Strategy #28: Connect With Hiring Decision Makers

Your aim during the second stage of the Vocation Master-style, proactive job-search strategy is to obtain a direct and personal introduction to the hiring decision maker. The perfect scenario is for this to be done by way of a known intermediary, usually someone in a position of influence who’s already employed by the company you want to join, and preferably by a person who works alongside the decision maker you’ll make your eventual pitch to.

In today’s strategy I’ll be introducing the way you engineer this introduction, if everything goes the way you’d want. I’ll also outline a fall-back procedure if there’s a problem that crops up during the introduction phase of your job search. This is when you decide to make a self-referral to the person with the authority to employ you, whether that’s from choice or by necessity.       

The major challenge of the introductions stage of the transformational job search is to manoeuvre yourself into a position where you earn the trust of at least one influential insider who has the ability and willingness to personally introduce you to the eventual decision maker. It might sound simple when I put it like this but things need to go according to plan for this to occur seamlessly. Things can also go wrong, so you need a secondary option which you can put into effect if necessary. I’ll begin by outlining a best-case scenario before describing the essence of a worst-case one.  

There are so many variables involved with requesting and receiving introductions to named contacts, especially when you have to rise up the chain of command of an organisation, that I can only give a schematic of what should happen here. The devil is in the detail, as the saying goes, which is why this stage of your job search is the most difficult one for me to give specific guidance on. It’s one of the principal reasons that I provide a dedicated support programme, in group and individual formats, in order to address real-life situations rather than hypothetical ones.     

That said, the basic rules of engagement are these. You first identify an entry point to an organisation via a third party. The mechanics of doing this is what I introduced in article #26 of this series, and which I cover in much more detail in my Job Search Masterclass of course. Once inside this potential employer, you use previously-uncovered knowledge of a pressing business problem to engage your internal contact in a discussion of the nature and implication of this challenge. I covered business-problem discovery in articles #21 through #24 if you need a refresher on this. 

This is only the start and, from here on, you must be flexible in responding to whatever you hear from your new contact. At the very least, and certainly if you’ve done your homework properly, you’ll have at least one viable and well-informed solution to offer. It’s entirely possible that you’ll need to use the first inside contact as an information source to help you do deeper or more specific research. In any case, this problem, and your appropriate solution, will become the leverage you need to persuade your fresh contact to lead you further up the hierarchy of the company, eventually to the hiring decision maker.

Building contacts is all about hopping from one stone to another, guided by people who give you more and more data which informs the direction you next go. Sometimes you’ll make fast progress, maybe even directly to the decision maker in hardly any time at all. At other times, it’ll take a while to get to where you want to be. You might even become dismayed about the information you hear, and this might make you take stock or even abandon a particular target employer.

 When you’re jumping from contact to contact, it’s important that you only give enough away to entice whoever you’re speaking with to become intrigued about what you propose. They also need to be motivated enough to pass you on to the next person up the chain, towards whoever’s responsible for your area of expertise. There are many possible words and actions you could deploy, each depending on what you next discover, how your contacts respond to you and where your judgement tells you to proceed.    

Crucially, you mustn’t get drawn into talking about wanting a job. You should keep your discussions focused on solving a business problem, not the possibility of getting hired. Any mention of a work contract absolutely must wait until the right moment, and that time is at the conclusion of your final pitch, which I’ll talk about in future strategy articles.

In my face-to-face training seminars, personal coaching programmes and online video courses I go into the stages of introductions and final pitches in some detail, so consider this an extremely brief introduction alone.

But what if your requests for onward introductions are rejected, either in a round-about way or in no uncertain terms? In this case, if you’re undeterred, you should take matters into your own hands and make a self-referral. This is unquestionably next best to a third-party referral but sometimes it’s the only way if a contact baulks at making an onward introduction.

Depending on the situation, you might prefer to remain in control rather than leaving it up to another person to act on your behalf, even if a personal introduction is on offer. After all, you can’t be sure what they’ll say, what the next contact will reveal or when the referral will take place. If you have to instigate the referral yourself, you can choose when it happens and you can judge its value by the direct response you get.

Here’s the outline of an opening gambit towards a final decision maker whose identity you’ve revealed, and you’re certain is the person you need to get in front of.

You call them up and say you work in logistics, or whatever your sphere of activity is. You tell them that as part of your ongoing professional development you’ve been keeping an eye on the decision maker’s company. An issue with logistics planning has come to your attention. You’ve been speaking with John Jones, or whomever your last named contact is, who confirms that this is causing a few headaches for them. Can you arrange a meeting to offer a few ideas and see where this might go?

There are variants on this approach but, once again, they’re all straight and to the point. You want to get a yes but you can live with a no. So long as you don’t get a maybe, you’re in a position to proceed or withdraw. In which latter case, you just move on to the next target company.

At some point, either sooner or later, and it’s usually sooner in my experience, you’ll get an offer to introduce you to the person who has the power to hire you. It might be via a few more contacts but if you’re bold and get to the point, then summarise the problem you’ve identified and which you feel you can solve, you’ll eventually get to whomever the main person is. Again, it’s easy to say this but I can assure you that getting such introductions is much easier than might appear at first glance.

Depending on the quality of your research, and the seriousness of the problem you’ve uncovered, this person ought to be intrigued enough to put aside thirty minutes to meet with you. An hour is better still, and this substantial amount of time will need solid justification on your part. This is where the quality of your research pays off as you aim to outline the business problem you know you can solve by doing the job, right there in front of the person who has the power to hire you.

So long as you’ve prepared well, and you’ve adopted a firm stance on getting further information and some good introductions under your belt, you’ll inevitably arrive at the top person, I can assure you. If the top person has any sense, they’ll want to know how and why your proposal will help them be more successful in their role as the boss.

If you need any convincing about this, just think about your reaction to this premise. Someone offers to bring a pressing business problem to your attention, and to present a viable solution as part of the deal. Would you want to hear them out or not? And if so, what happens next? That’s what the rest of this strategy series addresses.

Neil Grant, Vocation Master, London, September 2022

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions about the issues I raise here, I invite you to contact me personally. Please get in touch via LinkedIn;

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