My friend Beaton smelt a rat when an ex-colleague texted him out of the blue to ask how his trip to China had been. That trip was the last thing the two of them had ever talked about, two years back, so she was reaching all the way to the final thread they shared, and nobody revives a conversation that cold without a reason. Sure enough, after two short messages of small talk, she asked the real question. “I saw your firm is hiring for this role. Could you refer me?”
A similar thing happened to another friend, Charlene. A young man messaged her asking, “Can I buy you a coffee and pick your brain about getting into cybersecurity?” Charlene, being kind, made her way to a cafe near his office to save him the trip, and when they reached the counter she ordered. She waited for him to reach for his wallet, since he was the one who had asked to meet, but he never moved. He stood there and let her pay for both coffees. Later in the conversation he asked, “does your firm have any openings?” He wanted out of a company that he felt gave him no work-life balance.
Both of them helped in the end, because they are kind and they know how much a job can mean to someone who needs one. But both came away feeling quietly used. Charlene felt it most, because the friendly opening had let her believe a real friendship was forming, so she gave the kind of effort you save for a friend, the trip across town and a generous hour of advice, before she worked out the young man had been after a job the whole time. Beaton saw his coming, so he never dropped his guard. Still, it stung to know that he was only interesting because of his access, not because of him as a person.
What is the “right” way to ask for a job referral
All of this raises the question everyone seems to argue about, the right way to ask for a referral. I watched a version of that argument on LinkedIn recently, where a man who had screenshotted a cold request that he received. He argued that job seekers should open with some warmth and let the person know you a little before you ask, but a camp of readers pushed back to say they would rather you skip the niceties and ask straight, so nobody has to sit through the performance. Both sides have a point.
Do not make a referral your first request
But however you word it, reaching out to someone only when you need something, asking for the favour the first time you ever really speak, stays a transaction, and a transaction is a problem for you, the job seeker, because it buys you the thinnest help there is. A stranger might fill in the referral form and wish you luck, but they won’t spend real effort on someone they barely know.
Give the other person enough information to judge you
Look at what a warm relationship does instead. My friend Nat was hi-bye friends with a woman from another company on her floor. They shared a pantry, and over months of small talk they built up a casual sort of friendship. One day Nat mentioned she was thinking of applying for a posting at the woman’s company. The woman looked at it and told her honestly that the role was wrong for her, but that another one suited her better. That second role had been meant for an internal candidate only, yet the woman still put Nat’s name to the hiring manager and said she was worth a look. The hiring manager agreed to interview her, and Nat got the job. No cold request would have done that, because the woman spent her own credibility to open a door for Nat, the kind of thing people only do for a friend.
That is the real prize, someone who will open a door for you, and it is worth far more than the referral you were going to chase. You cannot summon a person like that when you suddenly need them, so build it now the way you would save for a rainy day.
But if you are scrambling at the last minute
Nevertheless, if you find yourself clutching at Buddha’s feet at the last minute, the way we all do when we’ve left things too late, here are two things to try.
1. Ask for something small before asking them to put their name behind you
First, if you have to reach out to someone who barely knows you, ask for something small instead of the big favour of a job referral. An acquaintance once asked me to glance over a pitch deck she was putting together, so I sent back a few comments, no big deal. But something shifted after that, because once I understood she was building a consultancy to help family offices invest in emerging tech, I tried to find people to introduce her to, all without her asking.
That is the Ben Franklin effect, the odd little truth that doing someone a favour makes you like them more, which is the opposite of what you would expect, because some part of your head decides that if you went to the trouble of helping them, they must be worth it. It is also why a small ask can beat going straight for the big favour. The only rule is that you have to actually want the help you are asking for, because the moment someone smells that your small ask was just bait for the bigger one, you are right back in “transactional territory”, which is what this whole post is cautioning you against.
2. Get a friend to ask for you
The stronger move, if you can manage it, is to have someone ask for you. When GXS let go of 10% of its staff earlier this year, within a day of the announcement two of my friends had messaged me to ask whether I knew of any openings for someone they knew who had been cut. I have never met those laid-off people, yet I found myself assuming they must be solid, because a friend was willing to put their own name on the line for them. Being spoken for like that makes you look solid before you have said a word, which does far more for you than the same message would if it came from you.
Make the referral easy to give when the time comes
There is no good quick fix here, so build these relationships long before you need them. Start on an ordinary day when nothing is wrong, by keeping up with a few people you are not trying to get anything from and being useful to them for no reason beyond it being a kind thing to do.
Do that for long enough and you will rarely have to send one of these coffee chat messages again, because the day you need a door, someone you were good to a year ago will already be activating their prayer chains and opening doors for you.
Are you preparing for a job interview?
Have you ever walked out of an interview thinking, “I should have said that instead”?
The hardest parts of an interview is about telling your stories clearly. Instead of silently rehearsing answers in my head, I say them out loud and record them with Typeless. I feed the answers into ChatGPT and ask them to reorganise my thoughts, so I can tell my stories without rambling.
If you’ve got interviews coming up, try it. It made all the difference for me.
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