Harry Wallop

But you can get in touch with people directly in a way that was far more difficult many years ago.

So that is a possible way to get around all this endless screening and testing.

I get contacted quite a lot by people on LinkedIn.

And usually they're polite messages, often by journalism students or what have you.

And they say, can you spare 10 minutes of your time?

OK, I can do that.

That's no skin off my nose.

And most people are nice people.

And most people do.

Most successful people, not by the way, just to be clear, I'm not suggesting I am.

But most successful people actually quite like the idea of helping people on the first rung of their career ladder.

And so I'm always surprised by how reluctant young people are.

Maybe they haven't been brought up in the world where they had to answer the telephone, but to pick up the telephone or even fire off a cold email is always worth a try.

Yes, yes.

And it's quite easy to be not creepy.

I think the simple message saying, I hope you don't mind me contacting you out of the blue, but I've always, you know, I admire your company.

Or if you've done some homework and said, I really enjoyed reading that blog post of yours or I love the product that you've made.

Most people are thrilled, absolutely thrilled that they've got some positive feedback and they will not always.

And, you know, you need a bit of persistence, but a lot of people will respond positively.