Job Search Step 6: Networking Blurb
When you ask someone to refer you internally, they need three key things:
The JD to cross-reference internally
Your Resume
Blurb to Pitch You
I recently asked a friend if a job listing was on their team, out of curiosity. They volunteered to pitch me to the hiring manager. To make it easier on themselves, they asked for a short blurb about my qualifications.
I had to scurry. I should have known better. If you are reading this and you don’t have a blurb or two at the ready, make it your homework.
My thinking: Send enough about me to allow for cherry-picking so they can copy and paste what they need. If I wasn’t as close to the person, I would have cut what I sent in half. But now I have the basic building blocks if I need them in the future. And I will need it because I need to start networking soon.
Here is what I sent:
Wendy-Lynn is a seasoned product leader with more than 10 years of experience building products at scale and nearly as much time building products at startups. Most recently, she worked on several Google Ads products, including Search Ad formats and Ad Metrics infrastructure solutions. She was responsible for helping Google retain more than $2B in ad revenues by helping large advertisers measure the impact of their ads while also growing consumer-facing revenues of $500M by improving Google Search Ad formats for consumers and SMBs.
Working across the Google Search and YouTube Ad organizations, she had to set strategies, build roadmaps, and generate buy-in internally and externally. Her products at Google required her to work with public relations, business development, customer service, and legal to manage GTM plans. She also held Google’s seat on the board of IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau), where she helped mediate industry discussions on video and audio measurement standards across all device types (desktop, mobile, OTT, etc.).
While at Yelp, Wendy-Lynn built out their internal experimentation platform, which increased experimentation by 200% as she created a better way for consumer and Ad product teams to push boundaries and make decisions with data. After successfully launching the experimentation platform for Yelp, she created a North Star metric that united all products and sales under one measurable goal to connect consumers to businesses.
While at Amazon, Wendy-Lynn owned Selling Coach, a recommendations platform for 3P Sellers, where she helped drive over $500M in attributed revenue by driving the fixes algorithms and focusing the team on New Seller growth. It was during her time on the Amazon Marketplace team that she learned Amazon’s best practices in product communication and has been coaching them ever since. She credits much of her successes at Yelp to applying Amazon's best practices.
What does your networking blurb sound like?
