How to warm up to cold calling
By Joan Axelrod-Contrada, Globe Correspondent, 10/16/2005
The term cold calling might send a shiver down your spine. But some career specialists say this job-hunting technique, done correctly, can help you connect with prospective employers and tap into the ''hidden'' job market.
Cold calling is best defined by what it's not. It's not networking, which career specialists agree is far more effective. Nor is it responding to an ad or a job posting.
Instead, cold calling involves coming up with a list of prospective employers and approaching each one, not knowing if there's an opening. It's risky, but converts point out the obvious: You need only one positive response to get a job.
The technique, though, requires a great deal of finesse. No random dialing and fast-talking. Specialists say you should assess your career goals and carefully research companies before you even pick up the phone.
Strategies vary on how to take the chill out of cold calling. Some career coaches recommend introducing yourself on the phone and asking for an informational interview. Others suggest finding the name of the hiring manager, sending a résumé, and following up with a phone call. Still others advocate a combination of strategies involving snail mail and e-mail.
Jeanine Tanner O'Donnell, a career coach in Hampton, N.H., and author of ''Find Your Career Path: A Revolutionary Guide to Career Satisfaction,'' prefers to call it ''proactive job searching'' or ''warm calling.''
Six years ago, she coached her brother, John Tanner, in the technique. At the time, Tanner was an MBA student at Washington University who had just learned he needed a paid summer internship to graduate. How would he find a summer job in the Boston area while going to school in Missouri?
O'Donnell, a manager at a staffing firm at the time, recommended that he try cold calling. He balked, since he associated cold calling with telemarketers who called during dinnertime.
''You're insane,'' he said he told her. ''No one will talk to me.''
O'Donnell made a bet with him. If he didn't find a job, she'd pay his phone bill.
Tanner agreed to give it a try and began to work with his sister on assessing his career goals. He settled on biotechnology as a field that would allow him to combine his undergraduate background in physics with business in a way that helped people. She instructs job seekers to give their ''career story'' over the phone, advising them to view receptionists as resources to befriend, rather than as gatekeepers to bypass.
Once Tanner had his career story in place, he began researching biotechnology companies in the Boston area. His sister advised him to focus on small firms and ask for an informational interview, not a job.
One Friday afternoon, Tanner began making calls. To prevent chief executives from being caught off-guard, he left after-hours messages on their voicemail, then followed up, always asking if he got them at a bad time or if they had a couple of minutes to talk. He expressed his interest in hearing more about the company and the CEO's role in it.
His sister was right: Seven executives took the time to talk to him at length on the phone, and two agreed to informational interviews. One of those two, Immunetics, a medical technology firm in Boston, offered him a job.
Tanner later founded his own company, V2 Sales Advisors of Portsmouth, N.H., using what he calls ''warm calling'' to increase the sales leads for high-tech companies.
Another job hunter, Kristen Jentzen, was convinced that she'd come across better in writing, and opted for an e-mail approach to cold calling. After graduating from Boston University in 2004 and deciding to move to San Diego, she did a web search to come up with a list of advertising agencies in the area.
Once in San Diego, she e-mailed 20 hiring managers a letter explaining that she was new to town and looking for advice about entering the field of advertising. A few days later, she wrote a follow-up letter to the managers who had not replied.
One of the follow-up notes led to an interview with the small agency that ultimately created a special position to hire her.
''Countless times I've been told that the jobs you want won't be advertised,'' Jentzen says.
Even cold-calling skeptics like Dan Kilgore director of talent acquisition at Getronics, a global informational technology company with an office in Billerica, give job hunters like Jentzen credit.
''She did what I would call highly targeted sniper cold calling,'' he says. ''Just plain cold calling? Nah, I don't believe in it.''
The highly targeted approach can also work for career changers.
Kristin Zirkel, for instance, plans to use cold calling to make the transition from marketing into pharmaceutical sales, because the technique helped her find two previous jobs.
This time around, she tried using Internet job postings, but lacking any experience in pharmaceutical sales, she got no response.
''When I approach companies as being very enthusiastic and just wanting to find out more information, that's how I'm comfortable,'' Zirkel says. ''Chances are that if I ask enough people, someone will say yes.''
Marcie Shorr Hirsch, principal of Hirsch/Hills Associates, a management consulting firm in Belmont, recommends that job hunters do a Google search to find articles by or about people they want to contact, then follow up with notes
expressing interest in their ideas and asking for a few minutes of their time.
''If you send a note, it allows someone to deal with you on their own time, as opposed to getting them when they're up to their armpits in work and the phone is ringing,'' Hirsch says. ''You can write some sort of introduction like, 'I didn't want to simply call cold.' It indicates that you're a thoughtful and respectful person.''
O'Donnell says asking for a job always rubs people the wrong way. The goal, she says, should be to get an informational interview.
''It's taking the opportunity to get to know them, versus you dialing up and being pushy,'' she says. ''Once you build some sort of connection, you don't come across as sales-y.''
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