No, I Can't Keep You in Mind for a Job, and Here's Why

Dear professional and personal friends that I know and love:

I'm never going to follow up on your ask to "keep me in mind if you hear of anything."

Here's why.

It's my care for you that's causing me to say it. I want to see you successful, but I also don’t want to be someone who sets you up for disappointment. So bear with me.

Two different people I really like a lot said some version of this to me in the last couple of days: “Let me know if you know of any job openings or work opportunities.”

In both cases I probably said “sure” but I'll probably fall down on that.

Put yourself in my shoes for a second. You're imagining that I'm sitting on some curated list of opportunities, pattern-matching them against you. What I actually see is a newsfeed — a blur of lots of random opportunities, in theory aimed at me, but the feed doesn't even do a good job of that.

What are the chances they're going to be relevant for you?

There's a bigger problem underneath that, though. People wildly overestimate how well other people know what they would clearly be good for, and what they're interested in.

Ask yourself: how many times have we actually spoken about work? Have I worked directly with you before? Have I seen your work firsthand, and how long has it been since work even came up?

Do we often discuss the details of the type of work you do and the successful deliverables you had?

One of the people who asked — someone I've known for maybe 15 years — I have a vague sense they're design oriented, but I don't think they've ever specifically been a product manager or a designer in a traditional sense. I know they're community oriented, because they're personable and outgoing and seem to be connected to a lot of people, but I don't think they've specifically had a community job either. Plus, I'm not up to date on what they want going forward. Their resume, if I remembered it, is in the past. I could not write the job description of the thing they're looking for.

Fifteen years, and I've got adjectives, not a role.

That's not a failure on my part, by the way. We interact socially, across communities that are tech and tech adjacent. We know lots of people in common. People just aren't sharing as much as they think they're sharing — and they're certainly not sharing with any specificity that would be helpful for me in identifying the perfect role for them, or writing an email to somebody else as to why they're perfect for this role.

Specificity alone doesn't fix it either. When somebody says, "Hey, do you know anyone at Ramp?" — I don't know. I'm connected to 5,000+ people on LinkedIn, and I don't really know if anyone I know has moved over there. Now, "would you mind taking two minutes to check if you know anyone at Ramp" — that's a finite ask, it's easy, and I'm happy to do it.

Off the top of my head, though? I'm lucky I remember my Social Security number. How and when you package up the ask matters.

Then there's the thing I hate to say, but it's true: being friends with someone does not mean you're comfortable professionally vouching for them. Those are two different things.

Both of these people — if you asked me, I would let them watch my child. 100% yes, without reservation. That is literally the highest trust I could ever bestow on somebody.

Would I stake my reputation that they could effectively launch a field marketing campaign? I literally have no idea if they'd be good at that or if they even want to do that.

I have no more idea if they're good at this than they would have as to whether or not I'm a good VC.

Now, because they know my character, they might believe me to be a good partner to a founder on a board, but if they're being honest, they really couldn't say whether or not my ability to pick investments is any good and whether or not someone should put money with me. I think, because they like me, they assume this to be true, but it's honestly not the same thing.

I know plenty of assholes who are excellent investors from a returns perspective, and I know plenty of excellent ones who never found that big fund-returning winner and couldn't raise another fund.

A third friend bumped into me recently and said they're curious to get back into the tech scene, particularly interested in robotics. Here's what's missing: I have no idea what level of seriousness they're at. If they're not robotics curious enough to have spent time figuring out how a robotics company can use their skills, it's really hard for me to imagine them at the top of anyone's candidate pile — because there are robotics obsessed people out there who are going to make their value add to a robotics company really obvious. Next to them, you look random.

So what actually works?

Show me some insight and professional sharing about your job. Something that makes you seem current, professionally curious, and adept at change — and ideally something that carries a little social proof. For example: "I have a bunch of clients, and the first question they always ask me about implementing AI is X. Here are three reasons that's the wrong question, and what I normally do in my engagements is A and B, and those things ensure a much more effective outcome."

If I read that, I think: this person seems really professionally organized, thoughtful, and focused on client success. That's also pretty insightful, and I'm definitely going to find myself repeating it to others — or sharing it with a portfolio company. All of a sudden you've gone from "I have some vague notion of what they do" to "if I introduce them to somebody, that person is going to have a really thoughtful, engaging conversation and be glad they got the introduction, regardless of fit."

The assumption is that you have to brag. That's not it.

What you're really doing is sharing what you've learned, which is the opposite of bragging. It says: whatever gaps I have in my knowledge, I am constantly in a process of filling them, and I fill them by connecting to other smart people. I would much rather introduce that person than somebody who tells me they won a bunch of awards or scored a bunch of new clients — because I still don't understand why that's happening.

People have confidence in the method.

It's this exact shift that we hope to convey in our Visible Work course, which we're filling the remaining seats for this week. It's not just that social media bragging is cringy. It just isn't useful. If you want to work with awesome people, you have to figure out the most effective thing to give to your network in order for someone to make a connection between you and some cool opportunity.

You might be thinking: sure, that works if you have an audience, but nobody reads my posts. It doesn't matter if nobody reads your posts, because everybody has something of a network. If you've been working professionally for over a decade, you can't tell me there aren't 50 or 100 people that, if you bumped into them, you wouldn't say, "hey, keep me in mind for x."

Start there.

An update newsletter with a thing you learned, sent to 100 people — anybody can do that. It has nothing to do with posting on LinkedIn or trying to go viral. Just don't bother asking anybody to keep you in mind if you're not giving them the right information to be effective about it.

The sharing replaces the asking, because if you share, you're going to generate inbound. Send me something concrete that I can forward to specific people — where I get to say, here is my wonderful friend, here is a thing that is going to make you think, here is another way of looking at a problem you almost certainly have, and I'm happy to make an introduction.

That is what I would love from you.

I really do want to be helpful.