You go to your dream company’s career page and find the perfect role. You fit the qualifications for the role and are excited for the opportunity.

You attach your resume and cover letter and are hopeful that you’ll hear positive news soon or hear back soon. Days go by, even weeks, and you finally receive an inbox notification which states “Thank you for applying!”.

Oh these words, you rush to open the email, but know that the first few words can make or break your day.

It’s an update; you’re thinking that it’ll be an interview opportunity, yet the opportunity turns out to be another one of those dreaded emails.

“Unfortunately, we decided to go with other candidates”.

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Those dreaded words that can make or break a person’s day. Have you ever felt this way?

I have had my fair share of receiving those emails, and I want to try and help you reduce those in your inbox. Hence, I am sharing some insider tips from myself/Wonsulting to get into your dream career.

The Difference Between Target vs. Non-Target Schools

Before going into details of how to land your dream career, let’s break down the difference between Target and Non-Target Schools.

Target Schools: Think the Ivy Leagues/top schools of the world. If you attend one of these schools, opportunities come to you. What does this mean? You can easily tell if your school is a target school by the following factors:

• Dream companies directly come and recruit at your school, whether it’s at career fairs, hosted workshops, etc.
• The Alumni pool at these companies are significantly higher than others.

LinkedIn Example from Target School (Undergrad/Grad): 1,800 students/alumni working at Google

If you go to a Target School, you can apply to these companies and land interviews; why? The company is directly involved with your university since they are trying to find the “ideal candidate.”

Non-Target Schools: Think of the smaller/non-branded named schools of the world. If you attend one of these schools, opportunities from in your dream company don’t always come about. What does this mean? You can tell if your school is a non-target school by the following factors:

• Dream companies do not come recruit directly at your school; to connect with these companies, the prime factor is to NETWORK to get into these companies
• The Alumni pool at these companies are smaller; there are only a handful of people who work at these companies coming from your university

LinkedIn Example from Ton-Target School (Undergrad/Grad): 100 students/alumni working at Google

If you go to a Non-Target School and simply apply, the odds aren’t in your favor. Why? although the company isn’t directly recruiting at your school, this is why:

The Tiers of the Job Search By Wonsulting

We believe that there are 4 tiers in the Job Search process:

Tier 4: Applying to Roles

You simply apply to a role without a referral. We call this a “blind application” because it’s simply a “hope for the best” situation.

Tier 3: Referral

You get referred for the role from someone at the company, but is not on the team that is directly hiring. For example, let’s say you’re going for an Operations Analyst position and a Software Engineer refers you.

Tier 2: Hiring Team Member Recommendation

Someone on the hiring team refers you for the role; for example, let’s say you’re going for a Financial Analyst position at Amazon, specifically for Devices. Someone on the team for Amazon Devices recommends you for the role to the hiring manager.

Tier 1: Hiring Manager Recommendation

The Hiring Manager who is directly responsible for the role recommends you; for example, let’s say you’re going for a Product Manager role at Facebook Messenger. The Head of Product for Facebook Messenger is the Hiring Manager; they recommend you for the role.

So what was the point of breaking down the tiers? Because most people will be in either Tier 3 or 4. Let’s break this down even further, and look at it more closely.

Let’s say you’re going for the Business Analyst position at Cisco.

Tier 4: Applying

How many people are applying? Let’s say 1,000+

Tier 3: Referral

How many people are getting referred? Let’s say 200.

Tier 2: Hiring Team Member Recommendation

How many people are getting recommended by a Hiring Team Member? Let’s say 10.

Tier 1: Hiring Manager Recommendation

How many people are getting recommended by a Hiring Manager? Let’s say 2.

Lastly, how many roles are they recruiting for? Let’s just say 5.

If you were a recruiter/hiring manager, what would you look at first? Let’s say they choose the 2 from the Hiring Manager recommendation and they choose 2 from the Hiring Team Member recommendations.

That only leaves 1 role left for 1,200 to go for.

The reason why you’re getting rejected is because if you’re in Tier 4 or 3, you’re getting beat out by the Tier 1 & 2. If you’re able to get into Tier 1 or 2, that’s when you get a better chance, especially coming from a non-target school or from a non-traditional background.

Now, how do you get into Tier 1 or 2?

Networking.

Networking is game changing, especially with you getting into your career

How do you network? Here’s exactly what I’d do if I were trying to get into my career.

Reach out to professionals who work at the company that I’m interested in; there’s SO many ways on how to do it, but let’s dive into how to do it first with Alumni.

Let’s break it down:

How To Network With Alumni on LinkedIn

Let’s say you’re going for a Marketing Internship. You’ve identified your company as Cisco.

Search “Position” and then filter “Current Company” to “Cisco”. You’ve now identified 3,000+ results of Marketing Interns at Cisco. Now, let’s find those who attend your University. Let’s say that you currently go to Chapman University. You’d then change the “University” to “Chapman University”.

Go to their Profile and look at their About Section; the person will USUALLY have something regarding their lives, experiences, etc. You’ll use this information and incorporate into the personalized invite.

Then check their activity; the reason why you want to check this is because you want to make sure that they’re ACTIVE on LinkedIn. Why? If you reach out to someone and they’re not active on LinkedIn, you’ll never be able to connect with them because they’ll never see your message.

Now why do you send a personalized invite?

• Surprisingly, only 1% of people send a personalized invite when networking. This will help you stand out when networking with professionals
• Shows you put effort in networking with professionals/recruiters, etc.

After they accept your invite, most will NOT reply at first. After, they accept, send a message with the following content:

1. Quick Introduction of yourself
2. Show interest regarding their story
3. Ask how you can both be valuable to each other

Here’s a simple message template you can send:

Hi (Name), hope you’re well! Thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn, I appreciate connecting with you!

I’m writing to you because I’d love to learn more about your story, specifically (xyz). I’d love to follow in your footsteps & journey; my story is (your story in 1–2 sentences). I’d also love to see how I can provide value/help you in any endeavors/initiatives! Please let me know if you’d be free sometime to chat, as I appreciate your time and help in advance.

Thanks and have a great day!

If they say yes to a phone call, that’s amazing! The goal of the call is as follows:

1. Build Rapport: Talk about both of your stories but focus it on them. You want to hear more about their story & journey because you want to follow in their footsteps.
2. Ask questions to show your interests in the field/industry: Let’s say we’re going for Marketing at Cisco. One of the day-to-day responsibilities could be “Utilizing Social Media Marketing to grow/scale Cisco’s growth”. Thus, one of the questions can be “So I know that Social Media Marketing consists of growing and scaling content. Was wondering what you do on your day-to-day and why you decided to pursue a career in marketing?
3. The Ask: If you’re comfortable, you can ask for a recommendation; instead of saying “Give me a referral”, you should ask “how do I get an interview?”. Why you do this is because they can either recommend you to the hiring manager OR give you advice; either of these are great especially for you getting into your career!

How To Network Through Events

If your school doesn’t have alumni in your dream companies, networking through events is another method. Here’s how:

Let’s say you want to work at Google as a Product Manager. Simply search “Google” and go to “Events”. Select the event that is related to your interests.

After selecting the event, click “Attend Event” and then select “Attendees”.

After selecting the attendees, go to the Filter and select “Current Company” as “Google”. You’ll now find every person who will be attending that works at the company (78 of them in this case!)

Select one of the profiles and look at their About Section/Experience. You’ll find people who are either in the role OR even hiring! Then, send a personalized invite and connect, something similar to the following:

After sending this (and hopefully get connected), you’d do something similar to the message template from the Alumni section and you’ll have more connections in your dream career.

Conclusion

Throughout my own career, networking has been essential in landing roles at companies I’ve always aspired to work in. Here’s some quick “don’ts” especially when networking:

• Making it a “One-Way” street: Most people will take rather than give; ask the person what you can do for them rather than what they can do for you.
• Always send a personalized invite: I currently have over 2,500+ pending invites on LinkedIn because they didn’t send a personalized invite and I’m running out of connection space. Imagine you being the 1 person who takes time to send a personalized invite.
• Don’t treat people as just “professionals/recruiters”: Treat them as human beings; we’re all human at the end of the day and want to not just gain connections, but at the end of the day friends.

Make friends, not connections.

I hope this article will help you in landing your dream career, especially if you come from a non-target school/non-traditional background. I was one of you, and it was through such strategies that I was able to land roles at Snapchat, Cisco, and Google. Through Wonsulting, I have been able to help numerous underdogs and turn them into winners. Here’s some of the amazing stories below in the past 2 weeks:

Ami Patel: Incoming Program Manager @ Microsoft

Rithika Raghav: Incoming APM Intern at Google

Ari Ichinaga: Data Analyst at Tesla

Adrian Lauderdale: Incoming BDR @ HubSpot

Austin Henline: Incoming BDA @ Salesforce

Alison Yu: Product Manager at First Republic Bank

Christine Nguyen: Campaign Manager @ Kargo

Stephanie Nuesi: Incoming BOLD Intern @ Google

David Vu: Associate Product Manager @ KitCheck

And many more (You can find more Wonsulting Reviews or Wonsulting Success Stories on wonsulting.com)

To more jobs for each of you in 2021, Wonsulting is here to help you get there. Let’s help you all get jobs, one underdog at a time.

Love,

#JWoW

Jonathan Javier is the CEO/Founder of Wonsulting, which mission is to “turn underdogs into winners”. He’s also worked in Operations at Snap, Google, and Cisco coming from a non-target school/non-traditional background. He works on many initiatives, providing advice and words of wisdom on LinkedIn and through speaking engagements. In total, he has led 180+ workshops in 9 different countries including the Mena ICT Forum in Jordan, Resume/Personal Branding at Cisco, LinkedIn Strategy & Operations Offsite, Great Place To Work, Talks at Google, TEDx, and more. He’s amassed 180K+ followers on LinkedIn & TikTok as well as 5+ million impressions monthly on his content.

These are some insider tips from Wonsulting’s course, so check it out at here at courses.wonsulting.com.

Interested in working together? Check out wonsulting.com or email us at [email protected] (reference this article too)!