Networking that gets referrals

Learn — a referral moves your resume from a queue of 3,000 to a queue of 20. It changes nothing about your code; it changes the queue. Most people start this in month four, when they are desperate, which is exactly when it works worst.

Do — five targeted messages a week, from week one. The message has three properties: specific, short, askable. Reference something real about them, link one shipped thing, and name the ask.

Check — reply rate, not send count. Under 20% means the message is generic; fix the message before increasing volume. Twenty messages should produce two to four referrals.

Ship — a tracked list: person, company, what you sent, what came back.

Message with a deployed project in the link and the reply rate roughly doubles, because you have changed the ask from a favour into an evaluation. That is why the project node runs in parallel with the grind rather than after it.