How to network your way into a job in an unfamiliar industry using my Targeted Networking System

In my high school alumni group on Facebook, someone asked a question about how they could get into the acting world, despite not knowing anyone.

In response, I shared this process for how to use “targeted outreach” and LinkedIn to learn about the industry and network their way into a job:

Avthar’s Targeted Networking System

One approach you could use (applies to non-acting jobs as well): 

(1) Go to LinkedIn and search for people in acting who are UWC alumni (filter for schools in your search). Ideally they are people who are doing jobs today that you want to do in future.

(2) Get their email via your school or find a way to DM them (Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever you can find)

(3) Ask to talk over a Zoom call to get advice on your journey and path forward. Alums love helping other alums, especially those figuring out their career path.

(4) On the call, be sincere and curious about their path and how they got to where they are. This requires some research on them beforehand. You're genuinely just looking for help, not trying to finesse a job out of them. 

(5) Usually they will want to help and will either open doors for you themselves, or offer to connect you to someone who can open doors for you (hiring manager, decision maker, owner, CEO etc)

(6) If they don't do (5), then ask who else they think would be good for you to talk to and get referrals to those people. Repeat until successful

Not only will you learn a ton about the industry, make connections but you'll also find out how to get to where you want to go and maybe someone might offer you a role!

All the best!

What if I don’t have a school alumni network?

🤔A common follow up question to the process above is: “What if I don’t have a large/good school alumni network?”.

Here’s my response to that:

In the method above, reaching out to school alumni is just an instance of reaching out to someone with whom you share similarities with. 

Apart from going to the same school, you could leverage other points of similarity like being from the same city/ country, both being immigrants or first generation college students, being of the same race or just facing and overcoming similar obstacles in life.

For example, as an aspiring early-stage investor, rather than reaching out to anyone in the field, I could look for investors who are from South Africa or even Southern African in general, investors who have immigrated from their home country, or even just other investors of South Asian descent.

The key point is this: Find someone who is doing what you want to do and build some sort of commonality with them. Chances are they want to help and will open doors for you. If not, leverage their network until you find someone who will.

Apart from leading with commonalities, you can lead with value by helping them in some way. My recommendation is to share a piece of content which demonstrates your thinking that’s relevant to their field. 

📚 You can learn more about this content-first approach in my essay: The Resume is Dead. And Content Killed It.