Networking Unleashed: Building Profitable Connections. An Interview with Jeremy Gartner and Michael A Forman
- mforman521
- 4 days ago
- 14 min read
Welcome to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections, the show where access creates opportunities and relationships in move careers forward. I'm your host, Michael Forman. The professional landscape is changing. Fast layoffs are happening at higher levels. Companies are becoming more efficient with AI and roles that once felt secure are now being reevaluated.
At the same time, more qualified professionals than ever are competing for fewer visible opportunities. So here's the question. If applying isn't working the way it used to, what does. My guest today believes the answer is simple, but not easy. Access beats applications. We're talking about how relationships open doors that resumes can't, how executives can position themselves differently in today's market and why the right conversation often matters more than the perfect application If you wanna stay relevant.
Visible and connected in a changing market. This episode is for you. So let me get into it. I'd like to welcome to the podcast, Jeremy. I'm so grateful that you're here. Would you mind giving us a little bit of how you got where you are today? Sure. So today I am leading one of the fastest growing career coaching companies for executives.
I, my background is. Not relevant at all. I got a PhD in aerospace engineering. I got my MBA from Walton. I worked in industry, so I'm not the typical HR person transitioning to career coaching. My gift I believe in that world is to be able to lend any opportunity that you just want with without being qualified for it.
And at the beginning of COVID, when people started losing their jobs left and right, I did an experiment and it was a very simple post on LinkedIn. I just said whoever lost their job because of COVID, I will have them with their resume for $5. And what I found was fascinating. I had access to very senior executives right away.
That needed help with a story that they thought they need a resume, but I knew that what they need is a story and a strategy on how to connect with the right individuals. And I had access from the frontline really, on how they think, on how they're navigating their life. And I thought to myself, what an amazing way to really accelerate my learning.
And by doing that, I was able to learn from them, but also to teach them what I knew very intuitively and starting building frameworks around that. And that was the starting point. Since then, it was six years ago. Since then, we had more than a thousand clients we had. Now there's a big team of coaches that are very clear frameworks on how to do that.
But yeah, that was the beginning of that journey. That sounds fantastic. That really does. Okay, so I came up with a bunch of questions for you, so let's dive right in. You're seeing major shifts in the executive market. How are layoffs and AI driven efficiency changing the way professionals need to network?
People are going to lose their jobs left and right because of ai. That's a given. That's not even an argument anymore. That's already happening. Now. People really tend to rely a lot on what they can control, which is going to job board such as LinkedIn. The problem with LinkedIn is, number one, it's not a game you can win at the executive level.
At the executive level, what you need. Relationships. It's not a job ball. If you see a job that is. Advertised by that time, it's already too late. They already know who they want. It's, they're really for compliance reasons. So the way to go about it, it's by building the right relationships with the right individuals, but you can leverage AI and automation and LinkedIn so that you can create really a very nice machine that is going to get you 10 to 20 phone calls automatically on LinkedIn with the right individuals, with the right thought leaders in the industry.
By doing that at scale, you can start realizing, what do I need to improve? Is that my story? Is that how I'm communicating my value? Is that how I'm building the relationships? And then you can start iterate on that process and accelerator of that. But AI plays a huge pattern of it because ai, it's not a solution, but that's a huge accelerator to a process that you can create.
Very good. Very interesting. Also. I can't wait to replay this because I wanna listen to all of it again. You say access beats applications, what does that really mean for someone relying on job boards or traditional hiring processes? I job boards today, you can beat job board using ai.
Meaning that you can tell, you can create an app. That is going to tailor your resume to a job that was advertised and submit that resume and submit hundreds of resumes like that every day automatically. Now, at the executive level from the get-go, we just said if you have a job date because of compliance reasons.
It's not because they're really trying to hire through that channel. It's to claim that it's a fair opportunity. It's not a fair opportunity. They know who they want. The name of the game is not to get to that job by having a better resume that is tailored because if that's the game you play, you are going to get people beating you at that game because they're going to play a volume game.
Access means that you are going to be in front of the right person, qualified to create a job for you, even though right now they don't have a need for you. So the name of the game is you to build relationships with the right individuals so that they know about you. And in the end of the day, it's not about who you know, it's about who knows about you.
And that's the game we play here. That's access. Okay, very good. Why are many highly qualified professionals struggling to land opportunities despite strong resumes and experience? Because the resume is no more than a piece of paper. That's not what's going to get you a job. Think about it that way, as an employee, as an executive.
You are being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? If we reverse that story, you are a business owner offering services that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars with a business model, which is to give exclusivity to one buyer at a time. Now, if what you are trying to do is to close a sale of a few hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You will not do that by sending a flyer. Not what you need. The story the flyer, it's just a tool. The way to build a great business, it's by building assets, the asset behind the resume, the story. So that's where the focus should be, not that piece of paper. Okay. What happens in a relationship that allows someone to bypass the application process entirely to bypass the end?
The application process starts way before that job is advertised anywhere. It starts from really the point when the hiring manager has a need. Let's say they need to build a budget for the new business units, okay? And they know that they don't have the bandwidth to do that, and for that, maybe they're going to need a VP of finance.
So they have that pain point at that same moment. Now typically what's going to happen, they're going to speak with the team. They're going to start brainstorming solutions. They're going to identify, they need the VP of Finance. They're going to go to the hr, right? Your job is to get to know that hiring manager before they have the need even to shape the market for your services so that they know that if ever at any point in time that they will have that type of problem, you are the person they should speak with.
And that you would be more than happy to help them creating something. That's how you are going to bypass the process by just being in front of the right person before that it is advertised anywhere. So how do you recommend somebody do that? I, all of this is creating a relationship with that person.
So how, what would you what would you suggest that our listeners can create that relationship? Another one. What the, what's the best way for them to do it? LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the best way to do that. Now you are going to send a message, not if you want the very tactical way of doing things.
It's not about sending them a message on LinkedIn, telling them, Hey, do you have a job for me? Not at all. We are there to build the relationship, to make it about them. It's more about, Hey, I'm very curious about your career, about how you got to that point. Would you like to speak for a good for 15, 20 minutes in the next couple of weeks?
I know it's out of the blue. I know you don't know me, but happy to reciprocate in any way I can. Now I'm going to hear typically lots of people telling me Jeremy, I get lots of emails like that every day and I don't answer them. I don't have the patience for that. So two mistakes to avoid. Number one, to project your behavior on the behavior of thousands of people.
Okay? Number two, the question is not about are they going to help me or not? The question is, if I were to send that same message to what? To 100 people, how many of them are going to respond to me? We got to a framework where you are going to get typically a 10 to 20% response rate, and that is okay. We don't need everyone, but we need to understand the data and how to use that data to get in front of the right people and understanding that not everyone will want to help us, and that's okay.
Not everyone will want to help you, but in my experience, I've found the majority of the people, if you reach out to them saying that I'd like to pick your brain or, I think you're doing so well, I'd like to speak with you about it. Most people will. Respond in kind and they'll respond to said sure.
I'll give you five or 10 minutes. Yeah. I'll talk about me. Yeah. That's everybody. Everybody loves to talk about themselves. Everybody does uhhuh. Okay. How should executives reposition themselves in conversations? So they're seen as valuable contributors? Not just candidates.
It's not about the. Type of problems you are going to solve. It is about the bigger impact you are going to have, meaning the second degree and the third degree level impact. For example, I had a client, he was telling me about the fact that he did some campaigns, advertising campaigns, and that's about it.
Said, okay. Tell me more about it. Say it was for the Super Bowl. Okay, tell me more about it. It was for the Super Bowl, it was an ad to promote girls to start doing to start going into tech and said, okay, tell me more about that. And in the tech world, basically they started running programs to really start recruiting people from girls from high school.
Said, okay, so what you did is not just doing advertising campaigns. It's to running campaigns that were viewed by millions of people that led to a full trend of gen to a full generation of girls moving their life into the tech space. Think about the number of lives that we've impacted through those campaigns, the impact that you had by doing that.
It's about building stories that have some meat to it, that have some suspense to it, that have some something aspirational to it. So you want to really think that through. It has to be way beyond just the technical details of, oh, I generated 20 millions of dollars. Okay, nice. But who cares? What is sitting behind that?
What's the story behind that? Very good. Okay. What signals tell you someone understands how to navigate today's market versus someone still relying on outdated approaches? What the what? Sorry? What signals tell you someone understands how to navigate today's market versus someone still relying on outdated approaches.
Updating approaches, it's people who rely on their resume on LinkedIn, job boards, on their network, and that's about it. There is something that we call internally with all of the people that we help inside of the company, the CP way, the career ion way. It means that you can take control of your life by being proactive about it.
You can't decide where to go by controlling your environment, by building the right story that's going to put you in front of the right people. People winning in today's market are not the ones that rely on. Again, on whatever job is advertised online, it's the ones that are capable to define what they want, to explore, where they want to go, and based on that, building the relationships with the right individuals.
So it's a very different game than what we used to have. Very good. Okay. Where do professionals unintentionally limit themselves by focusing too much on roles instead of relationships?
So can can you please repeat the last part of the question? Where do professionals unintentionally limit themselves by focusing too much on roles instead of relationships? Why where do professionals unintentionally limit the, where do they limit themselves when they're focusing on a role instead of a relationship?
Typically they tend to do that when they feel safe. They feel safe in their job. So they're just going to start doing whatever they believe should be done in their job, which is right. But in the end of the day, you always want to be able to start leaning into building the relationships of the next jobs that you are going to aim for, because that's a job that's going to take place your entire life.
That's how you will always have a job, even if you're going to be let go. Now, if you do the mistake thinking that your only job is to do the job. Instead of, okay, my job is to do the job and to start building the right relationships to start landing my next jobs. It's also a part of the job. That's how you see so many professionals that are so many that are so skilled in what they do, but falling to the chairs without a job because I'm being let go without seeing that coming in the end of the day.
You always have to be prepared, and the best time to be prepared is when you are safe. So don't become complacent. That's the only thing, right? It's staying within your comfort zone. You have to kinda leave that comfort zone a little bit to get ahead or get more. 'cause if somebody if an executive or somebody in that, in, in that space.
If they don't move out of their comfort zone, they'll never get ahead. Oh, very much. Very much. Okay. How can someone build access to decision makers, even if they don't currently have a strong network? How can someone get access to decision makers? Even though they co go ahead even though they don't have access to them.
The easiest way is you don't want just to go to any decision maker. You want to go to the ones that are going to be qualified to create a job for you. For example, if you want to become a director somewhere, you are going to want to aim for the VPs, not with the other directors. That's number one. This really identifying who is a decision maker, but on LinkedIn you can really screen.
People by title, and from there it's just about sending them emails you are going to send, you are going to get a 20% response rate typically, and most of them will not accept to speak with you, but many of them will accept to speak with you. It's just about reaching out and understanding that failing that rejection is a part of the game.
It's not about you, it's about them not. Making, choosing not to make time for that at that point in time. And that's okay. Enough people in the world are willing to help. Let's just focus on that. So unlimited number of people in that world willing to help you creating that next job. It's just about being proactive and reaching out to them on LinkedIn.
Simple message. Hey, curious to learn about your career, your journey, what you're doing now. Okay, sure. In a competitive and uncertain market, what habits help someone stay visible and top of mind with the right people?
What happens is that they will invite you to job interviews that are not advertised. We just had right now, a client, he was a VP at a big, tech company and he was just approached by OpenAI because he not showed relationships and he ended up getting a leadership job over there because he knew about them, they knew about him, and that's pretty much how it works.
You want to stay top of mind all the time. That's what's building your career in the end. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. I agree. Let's bring this podcast full circle. If a listener wants to create real opportunity in the next 90 days without relying on applications, what one networking behavior would you tell them to start doing immediately reaching out to people to start having conversations?
And being curious about them. Don't make it about you. When you speak with an executive with someone, doesn't matter who it is. Make it about them. They will remember you. You will learn about them. That's the way to make, to move forward. Don't make it about you and start, saying, oh, I've done this and I've no.
That's not how you are going to build the relationship. And at the end of the day, it's a world today that is driven by relationships and that is less transactional than it used to be just with the resumes. So we have to learn to communicate communication. Beca became really a superpower since this ai, and it's either you got it and you learn it or you stay behind and you are going to still struggling even though.
It's just about understanding that the game shifted a bit, so we want to adapt. You summed it up perfectly. That's exactly where communication is written driven from the pandemic, I felt was a line in the sand because before the pandemic was transactional and post pandemic, it's more relational.
So yes. It's exactly what I was thinking. Jeremy, this was fantastic. You are a great guest. If somebody wants to get hold of you either to be coached by you or just to say hi, what would they, how would they get hold of you? So either on my LinkedIn you can send their message and I will get back to you over there.
My LinkedIn just typed Dr. Jeremy Gartner or our website career prop.com. Over there you can connect with us and speak with our director of career strategy. If you are qualified, you will have access to lots of free resources to adventure career. So those are the main ways to get in touch with us.
Great. This conversation is a clear reminder that opportunity doesn't always come from applying. It comes from being known, being trusted, and being connected in a market where roles are shifting and competition is increasing. Relationships become your advantage. People who know you, trust you and think of you.
First are the ones who open the doors. Take one step this week, reach out to someone in your network who's closer to decision making than you are. Start a real conversation. Access often begins with a simple connection. If you found value in today's episode, make sure you like, follow and subscribe to Networking Unleashed, building Profitable Connections, so you keep getting the best insights on networking and communication.
And share this episode with someone navigating career changes or looking for the next opportunity. If you like help strengthening your communication and building relationships that create access, visit michael a foreman.com to learn how I can work with professionals, teams, and organizations. So until next time, build access, stay visible, and create connections that open right the right doors.
Jeremy, again, thank you for coming on my podcast. We made it through without any sirens, right? Yeah. Okay. So I'll speak. I will speak with you soon. Thank you so much, Michael.
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A huge thank you to our guests for sharing such incredible insights today, and of course, a big shout out to you, our amazing listeners, for tuning in and spending your time with us. If you're interested in my digital courses being coached or having me come and talk to your company, just go to MichaelAForman.com and fill out the request form.
Remember, networking isn't about being perfect. It's about being present. So take what you've learned today, get out there and make some meaningful connections. If you've enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to subscribe. Leave us a review. Share it with someone who could use a little networking inspiration.
Let's keep the conversation going. You can find me on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, or my website michaelaforman.com/podcast.
Michael is a business networking expert specializing in enhancing professionals' networking and communication skills to drive profitability. As a leading authority in this field, he is highly sought after for his dynamic presentations and workshops. His extensive experience has consistently led to significant improvements in corporate profitability by empowering individuals and organizations to connect more effectively and efficiently.
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