When is it Smart to Use Your Network to Hire

Krissy Manzano: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Blueprint Roundtable. I’m your host, Krissy Manzano. I’ve got Emily and Matthew with us today. And our first topic is going to be around when is it smart to use your network to hire? And I think kind of to set the stage with that a little bit, we’re in this realm where it’s not just responsible growth from a revenue side.

It also means who you hire, right? And there’s accountability in all of that. Like there hasn’t been in honestly, probably two decades, right? Where you’ve got to make the right hire. They’re really, you can’t chance it not working. And so we’re seeing more and more people look at their networks in ways that they haven’t before.

And so I want to hear from you all, when does it make sense? What are the pros and cons? Emily, I’ll start with you first.

Emily Bell: So my immediate thought is like when speed is of the essence. So when you want to be able to leverage your network to speed up a hiring process, and that can particularly come into practice when you have like a niche role. So, a role that requires like a very specific set of skills and especially if you come from that industry or you have a background or you have a specific network or you’re part of a community of networks that, would be able to deliver talent within that pool.

I think it absolutely makes sense. To, leverage your network or, network within maybe like secondary type of connections. So kind of blasting out some details on a role into your, your network to then share in a ripple effect scenario. But yeah, I mean, I think speed and then, niche skill sets are what immediately comes to mind for me.

And then kind of a close second would be when you want to really make sure that you can deliver quality candidates. So, which kind of stems from when you’re doing a very niche, search, you want to make sure that you can not only go out after the passive candidates on the market, but you also want to make sure that you can quickly deliver and get some contenders into the mix that you feel confident, will interview well and also check the boxes of skills and acumen that your client would be looking for. I’m curious what you think, Lewers.

Matt Lewers: I agree, I think a lot of times going to the network makes sense if it’s, uh, especially if there’s, you’re looking to hire for a role that. You’ve either managed or worked alongside of these people before. I think it makes sense to go to your network. you’re going to already understand. If they’re a fit for the organization, like the culture, the say, the stage or size of the organization, you’ll have a good sense for does their skill set and experiences align with what your current company’s looking for.

All of that would definitely come in handy if you’re looking for speed of execution, right? And you need somebody and see quickly, but I think in general, uh, it can yield a lot of results if your current role that you’re trying to fill aligns with people that you’ve worked with in the past, there’s been times in my, in my career where people that I’ve worked with on 1 side of the fence wouldn’t have benefit for the other side of the fence.

So, we’re, we’re able to take advantage of it, but the 3 of us have worked together multiple times. So, obviously. Obviously, hiring and working with people out of your network comes with a lot of advantages. If it’s if it’s the right synergy and the right opportunities,

Krissy Manzano: When is it? So we talked about where it can be beneficial and whatnot, but when is it not beneficial? When did, what do people do when utilizing their networks kind of in the wrong ways, or that can actually, lead them to make really bad hires?

Emily Bell: Well, okay, this wouldn’t necessarily be bad hire, maybe a bad hire decision or a biased hire decision when you use it for back channeling, in scenarios where it’s not absolutely necessary or you’re not doing it in an ethical way. It’s not always a bad thing to do that by the way, but I think just making sure that you’re doing it to qualify your assessment of a candidate versus to make the assessment for you is important.

And, yeah, I mean, I feel like that’s, that’s a big 1 that immediately comes to mind, but curious what you guys, if you guys have a another layer to bring to that. 

Matt Lewers: I think it, it has its place. Right? It’s one of many pillars in terms of sourcing and finding the right talent for the right opportunity. I think if you’re purely relying on your network and individuals that you’ve either worked directly or indirectly with, I think you’re. I mean, maybe it’s a pitfall pitfall, maybe not, but you’re limiting the scope of the talent that you’re going to meet with for the opportunity to an extremely small pool.

Even if you’re extremely well connected, there’s so many talented individuals out there. You rely just purely on your network. I mean, you’re looking at a fraction of opportunity compared to the rest. So, yeah, it’s its own

Emily Bell: To piggyback on that, you’re also, you’re limiting it in the sense of you’re also not likely going to be able to pull in nontraditional talent. And depending on what your network looks like, you could inadvertently, limit your access to diverse candidates into, the, the pool of consideration, not always the case, but I think it’s having like a 2 pronged approach to it, where you have your existing network and then you also reach out to the market at large gives you.

The highest likelihood of finding the right person and also helps mitigate, any other nuance to it. 

Matt Lewers: Yeah, it’s a zone type of biases. Yeah.

Krissy Manzano: For sure, for sure. I think it’s like, what we can do with networks is if you don’t, they’ve got to, there has to be a process at the beginning of this. And I think, Emily, you or both of you all said this, like, you’ve got to have a process and establish, like, what do I need for this role and then utilize your network and then.

Look, whether you’re hiring a recruiter or doing outbound, you have internal teams, whatever it is, but everyone needs to go through that same process because I feel like where networks get tricky is when you don’t have them go through the same process because you’re like, I feel like they’re just going to work because they worked at this other company with me.

And so I’m just making more assumptions. And I realized because, like, I don’t care who you are. You’re going to have biases toward the people that you know, over the people that you don’t. Like if I’m doing an interview process for, you all are interviewing to be in that role and other people, I’m naturally going to have biases for you all that, because I’ve just worked and known you all so long.

Right. And so knowing how to do that. So you don’t not only not maybe make the wrong hire, but also don’t miss like really great ones that are a part of building your network. Right. But I totally agree. I think it’s, we’re, we’re at a place now where we’ve got to be happy, consistent in order to get predictable hiring right. And we really move away from this gut and feel good motion. But that’s all the time we have for today. So hope this was helpful, but until next time, we’ll see you later. You can follow us on our YouTube channel or blueprintexpansion.com. We’ll see you. Bye.