Asking for job referrals

Perspectives & advice from the community

u/Enforcerboy on a post titled Getting ghosted after asking for referrals is frustrating shared the following advice:

Here's the thing with referrals.

Employees have the incentive to refer you, because they will get referral bonus, if you get hired.

But given that most referrals aren't going to get hired, and that many people getting the offer, might not join, they don't have much incentive to spend time on you out of their busy day.

So, unless the person who you are approaching is a close friend, make their job of referring you as easy as possible.

Always send the link to a job from their company's career page, along with your resume:

Not "refer me for an appropriate role based on my resume".

Not Linkedin job link. They mostly don't match 1:1 with the internal job posting. And if you are too lazy to look for it, expect them be even more lazy.

And certainly not the screenshot of the job opening.

It's not just height of being lazy, but really rude.

You are essentially telling them that while you don't even have enough time to share a link, they are supposed to type out the title from the screenshot in their company's portal, find the relevant job by reading each description, and then confirm with your highness, if they find 2-3 similar ones, that they aren't sure of. This is something that I wouldn't even do for a close friend. If a stranger sends this, I will just block them. If a friend does this, I will kick their butt, and will make them send me a link.

Always ... always ... always ... Share the exact job link from their company's career page, and your resume. Most of these links, take them directly to the page, where they can refer you.

To further your chances, add your name, location, email and phone-number to the message that you send to them. They need to fill these details on the referral page, and it's a pain looking for it in weirdly formatted resumes.

Go with:

Hi XXX,

I am looking for a job/job change, and I was wondering will you be able to refer me to the following job opening in your company?https://careers.<yourcompany>.com/<jobID>

Further details:

Name: string

YOE: int

Phone number: string

Email address: string

Current location: string

Preferred locations: csv, or array of string (if applicable)

I am attaching my resume with this message. Please inform me once you have referred, so that I can fill any additional details, or give my confirmation on the referral email, if needed.

<you can even ignore the usual thanks & regards, if you want>

Some people insist on adding some personalized message, but I don't think it's really important, unless you are sending the message to a senior person. Most SWEs won't care, as far as they have enough information to refer you, within a few clicks.

Also, use more standard, ATS-friendly resume templates. In most cases, HRs are even lazier, and they don't even go through weird looking fancy resumes, and rather pick someone else. Within 5-10 seconds of looking at your resume, one should be able to understand the following 2 things:

Who you are?(Senior SWE @ , working on <language(s)>/, experienced in development/design/architecture), or some variant of it, that applies to you

What kind of job you want to go for? Individual contributor / Managerial , etc

They should only have to spend more than 5-10 seconds, if they want to know more about your projects, your graduation/school marks, or your hobbies. Most recruiters won't care.

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u/fonderupp shared the following advice on a now deleted post titled, How do you properly ask for referrals?

Here's my template:

Hi {person name}.

Hope you're doing great.

I'm {my name}. I graduated from {college name since it is a good college, don't mention here if it's not that good} this year and I'm looking for Software Engineer opportunities. There's an opening at {company name} that I'm interested in. I would be grateful if you can refer me for the same. Here's the job: {job link}

A little more about me: {point wise highlight your skills and notable achievements. this section is to show why you're a good fit aka why you should be considered}

I am attaching my resume for your reference: {resume drive link so that people don't have to download}

Thanks and warm regards

Results

Ofc there are people who just ignore messages, but overall I get a pretty good response rate. At least people go through my profile or say that they will check with HR and get back. Now it's also a factor that I'm from a good clg with huge alumni network so I mostly reach out to alums, if no alums then alums from sister colleges or similar level colleges.

My template has a very clear format:

1. salutation
2. short introduction and what I'm asking for. if the reader is not interested, they will simply stop at this point, but at least they know what I was hoping to get from them
3. now if the reader did not leave, that means they want to know whether you're really good enough to be considered for the role. so here goes more descriptive section with skills and achievement.
4. again, if they are impressed by section 3, provide them the next step by sharing your resume
5. end with humble greetings

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