How Should You Measure ROI on Recruitment Marketing

How Should You Measure ROI on Recruitment Marketing Like most things in life, theres no point in doing something if youre not going to get anything out of it. Its no different for  recruitment marketing. Maybe you have someone dedicated to delivering this for your company or maybe youre still considering it. Our team of experts can help you make that decision by letting you how they measure the real return on investment when it comes to recruitment marketing. Joe Shaker Within the entire recruitment marketing mix, we look at a wide array of metrics. Often the main performance indicators are cost per application, cost per hire, cost per click, etc., but really the key metric is retention. We are often so focused on the candidate, and for good reason, but we can’t forget that the key to all of this is  retention of the employee and provide proper source attribution. Joe Shaker is the President of Shaker Recruitment Marketing. Maren Hogan Quality of hire and time to hire. Maren Hogan  is CEO and Founder of Red Branch Media. Jared Nypen I like to keep a pulse on the employer brand via Glassdoor and Indeed, and I like to see how successful our paid campaigns are. We look at the funnel from views, clicks, and conversions to ensure we are putting our budget in the right places and as a way to tweak our strategy. . Jared Nypen is the Vice-President of talent at Great Clips inc. Lisa Jones Stick to sanity stats:  Leads generated. Subscribers signed up. Lisa Jones is the  Founder and Director of Barclay Jones. Mark Cavanagh Fundamentally it is down to how many employee’s your recruitment marketing has helped to place into a role.   Monitoring metrics along this journey can give you an indication as to the effectiveness of your campaigns or equally how well you are converting those interested. If we work backwards from a placement, we first arrive at the number and quality of applications, try to balance the two. Followed by the Size of your network, how many people can you reach who are already engaged with your employer/recruiter brand? This could be database size, but it could also be a number of followers or engagement on social media. Moving even further back we then reach web traffic is also a great awareness indicator, how many people are finding or searching your brand across the web. Mark Cavanagh is the Marketing Manager at The One Group. Charlotte Jones Recruitment marketing measures can be measured by each stage of the talent acquisition life cycle â€" from awareness, attraction, engagement, interviews, offers and hires.   Measures include ad impressions, clicks, website visitors, views, email views/clicks, and website visitor to apply ratio, cost per application, cost per hire, sources of hire, campaign hires, Other measures can be rankings on employer of choice awards, net promoter scores (NPS) survey results from candidates, employees or site visitors. Charlotte  Jones is theRecruitment Marketing Manager at Lockheed Martin. Phil Strazzulla The ROI should always come down to how your efforts are effecting your cost per hire and time to fill. This can be a bit tricky and you should definitely take pages out of marketings playbook when looking at certain initiatives (for example, a culture video will increase the conversation rate on your careers site into your ATS and talent community, which will in turn lead to more quality applicants, and therefore faster hires at lower cost). But, its essential. So many HR teams do one initiative, dont track the ROI, and then cant get budget for the next project they want to tackle. Phil Strazzulla is the Founder of NextWave Hire. Shelby Burghardt Recruitment marketing is all about driving brand awareness and it is difficult to measure awareness, however, if you benchmark some of this data prior to implementing your recruitment marketing strategy, you will be able to see where your strategy is making an impact: • Time-to-fill • Cost-per-hire • Source of influence/applicant/hire • Net Promoter Score (NPS) • CRM Pipeline • Social media engagement rates • Talent Brand Index (LinkedIn TBI) Shelby Burghardt is the Global Talent Brand Manager at Thomson Reuters. Rebecca Drew There are several measures to know if your recruitment marketing is working, including: follower growth, as the number of people following your brand is correlated with the interest and recognition of your brand. Engagement- the amount of people clicking on your updates, as well as liking, sharing and commenting on it. LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager, for example, allows you to accurately see how many leads you’re getting following the activation of a brand campaign, as well as providing insights that suggest which tactics and audiences are driving the best results. Rebecca Drew is a Manager at LinkedIn Talent Solutions. Bennett Sung First, measure the website traffic growth to your online career center. A rise in website growth means more eyes on your career content and job postings, increasing the likelihood that candidates visiting or applying become members of your talent network. Second, your recruitment marketing database is your lifeblood, so a key measurement is its growth and the quality of your talent network pipeline. Lastly, use a Net Promoter Score framework to measure your employment brand and reputation. Research from The Talent Board’s Candidate Experience Studies continuously show there is a hiring and business impact if your NPS is unfavorable Bennett Sung is the Head of Marketing at Allyo.

Smart Ways to Control Your Level of Happiness - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Smart Ways to Control Your Level of Happiness - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Though many write and sing about it (most recently Pharrell Williams blockbuster Happy), happiness doesnt come naturally to most people yet its within most everyone’s reach.  Experts say the key to becoming a happier person is recognizing certain behaviors, thoughts and the mindsets that happy people share. Happy people are not  necessarily  smarter, better looking, more successful, more physically fit or even living in a sunny climate.  The primary thing that distinguishes the happiest people from those who are less happy  is outlook on life and approach to adversity. For the last three years, Gallup has called 1,000 randomly selected American adults each day and asked them about their emotional status, work satisfaction, eating habits, illnesses, stress levels and other indicators of their quality of life. It’s part of an effort to measure the components of “the good life.” The responses are plugged into a formula, called the  Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, and then sorted by geographic area and other demographic criteria. Alvin Wong was recently said to be the happiest man in America according to a Gallup poll. Wong says that having humility is the key to his happiness. “Humility teaches me that I don’t know everything, that I’m not the most important person,” he said.  He is polite, restrained and willing to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. “If you don’t listen, you’re not going to learn anything.” Wong follows the belief system that your heaven or hell is made here on earth by the deeds you do,” he said. “People will miss you or not miss you. Their thoughts about you are how you are remembered. If that doesn’t keep you grounded, I don’t know what will.” Wong’s happiness is grounded in his straightforward but optimistic view of setbacks, from high school breakups to deaths in the family to the time he nearly died as a 6-month-old during the Pearl Harbor attacks. He seldom focuses on negative experiences. “I guess my attitude has always been, you’ve got to go forward,” he said. “When you have a failure, when you have something that happens to you that is traumatic, what you have to do is learn from it, but move on and not let that happen again.” Wong is a role model for how to live a happy life. You could adopt some of the qualities that Wong and other happy people possess by trying to look at your life from a bit of a distance; Imagine you’re life is a play where they are the director, producer and the leading actor. Each challenge becomes another scene that requires good judgment to ‘play well. ’ You can choose to think and act in any way you want. In this case youre the protagonist in a life long play where the outcome will depend on your assuming a happy state of mind. Another key to happiness, according to Wong, is learning to laugh at yourself. “Happiness is, I don’t think of myself too seriously,” he said. “If you can’t laugh at yourself â€" at all your problems [and] mistakes â€" then you’re going to go through life a very unhappy person. This has always been my philosophy. Maia Szalavitz, a health writer at  Time.com  underscores Wong’s explanation of his own happiness in an interesting study on happiness. In the first-ever study of its kind, Ursula Beermann of the University of California, Berkeley, and Willibald Ruch of the University of Zurich studied 70 psychology students to gauge their ability to laugh at themselves. The findings support what has long been believed: that being able to laugh at oneself is not only a distinct trait, but is also linked with having an upbeat personality and good mood and may be the foundation for a good sense of humor. Participants who were able to laugh at themselves more also tended to be mor e cheerful and less serious overall, and were in better moods on the day of the experiment, the study found. The findings also showed a link between humor and humility. Some Ideas on How To Become a Happier Person Love yourself first See your problems as opportunities to grow and become a wiser person Seek ways to find creative solutions for your personal challenges Compartmentalize your problems Learn to laugh at yourself Do several acts of kindness each day Empathize with others but dont absorb their problems Learn to compartmentalize your most difficult struggles Maintain your core values and be confident about adhering to them Seek advise but always make your own decisions and be accountable for them Know its ok to leave a job if theres an unhealthy corporate culture Accept there isnt a perfect resolution for every conflict and not every conflict warrants indefinite energy to solve Seek feedback from a wise mentor Embrace your positive traits so you can confidently admit to the negative ones and work at changing them Reach out to your network for support and reciprocate support to others Let go of a dysfunctional relationships Give others the benefit of the doubt Surround yourself with other happy people Drop Unhappy Behaviors Don’t think theres a resolution for every problem or conflict Don’t stubbornly persist in a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship Don’t deny your core values and submit yourself to someones who contradicts yours Let go of notion that you can manage and fix everyone else’s problems Let go of fake friendships (ones that aren’t reciprocal) or ones that force you to abandon your values Don’t assume you’re the only one who has struggles and problems. The closer you look into people’s lives you’ll find that everyone has challenges large and small and they surface at different periods of their lives. Don’t hold grudges Don’t remain in an unhealthy corporate culture that stifles your creativity Don’t allow others who know less than you influence your decisions Don’t persist in defending your negative traits or negative thoughts Don’t avoid feedback of all kinds Don’t decline support from your network The happiest people commit themselves to caring for themselves and exercising these happy muscles.  Happy people are more inclined to balance taking time for themselves and doing for others. They don’t consider themselves martyrs and are willing to accept their imperfections. They tend to let things go more easily than others and take themselves a bit less seriously when they make a mistake. They are able to embrace their limitations and seek help from others for support and counsel on how to address problems. They don’t focus on trying to be perfect or on trying to portray themselves as perfect. They don’t crave attention nor do they need   constant approval from others in order to recognize their own self-worth. The happiest people have good self-esteem, set healthy boundaries with others and focus on what they can change not on what’s outside of their control. So what are you waiting for, get happy!

Personal Branding Interview Vivek Wadhwa - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Personal Branding Interview Vivek Wadhwa - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career Today, I spoke to Vivek Wadhwa, who is a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. Hes also a columnist for BusinessWeek.com and a contributor TechCrunch, and has made many appearances on U.S. and international TV stations including CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC and the BBC. In this interview, Vivek gives advice for students who are entering the real world, goes over the impact of globalization on the workforce, how people can have competitive advantages, tips for entrepreneurs, and more. When helping students prepare for the real world, what advice do you generally give? This afternoon, I spent some time with PhD students at the iSchool of Berkeley. They are worried about getting faculty positions when they graduate and wonder if they should focus on business opportunities instead of academia, for example. My advice was to keep their options open. Instead of doing meaningless research â€" which only leads to papers in academic publications that make no real world impact, to focus instead on solving important problems. When they solve these, they should put as much energy into communicating these as they did on the research. They can decide closer to graduation which path to pursue. This seems straight forward advice, but in the academic world, there is too much focus on irrelevant research â€" which is done just for the purpose of professors gaining tenure. There is very little focus on the real-world. I told these students that when their professors were doing their PhDs, the world was much different than it is now. There are no guarantees of facult y positions or research jobs for these students. They will need to learn to compete in the harsh, globalized economy. I also gave these PhDs advice I give to my Duke Masters of Engineering Management students about networking: Start building your networks. Contact the people you want to eventually work for or learn from and start forming bonds with them. Don’t wait till graduation to connect with the world, do it now. What do you think the impact of globalization will have on the workforce? Will it be harder to get a job or easier? Globalization will cause entire industries to die (as we have most recently seen with the automobile industry), and new industries will be born. In the old days, the world changed very slowly and the skills you gained in school lasted a life-time. Now, skills and entire industries can become obsolete in as short as a decade. This means that learning has to be a life-long effort. Workers need to keep upgrading their skills and companies need to keep investing in educating their people to make them more productive. Our workers are no longer just competing with other workers in the next State â€" they are competing with workers in the remotest parts of the world. How does someone create a competitive advantage when entering a new market? You have to start off by understanding the market, learning about all of the problems of the market, analyzing solutions available, and then innovate. This means coming up with new ways of solving old problems â€" being more cost effective and improving processes and efficiency. What are your tops tips for entrepreneurs who are just starting out? The advice I give tech entrepreneurs is to forget about raising venture capital or even angel funding. They will need to bootstrap. They will need to start by understanding customer problems and work with potential customers in solving these. Once they develop a solution, they need to master the art of selling. If they can build a product that customer really need and that they are ready to pay money for, they are on the road to success. Investment will come to them when they least need it. What got you interested in research, journalism, and teaching? Dan, life is taking me where it wants to. I wish I could say that I had planned making a transition from a tech CEO to academic. But I didn’t. I had health issues which led me to take some time off from the tech world. I thought I would take a “sabbatical” in academia for a year. One year has become six years, and one university has become three (I now have appointments at UC-Berkeley, Harvard and Duke). When I joined academia, I realized that national policy decisions were being made based on myth vs. up-to-date research. So I started researching topics I thought were important â€" engineering education and RD globalization. After building an understanding of the U.S. problems, I started looking into solutions â€" how can the U.S. stay competitive and keep its global edge. That led me to research on entrepreneurship, immigration and university research â€" some of the things that make the U.S. what it is. I found that I could combine research with teaching by getting my students to become researchers. They gained by learning about important topics and realizing that they could make a real impact with their work. And I gained by getting the best and most open minds to help me with research. Journalism was an after-thought. I wanted to communicate what I had learned and started writing. I learn a lot from the feedback I get, so my writing has now become an extension of my research. I don’t hesitate to express my views and take strong positions â€" because the feedback is a way of gaining information and learning. So my research, journalism and teaching have all come together in an unexpected manner. Vivek Wadhwa is a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University. He helps students prepare for the real world, lectures in class and leads groundbreaking research projects. He is also an advisor to several start-up companies, a columnist for BusinessWeek.com and a contributor TechCrunch, and to several international publications. Since joining Duke University in August 2005, he has researched globalization, its impact on the engineering profession and the sources of the U.S. competitive advantage. His work has been cited in over 1,000 national and international media outlets over a 30-month period. This has garnered the attention of top political leaders. Wadhwa has spoken at dozens of conferences including the National Governors Association and the National Academy of Sciences. Before joining Duke University, Wadhwa was a technology executive kn own for being a pioneer of change and innovation. He started his career as a software developer and gained a deep understanding of the challenges in building computer systems. His quest to help solve some of ITs most daunting problems began at New York based investment banking powerhouse CS First Boston, where he was Vice President of Information Services. There he spearheaded the development of technology for creating computer systems which was so successful that CSFB decided to spin off this business unit into its own company, Seer Technologies. As Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Wadhwa helped grow the nascent startup into a $118 million publicly traded company. With the explosion of the Internet, Wadhwa saw an even greater opportunity to help businesses adapt to new and fast changing technologies, and started Relativity Technologies. As a result of his vision, Wadhwa was named a Leader of Tomorrow by Forbes.com. Relativity was named as one of the 25 coolest companies in the world by Fortune Magazine. He is founding president of the Carolinas chapter of The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TIE), a non-profit global network intended to foster entrepreneurship. He has been featured in thousands of articles in worldwide publications including The Wall Street Journal, and Forbes Magazine. He has also made many appearances on U.S. and international TV stations including CNN, ABC, NBC, CNBC and the BBC.

How Glassdoor Gives Applicants a Transparent Look at Employers

How Glassdoor Gives Applicants a Transparent Look at Employers Many different integrated apps have tried to introduce recruiting and job finding into Facebook, but none have been entirely successful. I was invited to one I had not heard of before Glassdoor and it seemed interesting so I tried it. I will now review this app and website  a new way to find jobs and leave feedback on past and current employers,  anonymously. Glassdoor was voted the ‘Best Employment Site 2012’ by the Webby Awards, and is touted as ‘a free inside look at jobs and companies’. Employees can leave anonymous salary information, reviews, interview questions and photographs from current and past employees. Think TripAdvisor for jobs if you are considering a job offer from a particular company you probably want to check out what others think of it. Activation: Whether you are invited to join Glassdoor (as I was) or you search for the app via Facebook, a connection page first appears, where you can alter profile visibility. As with all apps, you can set the visibility as Public, Friends or Me which may be useful if you have current employers or colleagues in your Friends list. This automatic connection to your Facebook profile allows Glassdoor to use your original Facebook profile information (such as schooling and jobs) to create a separate Glassdoor profile (you can change/delete this information later on). A typical Glassdoor profile lists only ‘Work Experience’, ‘Education’ and ‘Connections’ with current job title under your name and uses your current Facebook profile picture (so make sure its a good one, as you cant change it!). The profile information is linked back to Facebook-type pages for each company (to be discussed later). Profile completion: Once signed up, I had a 60% complete profile with a ‘Basic’ membership. The first important step was to complete my profile with Glassdoor giving me a list of tasks to do, each with a percentage that would total 100% when all three were done. My three tasks were ‘Add current city’, ‘Invite 3 friends’ and ‘Like’ or ‘+1’. The ‘Add current city’ was an easy option in the Profile, with drop down suggestions for town names and locations. The ‘Invite 3 friends’ option was annoying. This is done through a page where you are invited to ‘Include’ a certain amount of Facebook friends (either ALL of your Facebook friends, or all of your colleagues from school, University or a workplace), with the idea that the more friends you have, the more connections you will have. The invite window (a private request) is not very helpful either â€" you cannot remove people so you cannot choose specific people to invite to the app. The Like or +1 element of the profile is a clever marketing tool for the company’s social pages. You have to complete both elements â€" liking the Facebook page and +1 the company on Google+ to gain the added 10%. Once you ‘Like’ the company, it will appear on your profile page, enticing your friends to sign up. This will allow Glassdoors presence on both sites to increase. You are then asked to write a review/salary/interview post or upload a workplace photograph to grant yourself an Unlimited membership.  There are two types of membership on the Glassdoor website â€" the ‘Basic’ membership and the ‘Unlimited’ membership. The website states that “all new members automatically get a Basic Membership with 1-month of access to everything posted by our community.   However, no payment is needed for unlimited membership (as the site is financed by large ads on every page), as it only takes a minute to upgrade. Simply give back to the community by posting an anonymous inside look of your own â€" remember, your posts are anonymous.” The wording is extremely casual and friendly, and shows a sense of applying to a younger generation â€" maybe graduates or people looking for their first job. It is also a  crucial  point that everything is anonymous no matter whether you are posting a positive/negative report, you will never be found out. Connections: The front page of Glassdoor boasts the bold sentence: “Most jobs are found through an inside connection.  Each friend that joins Glassdoor allows you to see more connections at more companies.  The main aspect of Glassdoor is the more people you add (who then accept), the more connections you will have, and also access to a higher number of companies will be granted. However, people have been getting annoyed at the app requests on Facebook (as a simple Twitter search of Glassdoor Facebook will show), as not everyone may be looking for a job at the time you invite them! Writing a review: When you write a Company Review or post a Salary, you are asked to select between Current or Former Employer. If your employer is not yet listed, you are asked to enter some details (website, type and number of employees (from drop down menus), and the Headquarters City). Once submitted, a new form appears (with again a reminder that it is anonymous at the top) and the user can rate a number of elements of the job, as well as give Pros, Cons and Advice to Management as well as whether you would recommend this employer to a friend, and where your job prospects are looking for the next 6 months (up or down). Next to each submission form is an important ‘Message to Our Community’, a sign that fairness and good quality is  crucial  to Glassdoor. When submitting a photo, the rules outline that a  behind-the-scenes look is needed and the user is informed that they may upload 10 photos. All content is reviewed before being posted on the site a simple way to ensure that people cannot tarnish a company or the website itself. The website is then split into four sections Jobs, Companies Reviews, Salaries and Interviews, with a separate blog. Jobs: Jobs lists available Jobs in a certain area, with change range and date posted. Each job links to the Company Overview, Reviews, Salaries and Interviews of the company posting the job and these elements are extremely detailed (the Review has an average rating from all posts). Companies reviews: Under this section, there are the Featured Companies, with the Most Popular Companies, Best Places To Work and Companies and Reviews By Industry. Each company is given its own page on the site (which they can edit to describe the companys missions/morals and other details), and a link to its Facebook and Twitter feed. Everything about this website is based around sharing sharing information on companies, sharing connections with your Facebook friends, and sharing your use of the site. Salaries: The Salaries part of the website is the one which may be the most problematic for two main reasons. Firstly, people may lie about their salaries, either directly (to sound as if they earn/have earned more) or indirectly (mistakenly inputting the wrong salary). Secondly, current employees of the company could use it to look up other peoples salaries (either for the same job title or the same company), and this could cause friction in the workplace and even complaints (if someone was secretly earning more than you, but doing the same job). This is the section that Glassdoor have to take care with the most, to ensure it does not cause more harm than good. Interviews: Interviews are listed by job and company, with the most popular from both in separate tables. Interviews are also tagged, with the most used tags in a chart at the bottom of the page. When an interview question is clicked on, it can be answered, tagged or commented upon. This is useful for interviewees (to prepare) and interviewers alike (as they can change the questions they ask, in case it becomes a very popular post on the website). Is Glassdoor useful for job seekers? Yes. It is an extremely handy tool which people can use to choose the right company and job to apply for (by using the reviews and salaries section). However, it needs to be handled with caution rogue posts (both positive and negative) may have passed through the system, and it should be used with a pinch of salt. Is Glassdoor useful for employers? It is more necessary than useful for employers. Again, the posts should be taken with a pinch of salt, but may be needed to improve work ethics at the company, and fairness in terms of salaries, as well as changing interviews to make sure that every candidate passes the interview easily. Pros? There are many different pros for Glassdoor: This website is one of a kind there is no other major site where you can review your company, post your salary, photos and interview questions, all anonymously. Reviews are always checked before they are posted to ensure for a fairness, with  guidelines  clearly set out so as not to allow any malicious posts. Glassdoor uses prizes to get people to write anonymous reviews or salary posts â€" in this case I was offered the chance to win a free iPad in return for a post so you may  receive  a really good prize for writing 100 words. It is extremely difficult to find negative reviews there is no lowest rated company chart etc. This makes it fairer to companies to ensure that they are not brought down or trash talked. It has a clear layout, with easy navigation and titles, and an interesting design. Cons? The ‘include’/invite friends element is the main con. Sometimes with these apps, you don’t want to include all your friends (such as bosses/fellow colleagues which you may have in your Facebook friends).  A quick Twitter search of ‘Glassdoor Facebook’ brings up a lot of frustration about the app requests sent by friends. You cannot change your picture (say if you want a different photo to your Facebook profile picture). The website is coded in HTML, and could be made to look slicker and smoother. Conclusion: In conclusion, Glassdoor is an interesting website with many pros and cons. It works in terms of ‘connections’, so is extremely similar to LinkedIn. Is it trying to be a better LinkedIn or just a simpler LinkedIn (that anyone can connect to), with the added anonymous review elements? I feel that Glassdoor is extremely useful for first-time job seekers (as well as employers), but is more aimed towards the Facebook generation, who like to share a vast amount of information as it easy to use with its casual language, prizes and large graphics. RELATED: What is the Best Employer Review Site? [Featured image: Shutterstock]

Weird And Wacky Ways To Network

Weird And Wacky Ways To Network Anyone that is trying to make it happen in this world Get on the InternetevalPhoto Credit Most of you won’t think that going on LinkedIn and asking people for a favor is weird. To be honest, most of you will think it is the norm.But, that isn’t the case when you break it down to the bare bones. For starters, you are conversing with a person that you haven’t met before and couldn’t pick out in a line-up.It is like going up to a stranger on the street and asking for a job recommendation if you could do it remotely. Plus, it is all done without any face-to-face interaction. Come on, that pretty weird! Still, it is very effective. Don’t forget that there is more to online networking than LinkedIn with Facebook and Twitter.Go to SeminarsPhoto Credit The first place you go when you want to network is a corporate meeting or event. However, these places are full of people that are on their guard. They don’t want to talk to you, and they will try their hardest not to.As a result, it is hard to get hold of someone’s ear, never mind impress these people. Instead, you want to go to places full of industry individuals that are more relaxed. A lecture of a seminar is a great place to start. As Paulson Plastics Academy notes, their seminars are full of people looking to improve their skill set. Learning new skills is one way to skin a cat, but making a contact is another.Make FriendsevalIndustry people are always keen on making acquaintances, but they are never so keen on making friends. Maybe they don’t like the idea of getting too close to someone, but they are missing out with this tactic. Instead, they should be looking to make friends. As you know, a friend is more likely to help you out than an acquaintance because they are more invested in your future. As such, they will come to your aid in your time of need. If you don’t have any, however, that isn’t going to happen. Think about making a lasting connection rather than a fleeting one.And Ask For Hel pDo your friends work in the industry? Do they know someone that can help you out?If they do, you should ask them to make an introduction. No one likes to blur the lines between work and friends, but it won’t do any harm as long as you treat them with respect. Just remember they are doing you a favor, so act accordingly.