Referring People who Reach out on LinkedIn
I occasionally have people reach out to me on LinkedIn asking me to refer them to my company. I want to be a nice guy, but I also don't want to refer people who are probably no better than the average person cold applying.
How should I think about helping these people without sacrificing too much of my own time? E.g. I can ask to see their resume and go through it to see that they're basically qualified. In my mind, the more qualified they are, the more reason I have to refer them, although the less likely they need my referral.
Am I thinking about this the right way?
Thanks!
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Discussion
(3 comments)- 3
8 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroI have had hundreds of people reach out to me fishing for referrals into Meta/Robinhood. I just ignore them as the people who are desperately reaching out for cold referrals are not very good engineers 99% of the time.
The thing for you to consider is the referral bonus. If your company gives a generous referral bonus, it could be worth it to spend 30-60 seconds parsing each person's profile and referring the good ones. But chances are that cold LinkedIn messages aren't coming from high-quality people.
Up to you on whether you want to take the risky time investment. It's like panning for gold.
- 1
8 months agoData Engineer [OP]Financial CompanyIn my case, my company provide no referral bonus, so it should be an easy slam dunk no.
As a follow-up, when the shoe is on the other foot and I'm the one reaching out to people for a referral, how do I stand out and not come across like just some random guy who's not worth their time? I imagine having some distinguishing feature or trying to provide something of value plays an important part.
- 27 months agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
Sometimes the referral system will give you an out, e.g. Facebook had this. You can refer them, but in the details say that "I have no knowledge of their work."
So you've technically referred them, but you haven't loaned out your reputation.
