Perhaps you’ve heard that career adage: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Apparently, knowing people— a well-placed software engineer or tech recruiter, perhaps— will pry open sticky career doors. I’ve found this to be true: most of my software engineering opportunities came from a referral inside the company.

Great. But what if you don’t know anybody?

I’ll start by interrogating the premise: I think you probably know somebody. An acquaintance who works at a company with programmers. A local business owner with a website. A cousin in tech. Think hard! When I do this, I usually discover someone I can lean on.

A brief story

But let’s accept that you don’t know anybody. Here’s a story that might help.

I worked for years at a small tech consultancy that hired very selectively. We had an always-on job posting for software engineers, and got dozens of applications per month. Of those, we called a handful of people per year. It was very hard to get an interview with us.

And yet, over the years, I noticed a pattern. A stranger would come to one of the monthly technology meetups we hosted. They’d get up and give a lightning talk, demo a small project, or drive a technical discussion near the boxes of pizza. They didn’t ask questions about hiring or try to connect on social media. It was just programmers in an office, nerding out on niche technologies.

Or so I thought. Weeks later, we’d often see that person apply for our job posting.

Internally, we’d say: “Hey, is this that person who gave that awesome talk on VimScript?” or “Isn’t this that guy who was really into Go?” After confirming, someone would say: “They were really smart; we should call them.” And then, very often, we would.

Boom. One in-person appearance, a few weeks of marinating, an application, and they went from “not knowing anybody” to among a handful of people we called in a year. I don’t know if these people approached us strategically, or they happened to decide we’d be an interesting place to work after visiting. It doesn’t matter. It worked. My own path into this consultancy followed such a trajectory.

Challenge

So, my challenge to you: how can you make yourself someone that your target company says: “We should call them”?