Work is a Verb
A newsletter by
There is a message sitting in my LinkedIn inbox from someone I have never met. It is friendly. It mentions a post I wrote and says something reasonable about it. It asks for nothing at all.
I already know what the second message says. So do you. Everyone has been on both ends of this, if not on LinkedIn then in every sales email that opened with a compliment before it got to the point. The friendly "loved your post" note does not read as a compliment. It reads as a less-than-genuine foot in the door. I don't know if they're after my money or my time, but I've been trained to assume it's one or the other.
That is the part the networking advice leaves out. People tell you to reach out to recruiters and hiring managers, but what worked a few years ago gets lost in an inbox full of AI spam today.
These days, most direct messages are going to be perceived as an ask with a delay built in. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing, but you're going to have to approach it differently for it to work.
This is worth getting right, because the job board queue is the worst-converting way into a company. The 2025 numbers from Gem, an applicant tracking system provider, put recruiter-sourced candidates at five times the hire rate of a cold application. Even more surprisingly, nearly half of sourced hires turn out to be people already sitting in the company's files from an earlier application.
So what can you actually give a senior stranger? Not money. Not time they asked for. Not a favor they need. There is exactly one thing on the list, and most people scroll straight past it.
Reach.
Engagement is what makes a post travel. A substantive comment on a recruiter's post spends your attention on their behalf, in public, with nothing requested in return. It is the only move available to you that:
- Virtually guarantees they will both see your name and have a positive association with it
- Adds value for them by expanding the reach of their post (nobody is posting on LinkedIn for the love of the game)
- Starts a genuine, value-add relationship that can lead to a DM later, where you're much more likely to be recognized and get an answer
I am not recommending this from the outside; I follow the same rules. I comment on LinkedIn to support the people who support me, and my comments drive more impressions, Remotivated sign-ups, and newsletter subscribers than my actual posts do.
When I'm reaching out to HR leaders about our services, I always try to add value before I ask them for anything, including their time.
What recently made me realize how effective this is, though, was that it works on me too. Running a remote job platform, I get my fair share of DMs from people wanting help of some kind. Some are AI spam, some are totally genuine, but either way there's not enough time in the day for me to fully engage with it all.
But I'm totally willing to engage with people I recognize: names from LinkedIn, newsletter subscribers, platform users.
Which is actually pretty weird if you think about it. They're still strangers, after all. But they've shown an interest in my work, and they've made me feel validated. It's a completely different dynamic.
If you're trying to work on networking but the very thought makes you feel sick, here's the easy way to get started: three meaningful comments, one message to a peer, one give-first action, in thirty to sixty minutes. Less than one doom-scroll. The full rhythm is written up here, including what to do once someone actually knows your name.
Two honest caveats. Relationships built this way turn into introductions in roughly six to eight weeks, which is brutal timing if you needed work yesterday. I get that.
But this is about cultivation, not overnight results, and it's never too late to start.
