Job Search

There are a lot of ways to leverage your network for introductions, one of these ways is to go through the investors in the company to get an introduction to the CEO or Head of Talent. In my experience, this has been the best way to make sure that I can get at least an interview with a target company. As a CEO, investors are a great source of introductions to great talent, especially from some of their portfolio companies that have been acquired.

In my previous, posts I’ve talked about the 3 phases of a job search

1. Phase 1 — Building your Target List
2. Phase 2 — Get an Intro
3. Phase 3 — Get the Offer

Let’s focus a bit more on Phase 2

Once you know what you are looking for (Location — inc Remote, Industry, Funding Stage, Employee Headcount) it is time to leverage your network to get an intro to your target companies for the right role.

Draft the intro email and ask multiple people in your network to refer you to the opportunity. Don’t let a single person lead to you not getting your resume at the top of the stack.

Reminder: Most large companies have several layers between the applicant and the hiring manager. It can take several reviews of your resume before you get scheduled for a phone screen.

A typical process has the Talent team review daily or weekly the inbound resumes, which then get reviewed and then passed to the hiring manager to review before they say yes and you get passed back to the recruiting team for scheduling a phone screen. At any point, you as a candidate can get filtered out for a number of reasons. This is why I prefer to go top-down and get an internal introduction, ideally from an investor to the CEO to make sure that I can at least speak to someone on the team. Smaller companies likely have less process but they also likely have fewer openings and therefore you are less likely to find a role that matches your experience.

The goal is to find and join the next big rocketship.

The VC Factory

I’ve now reached the point as an angel investor where I have several rock ship companies with massive (100+) hiring goals for 2022. Here is a sortable list.

If you want an intro to any of my portfolio companies that are hiring please take a look and email me kevin at kwangel.fund

[Subject] Intro Request to Portfolio | [Company Name] for [Your Name] / [Role]

[Body] Hi Kevin,

I’m currently looking for the next opportunity in my career. I have searched all the [city] companies that are in [vertical], and from my point of view, [company] is one of my top choices for the next phase of my career. (The more you can add here as to why you want to work at this company the better.)

I would appreciate it if you could introduce me to [Contact at Company]. I’m interested in applying for [link to the role] and think I could be a great addition to the team. Please find my resume attached.

KW Angel Hiring — Airtable

Appendix

Phase 1: Target Company List

Own your Job Search — Step by step process to find your next role

Phase 2: Get an Intro

Underestimating 10 years:

Phase 3: Get the Offer

Get the offer — Step by Step guide from Intro to Hired.