From 0 to 1 Percent by Mark Stone

April 2024. My career has been back and forth between individual contributor and people manager. As a manager, I have hired, or overseen the hiring, of roughly 50 people. As an individual, in the last 20 years I have changed employment by changing companies nine times.

I pick the 20 year time horizon because LinkedIn is just over 20 years old. And prior to 20 years ago, I had never encountered anyone with the job title of Recruiter. During that 20 years, I've reviewed hundreds of resumes as a manager, but recruiters working with me have reviewed many times that. As an individual seeking employment, those nine job changes represent hundreds of resumes sent out, and dozens of interactions with friends, colleagues, and recruiters. Almost all of this activity originated with LinkedIn.

As a manager, looking for qualified candidates is incredibly frustrating. Too many applicants, and not enough of the right applicants. I remember some years ago volunteering to help out an overwhelmed recruiter working with me, and reviewing some of the applications off of the unfiltered pile. We were looking for a Senior Technical Program Manager, based in either NYC or San Francisco. The first resume I pulled off the pile was from a pipe fitter in Singapore. We have made it too easy to apply for jobs.

As an individual seeking employment, finding the right job is equally frustrating. You engage in a lot of activity, but get very little feedback from that activity. Nothing is more baffling than sending in an application without a referral, and where you don't know anyone at the company. If your odds are 0%, then you should stop doing this; you're wasting your time. If your odds are 1%, then you should keep doing this and eventually success will come your way. How do you distinguish 0 from 1?

Of those 9 jobs, and the other dozen or so places besides where I at least made it to an interview with a hiring manager, I'd say about 1/3 of the time I knew someone at the company, or got a referral from someone who knew someone at the company. But only 1/3 of the time.

The other 2/3 of the time, a recruiter reached out to me on the basis of my LinkedIn profile. Mind you, my LinkedIn profile is unspectacular. It is thorough, and honest, but nothing more.

While I've gotten good jobs both ways, these recruiter-initiated contacts for companies where I knew no one have been some of the best moves of my career.

What has never worked for me? Applying for a job where I don't know anyone, and no one has reached out to me. After 20 years I can only conclude that my odds of success at this kind of activity are 0%. I'm sure I'm not alone. That initial, largely automated filter, into which my application has gone (often referencing that same LinkedIn profile that sparks recruiter interest) has been an enormous void that has yielded nothing. So, odds of success? 0%

My advice to anyone on the job market: stop spending time on activities with 0% chance of success.

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