The job market this year has been genuinely hard — even for experienced candidates who don't need sponsorship. I want to be honest about that, because I think a lot of career advice skips over it.
What I'll also tell you is that I landed a Fortune 500 Senior Manager role this year, with a salary step up, and the approach I used is repeatable. Here's what happened.
The role came through my network, not an application. I found the posting on LinkedIn, saw it was a strong match, and sent a personalized connect request to the recruiter explaining why. Simultaneously I reached out to several people I knew at the company — including a Toastmasters contact I'd met at an event two years earlier who ended up being the person who referred me. The recruiter responded within a few days. The referral almost certainly helped.
Before the first interview I had already done a lot of research — their website, LinkedIn content, competitive landscape, recent product launches. By the time I met the hiring manager I could reference specific things they'd published and connect them to things I'd worked on. That specificity lands differently than general enthusiasm.
I also proactively reached out to two people on the team through LinkedIn before the interview — a recent MBA hire and someone who'd been there three months. I asked for a brief coffee chat, got it, and showed up to the hiring manager interview having already built a small presence within the team. The hiring manager later mentioned that people on the team had said good things about me. That's not an accident.
The prep doc I put together for the final rounds was about 50 pages. STAR stories, company research, analysis of their marketing presence, recommendations for improvement. Is that excessive? Maybe. But one of the other finalists didn't do anything similar. In a close race, effort is a differentiator.
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