The Art of Winning Interviews via Referral: Complete Guide

Mastering the referral process: step-by-step strategies that actually work, including real case studies from successful job seekers who broke into Amazon, Stripe, and enterprise SaaS companies

If there is one key takeaway from my research of 5 job seekers who found jobs in this market, it’s that referrals are the key to job searching.

They do 3 really important things:

1. They get you a deeper look from recruiters

2. They get you a better look even during interviews

3. They give you crucial information about the company’s hiring

This is a critical insight. They don’t just make it easier to get interviews - they help even afterwards.

Referrals worked for me to get my jobs at Google and Epic Games. So I have firsthand experience with how powerful they can be.

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But They Aren’t Working For Many of You

Surprisingly, though, many of you come to me complaining about referrals:

“Even though i get referrals, I don’t get any interviews”

“I have applied via referral for 25 jobs and not had a single response.”

What’s going on here, and how can these people turn it around?

I decided to work with 4 of these people to turn it around. The result is today’s piece.

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Today’s Post

I’ve broken down why this works and its details, today I’m going to give you the tactics to debug problems you are having with it:

1. The Number 1 Strategy

2. Why Yours Referrals Aren’t Working

3. 🔒 The Framework to Track Referrals

4. 🔒 How Exactly to Get Referrals in Hard Places

5. 🔒 Case Studies in Referrals to Get Jobs (With Exact Messages)

6. 🔒 Most Common Mistakes

(Email productgrowthppp at gmail dot com for affordable PPP options.)

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1. The Number 1 Strategy

I have to be honest:

When it comes to a reliable strategy to break into jobs, there is no better method than referrals.

And I have data to back it up. Dr. Nancy Li and I did a survey of 100 PMs who got jobs last year.

Here’s how the techniques broke down for them:

Of course, inbound does well also, and we talked about that last week.

But nearly 1/2 of PMs found their last job via referral. It shows the power of the channel.

It also shows the channel is ubiquitous…

And yet, despite their popularity, many job seekers struggle to make referrals work effectively for them.

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2. Why Your Referrals Aren’t Working

With so many people pursuing referrals as their strategy to get their next job, you need a differentiated strategy to get referrals.

I am finding that people fall into one of three traps:

1. They are pursuing weak referrals - these are referrals from people who haven’t worked with you, and just drop you into the ATS (which people do because their company has a monetary bonus).

2. Their resume doesn’t meet the minimum qualifications - you may have gotten the person to refer you, but the recruiter gives a 6-second look at your resume and decides you don’t meet the minimum requirements (eg, years as a PM in that industry).

3. They don’t follow up after the referral - you assume that the referral is enough, but you’re not checking in and fade into the background, instead of remaining top of mind.

The way to avoid these mistakes is to create a system.

Referrals aren’t a “set it and forget it” strategy.

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3. The Framework to Track Referrals

Here’s my system to manage referrals well (complete with Google Sheets and Notion templates):