How to doorknock

What follows is Chapter 43 from A Career Breakdown Kit.

Is it a magic salve guaranteed for success? No of course not.

But much like anything in a job search, nothing is guaranteed. What we do is identify which avenues can be effective for your context, and form an appropriate strategy.

LinkedIn optimisation is great if people search for you on LinkedIn. Except speaking to my recruitment peers, fewer and fewer rely on it. Would it surprise you if I told you I rarely invested in at all before 2019? I've been working in recruitment since 1996 including at CEO level.

Applications, networking, referrals, content, CV databases. All have a place and a purpose.

Doorknocking on the other hand - some would tell you it has no place in the modern job search.

If my daughter*, her friends and other 18 year olds can get a job from an old school technique, while those employers say "only through Indeed" then that might be a hint it still works. Some of whom are socially anxious, but then it's a replicable process, not a cult of personality.

Or the periodic messages I get from CxOs who made their own jobs from direct outreach.

Not forgetting Granovetter's seminal research and recent LinkedIn-specific studies in Science journal showing weak ties drive more job mobility than strong ties.

And why wouldn't doorknocking work on LinkedIn, when you have a weak tie that suggests a viable employer?

But no, it's not a guarantee. It's just an arrow in the quiver of a multichannel job search.

43 - How to doorknock

Doorknocking is an old-school sales approach you may well have experienced, such as when a salesperson with a clipboard rings your doorbell and asks you to change electricity provider.

My wife even once bought from exactly this scenario.

While it’s not uncommon in a business-to-consumer situation it can also work business-to-business… if you can get past security.

Although technology has moved on, the principle is the same whether in person, by phone, email, letter or LinkedIn:

You approach someone cold and create your own opportunity.

This isn’t an approach for everyone and requires chutzpah. If you are used to a high failure rate in applications - what do you have to lose by being proactive?

More than that - look at all the advice on LinkedIn on how to improve your odds in a job search.

It’s all transactional and applicable, available to everyone - if you all follow it, everyone takes the same step forward.

While taking steps others are less prepared to do means the approach alone may stand out.

If you encounter the equivalent of a sign which says, ‘Trespassers will be shot!’, pay attention.

My own career of looking for work includes many non-transactional approaches:

• Walked into the local Cinema and asked for a job
• Walked into Office World and asked for a job
• Worked for Dad
• Talked to one of my ex-colleagues and gained some by-the-call phone research work
• Temped through an agency
• Walked into an Inn and asked for a job
• Referred to a publishing, training & consulting company
• In managing their small-scale recruitment alongside my day job I got to know the MD of a recruitment firm as a supplier. I went to work there
• Tapped up to return to a more senior role
• Started my business upon being given the boot - thanks Dave!

It’s true I did apply through job boards and agencies. It’s mainly through my own means that I have secured my employment.

*My daughter even tried doorknocking for her first job in our local town last summer. It didn’t work for her - she found a nice retail job through an application on Indeed. Her experience was positive enough that she helped a friend do the same - who got a job at the first shop they tried.

Doorknocking is about approaching companies by category not because they are recruiting. These categories can be:

• All the employers in your local business park (often they have websites, with directories and job adverts)
• Companies listed in local newspapers, directories or platforms (local to me this could be Cambridge Evening News, Bury Free Press, Cambridge Network or Business Weekly)
• Top 100 employers in your domain
• Companies that have recently had funding and are about to scale
• Doorknocking companies you’ve come across through networking and its resulting market map

Make contact and make a case for yourself on the principle of the right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price.

There’s an element of luck involved for these elements to all come together.

A disadvantage is that they may not be recruiting or ever have a need to employ you and even if they do have a vacancy, you still have to establish the right fit.

That means a logically low hit rate.

Your threshold for an acceptable failure rate will inform whether this is the right approach for you.

The difference is the anonymous rejection of a volume-based application versus the ‘personal rejection’ from your direct outbound approach.

Right person, right time, right place, right message, right offer, and right price.

Let’s reorder and examine this marketing principle:

Right Place

Those Categories above. The place is the Company, and how you contact them. You can go in blind if you are a bold prospector or research them in advance.

‘site:’ is a useful command in Google.

You can search on specific websites: ‘site:linkedin.com ACME jobs’

Right Person

Typically this will be the ‘next one up’ - Head of department, Director, CxO or Owner.

Who would be the budget holder at work? Those are prospects. Look them up on LinkedIn, PR, news, video platforms. What can you find out?

Right Time

While time can be happenstance, can timed factors create opportunity? What might be a hiring trigger?

Perhaps you could contact a list of companies that have recently announced funding or a big win - news that may lead to hiring additional people.

Or maybe you hear through the grapevine that Janine is about to go off on maternity leave.

If their process isn’t time-bound, can you make it time-bound?

‘We aren’t hiring right now’ might mean they’ve run out of headcount in the January to June period and may have a new budget in July. What can you learn that helps you both?

If you have radio silence, why not try again in a month or three months?

Think about how you buy. If you don’t need something how likely are you to respond to a message no matter how well crafted?

If you do need something you might think first of someone who keeps in regular touch.

Right Offer

You have more opportunity for career creativity in being unemployed than someone entrenched in a 9 to 5 permanent job.

What problems can you fix for a company in a non-traditional employment capacity?

Let’s say an employer has a problem that needs fixing. They don’t have capacity to do it right now. It isn’t burning enough to seek professional help and there isn’t sufficient work in view to make it a job.

What if you caught them at the right time?

An out-of-work TA Manager who offered to revamp an onboarding process.

A web designer who notes lots of issues with their website.

A strategic operational issue that is their unknown unknown identified by your expertise.

A swamped team that could benefit from their admin burden being reduced.

An orchard that needs pickers at harvest time.

What starts out as a short-term, project, or part-time piece of work can become proof of concept. While rare, I know a few people whose permanent full-time jobs have come about this way, including at a senior level.

Right message

This is both specific and crude.

It’s specific because nailing the message CAN create an opportunity a poorly written message may miss.

It’s crude because sometimes you can catch people at the right time, no matter how cruddy your message is.

This is the case in recruitment - I’ve picked up several senior appointments by calling at the right time.

‘I’m glad you called Greg, I’m starting to think about my maternity cover in June.’

Had I not called, that HR Director may well have gone to the specialist HR recruiters she is also in touch with.

If you have a strong hook in your message - such as a key area of rare expertise or a clear issue you’ve identified which companies may have - go in with that.

If you don’t - done is better than procrastinating:

‘Hi Greg, I live locally to Bircham Wyatt Recruitment. Love what you do. I wondered if you might be recruiting for an apple picker at any point. If you can’t help, could you point me in the right direction?’

Right price

I’ve left this until the end because much of this is variable and subjective.

What are your needs? What can they afford? What does the market say? How flexible can you be?

Research will help if you can get a sense of what they generally pay through Indeed, Glassdoor or others. Or maybe what comparable companies that are advertising will pay.

One approach might be to pro-rate your salary over the period you’ll work there.

Doorknocking can sometimes give you access to jobs that are being actively recruited. It’s a happy byproduct of your work, if you find yourself in this situation.

It’s worth persevering. Otherwise, it’s too easy to think after 10, 20, or 100 unsuccessful efforts that the approach itself is at fault.

There is always an element of luck in any activity.

This may be out of your comfort zone, in which case it’s an opportunity to grow.

The only certain thing is that if you don’t try you definitely won’t benefit.