Readers of this blog often ask me questions about job hunting. The software engineer mindset is: if you have to do the same thing more than twice, you should find a way to automate the repetitive steps. So I wrote a whole job-hunting series: the interview process, prep, LinkedIn, resumes, negotiation.

Throughout that series, I kept emphasizing one thing: the best way to find a job is to find a friend at your target company and ask them to refer you.

Why Referrals Work Best

These days, a large tech company receives millions of applications a year. No single application stands much of a chance on its own. The key to standing out among that many applicants is getting a real person to actually look at your resume. If you apply through the company website, an automated system often does the first round of screening. Even if your experience is outstanding, if your resume does not use the keywords the role asks for, you can get filtered out before a human ever sees it.

When a friend refers you internally, many companies assign a real person to review candidates referred by employees. A person reading about your experience may notice the highlights in your background, which greatly increases your chance of getting an interview.

What If You Don’t Know Anyone There?

If you don’t have a friend at the company you want to apply to, you generally have a few options:

  1. Find second-degree connections on LinkedIn: Look at the employees section of the company page and check whether you have any second-degree connections. A mutual friend can introduce you.
  2. Attend local meetups: For example, if you want to apply to Netflix, meet employees at a technical talk hosted by Netflix. If you can impress them with your ability at the event, it feels natural to stay in touch afterward and ask for a referral.
  3. Ask in online communities: On the PTT Oversea_job board, the 1Point3Acres forum, or Blind, look for people who work at your target company and ask if they would be willing to refer you.

Every one of these approaches requires effort on your part. You have to find ways to show that you are a strong candidate, the kind of person others are willing to help.

The Birth of the Referral Mutual-Help Network

When I first came to Silicon Valley in 2015, I did not know many people, but I still received referral help from a few friends, and friends of friends. More than four years later, I know people at most of the major tech companies, and if I had to look for my next job, the help I could get would be far more than four years ago. I also know the entry-level job market is not as strong as it was a few years ago, and sometimes all people need is a foot in the door.

So I found some Taiwanese friends and asked whether they would be willing to help Taiwanese people who need it. Many of them responded warmly: they are happy to help fellow Taiwanese candidates get a fair shot at an interview. This network saves you the legwork of the three approaches above: finding someone inside who is willing to help.

(The network’s Chinese name, 歹晚郎， was inspired by a famous line from Phil Karlton: “There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.” Naming is one of the two hardest problems in computer science. I thought about it for a long time, and this is the name I like best for now.)

Is Everyone Just Doing It for the Referral Bonus?

You might ask: is everyone helping just to earn a referral bonus?

Many Silicon Valley companies pay employees a referral bonus a few months after a referred candidate starts work. But I have to say, the friends I asked are all doing it in a pay-it-forward spirit. Companies like Netflix and Expedia have no referral bonus at all, and friends there are still willing to spend their time helping Taiwanese candidates.

Since joining Facebook, I have referred forty-some friends. For each friend, I spend roughly 15 to 30 minutes communicating, filling out the referral form, and writing a recommendation. After the interview, I still need to follow up with HR and ask about progress. Conservatively, the whole process has taken me more than 25 hours so far. And as of now, not one of my referrals has been hired. Measured in hires, the return on investment is zero. But hires are the wrong scoreboard for a referral: what a referral actually buys is a human review, and often a first conversation. What happens after that is up to the candidate. Another senior Taiwanese colleague has been at the company for over eight years and referred many friends, and so far exactly one has succeeded.

Many of the friends who help, like me, have families and kids, and very little free time. I subscribe to Netflix, but between work, taking care of the kids, and not sleeping enough, I have not opened it in months. For me, referring people was never about the bonus. If one ever came through, great, but the hours I put in would never be worth it on those terms. I just hope Taiwanese candidates get a few more chances, at least to be considered in a first-round interview.

The Network’s Rules: Not Everyone Gets Referred

So, will this referral mutual-help network definitely refer me? Well, no. That needs to be stated clearly up front.

It is the same as networking events or asking for a LinkedIn intro: the other person has to understand your background, and they have to actually want to help you. This network also asks some effort from you: be polite, provide a thorough summary of your own experience, and provide all the materials needed for a referral. After the friends who help review what you provide, they decide case by case whether to spend the time referring you. Sometimes they see that your resume lacks experience, or that you did not provide the materials they specified, or that the same role already has many referrals; to keep referral quality up, they will decline your request. Nobody wants to get blacklisted by HR for referring too many unsuitable candidates.

Do companies allow this? Basically, yes. The referral system asks detailed questions about how you know the candidate and how well. The effect varies, but it is still more effective than mass-applying online. And since everyone evaluates your background and materials before deciding whether to refer you, nobody is referring blindly just because someone asked.

Postscript

When this post was published, friends at 69 companies were willing to help through the network. Years have passed, and it has grown into today’s ReferHero 歹晚郎內推互助網絡, with more than 400 members. The original intent has never changed: to give talented people the chance to be seen by a real person.

This post was originally published on my former blog, 「半路出家軟體工程師在矽谷」 (March 15, 2019; the site is now offline, and the full text is preserved via the Wayback Machine). It was lightly edited when it moved to this site, and the postscript was added.