Benjamin Todd

How to get leads.

Don't just cold email your CV, use connections.

Many large organisations have a standardised application process, such as the UK Civil Service and Teach for America.

They want to keep the process fair, so there isn't much wiggle room.

These cases just apply.

But what do you do in all the other cases?

The most obvious approach is to send your CV to lots of companies and apply to the postings on job boards.

This is often the first thing career advisors mention.

We would recommend doing this sometimes and have our own job board.

But the problem is that sending out your CV and responding to lots of internet job ads has a low success rate.

Richard Bowles, the author of What Colour Is Your Parachute, the best-selling career advice book of all time, estimates that the chances of landing a job from cold emailing your resume to a company is around 1 in 1,000.

This means that unless your application is much stronger than average, you need to send out 100 resumes just to have a 10% chance of landing a job.

We'd guess responding to a job listing on a job board has about a 1% chance of success.

Moreover, the positions on job boards need to be standardized and are mainly at large companies, so they don't include many of the best positions.

The best opportunities are less competitive because they are hidden away, often at small but rapidly growing companies, and personalized to you.

You need a different way to find them.

Consider the employer's point of view.

Employers prefer to hire people they already know, or failing that, to hire through referrals, an introduction from someone they know.

Which would you prefer?

A recommendation from someone you trust, or 20 CVs from people who saw your job listing on Indeed.com?