How to Go Past the Gatekeepers and Get Hired, with Linda Marak

Some hiring managers report upwards of thousands of applicants for each open position. Find Your Dream Job guest Linda Marak helps her clients bypass the competitors (and the ATS) to get their resumes seen. Linda encourages job seekers to make a list of target companies and then use LinkedIn to find current or former employees to find out more information about the company’s hiring policies and any introductions they can make. Linda says finding a job is not a numbers game; stop wasting time filling out applications for 8 hours a day and learn how to connect with real human beings who can help you.

About Our Guest:

Linda Marak is a recruiter and career coach.

Resources in This Episode:

• Whether you need personal coaching or a class to help you take the next step in your career, Linda can help. Learn more at her website by visiting www.candidatewhisperer.com/.
• Connect with Linda on LinkedIn. 

Transcript

Find Your Dream Job, Episode 462:

How to Go Past the Gatekeepers and Get Hired, with Linda Marak

Airdate: August 7, 2024

Mac Prichard:

This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired, have the career you want, and make a difference in life.

I’m your host, Mac Prichard. I’m also the founder of Mac’s List. It’s a job board in the Pacific Northwest that helps you find a fulfilling career.

Every Wednesday, I talk to a different expert about the tools you need to get the work you want.

You likely won’t meet a hiring manager until you interview for the job.

And before you get to the interview room, you have to compete with other applicants.

But there is a way to bypass your competitors altogether.

Linda Marak is here to talk about how to go past the gatekeepers and get hired.

She’s a recruiter and a career coach.

Through online classes and coaching, Linda shares with job seekers her insider knowledge of how hiring works.

She joins us from Bothell, Washington.

Well, Linda, let’s jump right into it. We’re talking about why you need to go past gatekeepers in a job search. Who are the gatekeepers, exactly?

Linda Marak:

The gatekeepers are anyone who is, basically, not involved in the hiring process. The person who is going to be making the decision is usually the hiring manager, the manager of the team, or somebody who would be your direct manager or supervisor.

There’s a lot of voices that are included in that: team members, other departments that might be interacting with someone, but the people who are receiving resumes or trying to filter things out. There are hundreds of resumes that companies get for each job if not thousands, and the hiring manager does not have time to go through all of those, and so they typically rely on an applicant tracking system or an ATS to sort those resumes.

That is a computer, and it’s just going to be based on keywords. They’re getting more intuitive, so they’re a little bit better at discerning job gaps or companies that you’ve worked for or titles that you’ve held, but it’s still just a computer, and so you’re going to get ranked, and if you’re not in the 5 or 10%, you’re not even going to get seen by a hiring manager.

The ways to get around that are talking to a person, talking to somebody who might be directly involved in the hiring process, the hiring manager themselves, someone at the company who can personally vouch for you.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s talk more about that in a moment. With these gatekeepers, Linda, so there’s an applicant tracking system, the common acronym is ATS, and there are people who are staffing those systems, that stand between you and the decision maker. If you go around the tracking systems and the people who support them, is that going to jeopardize your candidacy? Are you just going to be rejected out of hand?

Linda Marak:

If you do this in a polite and professional manner, it should not interfere with you being hired. Everyone is happy when the hiring manager is happy with their hire, and so the recruiters, the HR personnel, they typically have many other jobs they’re looking to fill, and if they can find a person, then fantastic, wonderful; that’s one less thing on their plate.

Mac Prichard:

You want to go around the systems and the people who staff them, you want to get in front of hiring managers. Tell me more about that. Who exactly are you trying to connect with when you say a decision-maker? Who is this person?

Linda Marak:

The decision-maker is typically the hiring manager or someone who has influence in that decision. If you interact with someone who is perhaps on the team that you’re looking to be hired into, and that person feels that you would be a good addition to the team, then that person can be your advocate from the inside.

That person can also give you inside information about what they’re looking for, information that’s not typically shared with candidates, but if you can form some sort of alliance on the inside, then that’s going to give you information that’s going to help you during the interview process.

Any information that you can gather, any human connection that you can make, that’s definitely going to be to your advantage.

Mac Prichard:

How do you find these people, Linda? How can you be sure that you’re reaching out to the right people? Whether it’s the decision maker or other contacts or people inside the organization.

Linda Marak:

Well, it’s a little bit of a research game. I am a tremendous advocate for the LinkedIn platform. LinkedIn is the premier professional networking site, and I find that people do keep their information somewhat up to date on LinkedIn, and so you can go into the company’s page and go to the search form and look for people who do what you do or do what you’re wanting to do and look inside that company and either find people that are there or who used to be there.

Those people are going to have very valuable knowledge, and so if you can connect with them in a professional way, be mindful of their time, then you’re going to increase your chances of potentially getting someone to be able to give you that information, give you that research that you’re looking for.

Mac Prichard:

I can think of two likely scenarios the listener might be considering right now. One is the person has spotted a job on the company website or job board, and they want to apply for that specific position. Another is a company or other organization might be a target employer.

Walk us through, Linda, what you do if you see a job, you want to apply, and you want to get past the gatekeepers. How do you find the hiring manager for that particular position? And then let’s talk about the other scenario afterward.

Linda Marak:

Okay, so depending on the size of the company, it could be quite difficult. If you’re looking to get hired into a company like Amazon or Google, then you’re dealing with a company structure of hundreds of thousands of people, and so it’s going to be a little bit more difficult to narrow that down, but if you interact with people, so one of the ways that you can do that is that they’re going to give you a job title.

You go to that company on LinkedIn, and you look for that job title, and you’re going to find people who do that work and someone who’s done that work for a significant number of years possibly has been promoted or possibly has influenced the likelihood of them doing that job well and being a respected voice in the company, is going to be stronger. Connecting with those people on LinkedIn is a fantastic way to do that.

You can also see if you know somebody, if you’re already connected to somebody that knows that person. These are different ways that you can politely reach out, and I keep using the word politely because remembering that people are very busy, and it’s very difficult to get someone’s attention for them to give you that information that you’re seeking.

The more that you can reach out, the more contacts that you can have, the better the chance that you can find someone who will take 5 minutes of their time to review your resume or to give you that bit of inside information about what a successful candidate would look like or be able to say or be able to offer, and at the end of the day, hiring is a human process, so being able to get past the computers is the goal.

Mac Prichard:

You go on LinkedIn, you find people who have done the positions that you want, that you’ve seen advertised at this organization, you reach out to them and ask for time, either, perhaps, a Zoom call or you communicate through email or LinkedIn messaging, and you’re asking for insights about the work and the company. What do you do with that information, Linda?

Linda Marak:

Well, there’s one trick that I give the people that I work with, is reaching out with a short, professional message; most people are open to networking professionally with someone on LinkedIn; they typically will accept your request, and then if there’s an open job for a position, asking that person, knowing that most companies do have a referral bonus for employees if they refer somebody in to get the job, saying something along the lines of, “Hi, I saw that there’s an open role and I would love to be able to utilize you as a referral and hope that you get the referral bonus.”

Then that actually gives a little bit of a financial incentive, and that person might be able to…you only get the hiring bonus if that person gets hired, and so “I’d love to know what you think of my resume. What can I include that would give me a better chance? Do you know the hiring team?”

That sort of thing, because that gives that person a financial incentive, and you’re still being polite. You’re still being professional. You don’t want to overstep, you don’t want to be bombarding someone with messages, but it just gives that little bit of an extra edge.

Mac Prichard:

Let’s pause there and take a break. When we come back, I want to talk more about how you get in front of the decision-maker herself or himself, who’s actually going to be looking at resumes for the position that you want to apply for.

Stay with us. When we return, Linda Marak will continue to share her advice on how to go past the gatekeepers and get hired.

We’re back in the Mac’s List studio. I’m talking with Linda Marak.

She’s a recruiter and a career coach.

Through online classes and coaching, Linda shares with job seekers her insider knowledge of how hiring works.

She joins us from Bothell, Washington.

Now, Linda, before the break, we were talking about how to go past the gatekeepers and get hired, and we were walking through the scenario of, you see a job on a company page, and you want to apply for that position, and you want to get past the gatekeepers, and you walked us through the steps that you can take to reach out to people inside the organization to get insights into what a job might require, to find out about company referral bonuses, and connect with people who might make a referral and get rewarded financially for doing that.

Let’s talk more about the decision-maker himself or herself. There’s somebody who’s going to get a stack of resumes that came through an applicant tracking system, and that is typically brought to them by HR. You want your application to be in front of that person, too, and you want to go around the gatekeeper to do that. How do you make that happen, Linda?

Linda Marak:

Well, there’s a couple of different ways. You could actually be very targeted. You could be looking at a smaller company, and you could actually directly make a connection with the hiring manager themselves, and that would be fantastic. However, you want to make sure that in every conversation that you have, you’re thinking, ‘Okay, this is actually part of an interview. This person is using the information that I’m sharing with them to make their decision.’

If you’re reaching out to a team member or somebody else in the company, that person might be able to give you information that is of importance to the hiring manager. And so, whenever you’re reaching out to a person, you’re wanting to understand, what is this person looking to hear from me to support that I’m going to be a good person to work with?

These are the questions that you need to be asking yourself.

Mac Prichard:

Tell us about those questions. You’ve found the person who’s going to make the hiring decision, you’re reaching out to them, what are you asking for, Linda, and what kind of questions are going to help you get insights into their needs?

Linda Marak:

Well, every question is geared towards helping that person to make that decision and be comfortable saying, “This is the person who I feel can do the job well and won’t be horrible to work with.”

I know that that sounds odd, but almost every hiring manager has made a bad hire, and so when that happens, it’s very difficult to get that person off of the team, it’s difficult to get that person out of the company, and so they become a little bit decision shy, and so they’re trying to find different ways, different tests, different questions they can ask to ensure that you’re going to be a good hire, and so understanding what that person is looking for is important.

Because that hiring manager is a person, they may have different biases, they may have different favorabilities from different companies people come from, from the education that you’ve had, from the different things that you do in your off time, and so when you speak to somebody else, you can ask those kinds of questions.

Does this hiring manager have a preference for the people on their team? I know it sounds like a hiring bias, and in some instances, it definitely is, but you having that information before you go to them is important.

Mac Prichard:

What kind of questions should you ask when you’re in the meeting with the hiring manager to understand their concerns about risk? You mentioned a bad hire. What kind of questions can help you understand those needs?

Linda Marak:

Interview questions are tailorable to the role and the company, but one good question that you can ask is, “In your experience, what do you feel would be a measure of success of a hire that you’ve had in the first three months or the first six months?”

Or alternately, you can ask, “Where have people in this role struggled before? Where do you feel that people have needed the most help or reaching out for assistance?”

It’s not expected that you’re going to know everything, but having that wherewithal to know what you don’t know and being able to ask for help before it becomes a problem for the team, that’s a good amount of self-awareness.

Mac Prichard:

When you get that answer, the hiring manager says, “Well, I’d like to see this happen in the first three months or six months,” what’s an effective way to respond to that information when you’re in that conversation? What should you do with that insight?

Linda Marak:

A great interview technique is mirroring, being able to repeat that back to the hiring manager, “I see how that can be an issue.” Or, “That’s a really good measure of success. That’s fantastic.” And then, it’s up to you to give something in your background that supports that.

Every time the hiring manager says something, you can mirror that back to them. “That’s a very good piece of information.” And if you have that experience, if you have that to offer that forward, “Oh, in one of my last jobs, this was happening, and I was able to pull in an additional team member,” or, “I was able to go do research outside of work,” or “I was able to support my knowledge with something else and bring it into the team.”

That’s then giving that support to what was important to the hiring manager.

Mac Prichard:

You’ve talked about getting in front of the hiring manager and building connections inside of an organization where you either want to work or you’ve seen a job advertised that you want to apply for. Running through all of this, Linda is the importance of targeting. You can find thousands of jobs on a job board, but it’s important to have a target list of employers in order to get past the gatekeepers, isn’t it?

Linda Marak:

It is. Knowing the kind of environment that you want to work in is important to your professional level of your mental health. Many people that I speak with, they’re looking for a job because they are out of work and they’re, and it’s hard to use this word, but they’re desperate. They’ve been out of work. It takes, sometimes, three months to get a job, six months to get a job, and it can be very overwhelming, but understanding the kind of environment you work in can lead to a tremendous amount of that ability to have a satisfying career.

When you’re doing this work, doing the research, doing the reach out, look at job sites like GlassDoor. GlassDoor gives a lot of good information about people who have interviewed with the company, it gives a lot of employee reviews, it allows people to post anonymously. So yes, you’re going to get some sour grapes, people who had a bad experience there, but the more reviews that are there, you’re going to get a better and more accurate impression of what it’s like to work there.

Mac Prichard:

Well, it’s been a terrific conversation, Linda.

Now, tell us what’s next for you.

Linda Marak:

What’s next for me is I’m taking my 20 years of hiring experience, being on the other side of the table, and I’m helping individuals and groups of job seekers be more effective at the hiring process.

It’s so overwhelming, it’s so daunting, that I want people to understand that they have more influence than they think they have. I’m going to be having some more workshops coming up. I’m going to be doing some free webinars just to give people some tips and tricks, and then I’m available if people need help; if people need one-on-one help, I am available.

Mac Prichard:

Well, I know listeners can learn more about you and your services by visiting your website, candidatewhisperer.com, and that you also invite listeners to connect with you on LinkedIn, and as always, when they do reach out to you there, I hope you’ll mention that you heard Linda on Find Your Dream Job.

Now, Linda, given all of the great advice that you’ve shared today, what’s the one thing you want a listener to remember about how to go past the gatekeepers and get hired?

Linda Marak:

Hiring is a human process. It’s not about the numbers, it’s not about how many applications you submit; it’s about connecting with a person. Understanding what you have to offer and the value of that and how it’s valuable to the person that you’re speaking to, that’s going to be able to create that connection and get you hired.

Mac Prichard:

Next week, our guest will be Michelle Schafer.

She’s a certified professional coach and workshop facilitator.

Michele helps you develop a job search strategy so you can find energizing work for companies you’re excited to work with.

One of the obstacles you may face as you look for your next job might be yourself.

You may believe, for example, that you can’t network or interview well.

In fact, these are skills that anyone can learn with study and practice.

Join us next Wednesday when Michelle Schafer and I talk about how to reframe your limiting beliefs in your job search.

Until next time, thanks for letting us help you find your dream job.

This show is produced by Mac’s List.

Susan Thornton-Hough schedules our guests and writes our newsletter. Lisa Kislingbury Anderson manages our social media.

Our sound engineer and editor is Matt Fiorillo. Dawn Mole creates our transcripts. And our music is by Freddy Trujillo.

This is Mac Prichard. See you next week.