One aspect of my conversation with Brandon Busteed on the Keynote podcast this week that’s had me thinking is actually a thought that brings me back to working on a college campus and leading career services. It’s the idea that before we can help students or recent grads secure internships, jobs, or just other types of experiential learning opportunities, the need to understand how people make hiring decisions comes first. There’s a crucial narrative that colleges and universities must teach and bring to life.
I call this narrative the “Hiring Manager’s Story.”
Here’s how I used to tell the Hiring Manager’s Story to both students and alumni as a way to explain network-building. I try to use the word “hiring” as much as possible, and tell the story of how referrals are the key to securing opportunities.
I used to say...
Have you ever heard the old phrase, “It’s all about who you know?”
(Student or grad nods head)
Well, that’s not quite saying it right. The correct adage should be, “It’s all about who knows you.” And here’s why…
When hiring managers look to fill a position they’re doing so on top of all their other work. Hiring a new team member is not something that’s done every day, so this means extra work for the person making the hiring decision. It takes actual hard work to hire someone. They have to do a lot of paperwork, coordinate the schedules of busy people first for phone interviews than in-person interviews. The hiring process is a lot of work over the course of sometimes several months for the people doing the hiring.
Therefore, when people look to hire a new team member, they’re trying to make a trusted decision as quickly as possible. They want to make the right choice.
When a hiring manager wants to fill an open position and recruit a new team member, they look for referrals, first internally, then externally. Someone trying to hire will reach out to their colleagues and say, “Who do you know that might be a good fit for this job?” They’re hoping to receive suggestions for who might be a great person to hire. First, they reach out to colleagues, then hiring managers ask for referrals in social networks like LinkedIn or X.
They say, “Help me hire someone good!”
What hiring managers are trying to do is create a “shortlist” — a small group of final candidates to make the work of hiring easier: scheduling interviews, travel, etc. ” Remember, this is on top of all their other work. And they want to feel like the person they’re hiring will be a good fit.
So, for almost every job, there’s a short stack and a big stack. You want to be in the short stack. (I like the visual of a big pile of applications vs. tiny.)
The big stack is every one that just applies on the website.
The short stack is made up of people that formally applied to the job on the website, but they’re also candidates that received a referral for the position. As high a percentage as 70-80% of jobs are obtained this way, through a referral. That’s because hiring is hard work! When hiring managers ask colleagues for referrals to build their short stack, it’s because they hope to pick from this group. They want to make the best decision possible as quickly as they can.
When we say, “It’s all about who knows you,” we’re talking about referrals.
Back when I used to work on a college campus, I would tell the Hiring Manager’s Story to students as often as I could. Alumni are the solution to this short stack vs. big stack problem students face in landing a great job or internship. For students and alumni, a strong network will hopefully generate future referrals. The strength of our university networks is about the health and vibrancy of our referral systems.
Colleges and universities must teach students how, where, and when to introduce themselves to alumni that understand and share career aspirations, and not rely on the university connection alone. This is step one before any actual opportunity can be secured.
A university network must produce referrals for it to have value. The hope is that as we build and activate volunteers, donors, and nurture our relationships with alumni, our referral system matures and strengthens too.
If your school is one of those that is working to differentiate in this area, it’s actually the Hiring Manager’s Story that must be tackled first and most often.
About Speaking Engagement
This week was a vacation week for me. I spent time with family in Hilton Head, South Carolina at my Dad’s place. It was great to take a little more down time. I was texting back and forth with Annie Quade (friend and also SE Contributing Editor) this week and lamenting that it’s tough to stay proactive producing and publishing content AND also be on vacation.
Annie told, me that I should, “Cut myself some slack.”
Noted.
That said, this IS the “conference on engagement that never sleeps.”
During vacation this week, I was able to line up two more Keynote guests, our next Book Club read and the author’s involvement, our next Agora speaker and date, and secure two more university partnerships. They all came together this week.
The good news is that I’m really enjoying this work! I also enjoyed some downtime this week, too.
About the next Keynote
Coming up on Monday’s Keynote is special guest Omar Garriott. Omar is the Executive Director of the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Technology at the UVA Darden School of Business.
I first met Omar back during my tenure at the UVA when he worked at LinkedIn. Omar has a tremendous set of professional experiences and is was great to catch up in order to discuss the changing nature of college.
I highly recommend readers subscribe to Omar’s newsletter on Substack called Deepfake It Till You Make It.
