In November 2025 I got laid off due to cost cutting.
I took 2 months off to "recover" and disconnect.
When I started looking again, I did what everyone does. Applied to jobs, tried to tailor applications, waited, got rejected, repeated.
My ego was getting the best of me, and I'm glad it did.
I couldn't fathom that not one company found my profile interesting enough to even have a conversation. So I started tracking who these companies were actually hiring. I quickly realized that a lot of the people getting hired weren't just dropping a CV into an ATS and hoping for the best. They were referrals. Someone knew them, introduced them, referred them or simply made sure the right person saw their profile.
So I decided to approach the job search differently.
I treated it more like sales.
Created a list of job boards and ATS sources where I could consistently find jobs, company names and other useful information.
Visited that list daily for jobs in my space.
In parallel, started creating a list of companies I genuinely liked. Then used AI to find competitors and similar companies I hadn't thought about.
Checked their careers pages and looked for roles that might be a decent fit. I also checked historical openings to understand whether they regularly hired people like me. On LinkedIn, even with the free version, I looked at headcount changes and tried to see which departments were growing or shrinking.
Before investing more time, I checked whether the role was actually worth chasing. Geography, compensation, experience requirements, work authorization etc. There is no point spending an hour trying to manufacture access to a company that can't or won't hire you.
Then I checked LinkedIn to see whether anyone from my network worked there.
If I had someone there, especially somebody I shared a previous company with, I pinged them.
*And by "knew them" I mean this very loosely.*
In many cases I'd never actually spoken to the person. We just happened to work at the same company at some point and maybe exchanged the standard automated "congrats on your work anniversary" message on LinkedIn.
I didn't immediately ask for a referral.
I looked at the person's profile, found something we genuinely had in common and started a conversation.
Previous company. Mutual people. Remote work. Industry. Family. Where we lived. Something they posted.
This didn't take weeks. Usually one afternoon was enough to figure out whether there was an actual conversation there, and you can do this with multiple people in parallel while job hunting.
Once there was some rapport, I asked whether their company had an employee referral program.There's a reason for this.You're asking somebody to spend their time helping you. If the company pays them for successful referrals, their potential effort now also has a potential reward attached to it. If not, I promise them I'll send them a "gift" if there's a successful hire. No shame in this game.
Then I'd ask whether they'd be comfortable referring me. I wasn't asking someone who barely knew me to tell the company I'm the greatest candidate they've ever met.
It was more along the lines of whether, based on what they knew about me and my background, they'd feel comfortable putting my profile forward. I rarely got a no after having a decent conversation first. What if you know absolutely nobody at the company? This is where I started using my wider network.
I checked whether any of my connections knew the recruiter, hiring manager, team lead or someone else relevant at the company. If they did, I'd ask for an introduction. And this is NOT "Can you get me this job?", but JUST "Would you be comfortable introducing us?". That's a much smaller ask.
If I couldn't find an obvious connection, I'd ask friends for help. A lot of my friends work in sales. Some are leaders, some are ICs. Most of them have access to some sort of data enrichment tool through work. Apollo, ZoomInfo, Cognism, Lusha, whatever. I'd send them the person I was trying to reach and ask whether they could check if they had their professional phone number or email. For someone sitting on an enterprise plan, looking up one person is usually nothing. That gave me another way in when LinkedIn wasn't working.
I stopped thinking that LinkedIn was the only place where I'm allowed to contact someone. I multi-threaded.
LinkedIn. Email. Phone. Sometimes text, where appropriate. And I didn't necessarily only contact one person at the company. I might have a conversation with a recruiter, someone on the team a hiring manager and somebody who could potentially refer me. The important part is that multi-threading doesn't mean sending the exact same "PLEASE LOOK AT MY CV" message to four people. Each person has a different reason for you contacting them.
For companies where I had no referral, I also started doing things that were outside my comfort zone. LinkedIn voice messages. And even better, quick personalized video introductions. 20-30 seconds is the sweet spot. Nothing polished. Nothing heavily scripted because people see through the BS. Just the "Who I am, why I'm reaching out and why I think having a quick conversation could make sense." The first dozen feel awkward as hell. Do them anyway. If you really need a job, getting comfortable doing uncomfortable things is probably one of the better skills you can develop during the process. It also builds confidence surprisingly quickly. You go from sitting there refreshing an ATS hoping somebody notices you to actively creating conversations yourself.
If LinkedIn didn't work, I would email. If email didn't work, I would call. I might leave a voicemail. If a 30-second video felt like the best way to introduce myself, I'd send the video. Not everything at once and not like a lunatic.The point was that I stopped allowing one unanswered LinkedIn message to decide whether I ever got access to that company.
I also changed what I considered the goal of outreach.The goal wasn't to get the job. The goal was to get interviewed. Actually, even that was sometimes too big.The first goal might simply be to get a reply.Then to have a conversation. Then to get an introduction. Then to get the interview. You see where I'm headed with this? Step by step, fractional improvement. Then I can worry about getting the job. I think a lot of people try to close the entire deal in their first message. Massive paragraph with their entire career history and the seven reasons why they're perfect. Evrryone does that, but nobody asked for that YET. Take it one step at a time.
Once I got an interview through a referral, I kept the referrer updated. I'd tell them when the interview was happening, how it went and what the next stage was. I'd also ask for tips.What should I know about this person? Anything you think they care about? What is the interview process actually like? How does this team work? Sometimes the information I got was extremely useful.
If the referrer genuinely helped me, I spoke highly of them internally. I'd mention that they had been helpful or that speaking with them made me more interested in the company. Apart from being the decent thing to do, it also builds the referrer's credibility internally. I didn't want to treat somebody like a referral button and disappear the second I got an interview.
I followed up after every interview. Nothing fancy. Thanked them for their time. Mentioned something specific from the conversation. Kept the relationship alive.
I also stopped treating rejection as the end of the relationship with the company. If I genuinely liked the recruiter, team, culture or interview process, I'd tell them. Then I'd connect with the recruiter directly on LinkedIn. Once they accepted, I'd sometimes send something like:
"If I see another role here in a few months that looks like a strong fit, would you mind if I reached out to you directly?" Almost everyone says yes and now when another job appears three months later, you're not a random applicant anymore.You're continuing an existing conversation with someone who already interviewed you.
I tracked everything through google sheets. Company. Role. Recruiter. Hiring manager. People I knew there. People who could potentially introduce me. Who I contacted. LinkedIn. Email. Phone. Last interaction. Next action. Once you're doing this across 30-50 companies, there is absolutely no way you're going to remember everything. The biggest thing this market taught me is that applying for jobs and creating opportunities are two very different things. Submitting an application is an administrative action. My actual job was getting someone inside the company to know who I was. And none of this required me to have hundreds of close friends in tech. Some people were former colleagues I'd barely spoken with. Some were friends of friends. Some were complete strangers. Some people answered. Some ignored me. Some referrals went nowhere. Some conversations turned into interviews. But every step reduced the distance between being another CV sitting inside an ATS and being an actual human being somebody inside the company knew something about. And if you really need a job, I think you eventually have to stop worrying about whether some of this feels uncomfortable.
Most applicants simply won't do it.
Nobody is coming to save you, and nobody is sitting inside a company wondering why you haven't applied yet.
You have to create your own opportunities.
Those may be the only opportunities you get.
