You’ve got the qualifications. You’ve got the experience. You’ve got the love of crypto, the practical skills, know the lingo and have somehow survived a decade on social media without committing a faux pas or sending a career-ending tweet. On paper, you’re the perfect candidate for the crypto vacancies you’ve been applying for. And yet, try as you might, you can’t seem to land a job. What are you doing wrong?

The most likely answer is ‘Nothing.’ The recruitment industry is highly competitive, and due to the sheer volume of candidates, it’s easy to be overlooked despite boasting a flawless resumé and compelling cover letter. You might not doing anything overtly wrong, but you could be missing a trick that would catapult you to the top of the shortlist and help secure the next crypto job you apply for.

The trick entails getting a colleague to recommend you, and it’s easier to implement than you might think. When performed correctly, it’s also more powerful than you could imagine, as shown by a case study we’ll consider shortly. But first, here’s the theory of how it works.

A Word of Mouth Recommendation Goes a Long Way

Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is one of this year’s big trends in online marketing. Like most hot new strategies, it’s not that new at all. In fact, WOMM is older than marketing itself. Long before advertisers dreamed up ways to convince us to buy their products and services, we were doing so off the back of recommendations from friends and family. Nielson reports that 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family, placing word of mouth ahead of any other marketing method.

But what’s all this got to do with recruitment? Well, cynical as it may sound, when it comes to hiring, you’re the product and you’re effectively selling yourself. The good news is, you don’t have to do this alone. The recruitment process is typically envisioned as a one-on-one process between you and the recruiter. While there will be other candidates applying, you’re powerless to dictate what happens there, and thus the only variable you can control is yourself.

But what if you were to insert another person into the recruitment process from an early stage, utilizing their WOM recommendation to get a foot in the door? Forget all the adages you’ve heard about “two’s company, three’s a crowd” – it turns out that leveraging a third party can dramatically ramp up your employment prospects.

Cristina: A Case Study in the Power of Personal Recommendations

I recently introduced a recommendations option into Crypto Jobs List. Apply for any job on the site and, after completing the form and hitting “Submit,” you’ll see a field titled “Invite colleagues to recommend you.” After adding this feature to the site, I didn’t have to wait long to see it in use. Cristina invited three colleagues to compose a short recommendation for her and within days of doing so she heard back from the company.

She’d got the job.

A week ago I launched recommendations feature on @CryptoJobsList

Christina was the first to use it.
She invited 3 colleagues to write a recommendation letter for her, and…

She got the job! 👩‍💻 pic.twitter.com/NPgBhepIRk

— Raman Ksaitor (@ksaitor) September 11, 2019

That’s the power of a personal recommendation in action. It’s a simple yet highly effective trick that can open doors and catapult you into the role you deserve. It’s not just looking out for number one, either: if you’re as good as you – and the colleague recommending you – say you are, it’s doing your future employer a favor. With an honest recommendation, everyone wins, including the acquaintance who provided the referral, because you’ll be eternally indebted to them, and disposed to return the favor in future.

You can’t rely on the goodwill of friends to land your next job – that’s called nepotism. You’re still going to need the usual attributes to get hired, like an ability to perform the role, relevant experience, and a readable resumé. What a recommendation can do, however, is bolster your prospects and help seal the deal. It worked for Cristina and it might just work for you too. So the next time you apply for a vacancy on Crypto Jobs List, don’t skip the recommendation field – it could be the difference between job applicant and job offer.