How to leverage followup in your job search

Followup is scary. Most of us struggle with leaving our comfort zone. When I ask a job seeking client if they followed up in their job search, they often respond with either a flat-out no or they say they emailed.

If I press on to find out who they emailed, it is almost always HR. Don’t leave followup in a job search to email and should never just be contained to HR or recruiters.

You need to become visible to decision makers: heads of departments, directors, senior management, and depending on your role, the C suite. To do that, you have to followup using the phone.

Stopping your job search with HR may mean disaster

I work with wonderful HR people committed to the mission of finding the best candidates for the job. But they also understood the value of a powerful resume and job search strategy to capture the attention of decision makers. They partner with key personnel to select the right people for each job.

Some companies have at least one person who gets it. When I worked with a friend of mine who was VP of IT for an international sportswear company, he told me he always asked HR and their internal recruiters to give him the resumes they threw out. Smart man.

He knew they didn’t grasp the differentiating variables making one person ideal for his IT department and another totally inadequate.

Think about it. How can HR be an expert in every part of the company especially with dealing with functions as diverse as sales, IT, finance, and engineering and all the subsets of those areas?

Followup with decision makers

How? Use your computer to find them and then use the phone. Deep research into a company on their own website, using Google, or LinkedIn will help you find those people in charge of the area you are targeting.

If you struggle with finding the right person, the phone comes in handy there too.

• Call the company and ask the receptionist who is in charge of the XYZ department.
• Don’t have them put you through right then.
• Think about how to approach the person and research them online.
• Find out their history.
• LinkedIn will often help you learn their career path and educational background.
• Don’t go into a call blind!

Write a script to let people know your value. What can you say to make them help you in your job search?

Successful sales people know that the phone is their best friend. Coached on how to handle rejection and how to effectively communicate their value, they win new clients, gain market share, and uncover strategic sales opportunities. Take a tip from a sales expert and pick up the phone to followup in your job search.