How to Prospect for a Job

Job prospecting is not just for people lying on their on resume, but if you are concerned about an upcoming employment verification check, you have options.

If you have been out of work for awhile, consider these options for concealing a job gap.

Prospecting is the Way in this Economy

As you’re already aware, most jobs that are filled, are not filled using job ads. And we know how many job ads are actually not even real jobs. So how do these get filled? According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report (2023), 80% of job openings are filled through personal and professional networks rather than public postings. This significant reliance on networking means many jobs are never advertised. 

Although it is easier to apply for a position online using LinkedIn or Careerbuilder, it is actually more difficult to get a job from the site.  These days, companies are getting flooded with resumes, and your application is adding a needle to the haystack. Recruiters are reporting that their biggest issue is finding good candidates in the sea of applications. Your prospecting helps them do their job. 

To read an example of how I used prospecting to secure a job, read about my personal cold-calling example.

Prospecting for Jobs is Networking

We are proposing calling or emailing the hiring manager, and asking for ways that you can help. If this sounds scary, it shouldn’t be. This is just networking – you are connecting with executives and asking them if there is a way for you to help them out. If you do this politely and professionally, most senior managers will appreciate your outreach, because you are doing them them the favor. This works especially well if you have a unique story to tell – either a valuable skill set, experience that directly relates to the company or executive, or some other compelling story that relates to the manager. If you need help developing your story, read this article about Storytelling on your Resume.  

The other thing to consider, if you call someone, is that you are probably the only person to ever do this. That’s a good thing! It shows you as being proactive, and most importantly, it means that no matter how badly you sound on the phone, you’ll still be the first person to do this! So don’t feel nervous – the bar for this activity is very, very low! 

We will walk you through exactly how to do this. 

Prepare a List

To start, you need to build a list of all companies you might want to work for. Use only your basic criteria from preparation for this step – list companies in the field, industry, size, and geographic location you are interested in. Do not start whittling down the list yet, that will come next. For now, size matters. You want as large a list as possible.

How does one get this list? There are several resources available, mostly for free. First, start looking for local and business-oriented publications – even in 2024 these still exist. If you are new to this, the local library often has resources that will help you develop lists of companies – ask the librarian if you are new to this. They sometimes subscribe to list providers that will help you build a list of local companies by SIC code.

Alternatively, Google local searches and LinkedIn Company searches are your friends. Additionally, we’ve used services such as Hoovers and Crunchbase. They cost money, but you can usually get a trial.

If you need a list of companies, we might be able to help, send us a message using the Contact Us page. 

Don’t forget to ask colleagues and persons in your network. Just ask for names of companies in the area, not just companies that are hiring. Remember, at this point all you want are names to add to the list.

There are other resources for free that you can use: 

• https://www.g2.com/
• Asking ChatGPT to produce a list for you

Some resources that will cost money, but you can usually get a free trial account: 

• crunchbase.com
• Linkedin Sales Navigator
• Apollo.io
• Zoominfo
• Seamless.ai
• Hoovers

We know this takes time and effort. Think of the time spent building your lists as time you would otherwise be sending countless resumes into the ether… Your time spent here preparing a list, will yield you more job offers in less time than more ‘conventional’ methods of job hunting.

Qualifying and Pruning your Target Companies

Once you have 25 – 50 target companies on your list, you can start to qualify. Visit the company’s website, and take a quick glance at the business they are in. Often, people will start reading their annual report, review the credentials for the Management officers, etc. We do not suggest this, it just doesn’t help you identify companies that are hiring. That information will come in handy once you secure an interview. 

We are only sifting out the companies that you are absolutely not interested in contacting. For example, if you are looking for an IT job, and you see that the company does most of its development work out of India, then it is probably a good idea to discard the name.

As a rule of thumb, you should spend no more than 2-3 minutes per company deciding whether its worth a contact. Figure out the few criteria that are most important for you or your target role, and screen for that. Anything longer, and you are probably losing precious time that could be spent performing more effective job hunting activities.

Getting Contact Info for Managers

Next, we’ll need to build a list of hiring managers and decision-makers that you want to contact, and their contact info. 

Identifying the Decision-Makers

To be clear, we are contacting the decision-makers, not human resources. Do Not Cold-Call HR, it’s a waste of time, except of course if you are looking to work as a recruiter. 

First, to find decision-makers, there are a couple of resources – depending on the size of the organization and the seniority that you are targeting. 

For Senior Executives: 

The most reliable method is to check the website under “Management” or “Team”. Sometimes your contact’s name will already be listed there. This will only give you the senior most executives at the organization. If it’s a small company, that’s probably who you want to  
If not there, look around the “About us” area of a website; the list of managers may be there as well.

For lower-level hiring managers: 

Try running Google searches for your managers. You can also try LinkedIn. However, to do this effectively, you will probably need to subscribe to a service. There are a number of these services on the web, many of which provide you a trial, including:

• Apollo.io
• Zoominfo (very expensive)
• Seamless.ai

Probably the easiest to use for most job seekers is going to be Linkedin Sales Navigator. You can sign-up for a trial through your LinkedIn profile. Sales Navigator allows you to search for companies, leads, etc. – but most importantly you can do keyword searches that are relevant to projects or activities that you would be interested in searching for. 

Contact Information

There are a few methods here, but the fastest and most efficient way to get the email and direct phone number for executives is using an online list provider – 

• Apollo.io
• Zoominfo (very expensive)
• Seamless.ai

These aren’t cheap (typically $200 or so per month) but it’s an investment into your career, if you can afford it.

Alternatively, if needed, contact us if you have any questions on finding contact info for managers, as we have resources used internally as well. 

Contact Hiring Manager

Now is the most exciting, and for some the scariest, step for most job hunters. Even professional salespeople hate reaching out to contacts, but just embrace this as a challenge. Remember the problem with using online job sites – it is easy, so everyone goes there, and you will compete against hundreds for the same job. The opposite is true here. Contacting the hiring manager is easy if you follow my method, but for someone who has never done this before, it can be terrifying. Believe me, I understand. When I first began sales I hated calling people as well. It is normal to become nervous when stepping outside your comfort zone and calling a stranger on the phone, to talk about a position.

Before skipping this section, and never calling a manager, remember this – if it is difficult for you, it is just as difficult for everyone else. The only difference is that you are the type of person improving yourself and that you are willing to push yourself a little harder to get a better compensation than your peers. Demonstrate that to your future hiring manager. 

The fact that this is difficult and scary is the very reason why this technique works – it is effective because no one else wants to do it! You will have no competition who was assertive enough to call up the hiring manager and ask what their hiring plans were.

When you get the hiring manager on the phone, he or she will be so impressed when you call that they will overlook any mistakes you may make. You can call up and act nervous, stutter, slur your words together, etc., and you still will appear better than all the other candidates who refused to make the call.

Recomendened read: If yoou feel interview anxiety read our blog, Stop Being Nervous

What to Say

Before you make calls, be sure to write down a call script, and practice it. The key to cold-calling a direct hiring manager is to keep it short, straight to the point, and succinct. You’ve probably heard salespeople talk about “building rapport” – DO NOT BUILD RAPPORT. I don’t even recommend asking how someone’s day is, because they know you don’t care. In order to make a hiring manager want to talk to you, you need them to understand that you are not wasting their time, you are not asking questions that you don’t care about (they know you don’t care about their day and they don’t want to tell you about it). 

The only reason you are calling them is about a specific project or role, and you want to know if they are hiring. 

Here is a sample script that was used recently to find Data Science role: 

I will break down why this script works, and how to customize it in another post. If needed, we can work with you, and help build a script and plan for reaching out to other hiring managers. 

Note, the more specific you can get in this script, the better. You want to think of what kind of niche service you provide, the more nuanced and specific you can get, the more interesting to the prospect. 

Reaching Out

You’ll want to use a combination of LinkedIn requests, phone calls, and emails. Often, an executive will ignore one of these, but if you coordinate your outreach using all three methods, they will warm up and will almost always give you a few minutes to talk, once you get them on the phone. In other words, you should expect to be ignored via email or LinkedIn, but understand that the purpose of those is to warm up the call for when you get them on the phone. 

We recommend the following sequence of outreach: 

Day 0: Send a LinkedIn note or request, explaining what you are looking for
Day 2: Send an email to the manager’s work email
Day 3: Make an initial phone call to the manager, either to work or personal phone. Leave a voicemail if no contact
Day 6: Send a follow-up email to the Prospect
Day 7: Make a follow-up call to the manager, leaving a voicemail if no response. 

After Day 7, we recommend calling the executive every 3-5 days (no voicemail is needed) for the next few weeks. They will remember you.

Understand that most executives you will never hear from, but don’t let that discourage you! This is a numbers game. If you contact 20-25 managers a day, you should end up with 5-7 conversations a week, and those will be well worth the time you’ve spent calling managers that never pick up. All you need is one hiring manager to say yes to providing you a job!