Application materials · Level Starter · Job hunting Referral Network
Referral request: asking without awkwardness
Wanting a referral from a former colleague and feeling awkward.
Prompt
One criterion: can a hiring manager tell in twenty seconds that you have done this job. Actions and results, never adjectives.
Task: Wanting a referral from a former colleague and feeling awkward.
[Before you start, do three things]
1. Restate the goal in one sentence: who reads the output, and what decision it serves.
2. If I have not given you the following, ask me. Do not assume:
- our relationship
- the role
- my fit
- what it costs them
3. Say how you plan to do it (at most 5 steps) and wait for my go-ahead.
[Go through each of these]
- one message: role, one-line fit, what you need
- say explicitly it is fine to decline
- attach the resume and link
- report back regardless of outcome
[Process]
1. Read the job description and extract the three things they screen for
2. Rewrite each experience as context, my action, result
3. Delete unverifiable adjectives
4. Mirror their vocabulary without inventing
5. Name the weakest link
[Output]
Rewritten material, what was cut, what evidence is missing.
[Do not]
- Never invent experience or numbers
- No 'expert' or 'proficient'
- Never one resume for every role
- Do not present duties as achievementsWhat to state before it starts
Leave these unsaid and the model fills them with an assumption. Most 'wrong answers' start here.
- our relationship
- the role
- my fit
- what it costs them
Go through each of these
Where this kind of work most often goes wrong. Already in the prompt, so you do not have to remember it.
- one message: role, one-line fit, what you need
- say explicitly it is fine to decline
- attach the resume and link
- report back regardless of outcome