Networking - can I follow up?

[Anonymous]

If someone in your network (not a friend but a guy who knew you from college and took 30 min to talk to you) said he’d put you in touch with someone at another company (again - not his friend but a professional colleague) because that company may be a fit (or may not) and may be looking, is there any way to follow up on that? I sent him a resume after we chatted and he responded and said he will send it as discussed.

I obviously don’t know how he has/will position it. As I think I made clear to him, I’d love to just have a conversation with someone at that company even if they’re not looking/I’m not a right fit right now. It’s possible though that a resume got forwarded, the company looked at it and said “yeah this isn’t who we want” and that’s that. Any way to follow up? Basically I’m just looking for a networking meeting there as a foot in the door and I don’t want them to think I only want an interview.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If someone in your network (not a friend but a guy who knew you from college and took 30 min to talk to you) said he’d put you in touch with someone at another company (again - not his friend but a professional colleague) because that company may be a fit (or may not) and may be looking, is there any way to follow up on that? I sent him a resume after we chatted and he responded and said he will send it as discussed.

I obviously don’t know how he has/will position it. As I think I made clear to him, I’d love to just have a conversation with someone at that company even if they’re not looking/I’m not a right fit right now. It’s possible though that a resume got forwarded, the company looked at it and said “yeah this isn’t who we want” and that’s that. Any way to follow up? Basically I’m just looking for a networking meeting there as a foot in the door and I don’t want them to think I only want an interview.

Yes. Send him an email: "X, it was so nice to see you the other day. Thanks again for passing on my resume. I'd love to talk with [contact at other company] to learn more about [other company]. Would you mind putting me in touch? Thanks, Pookie."

[Anonymous]

If the guy you chatted with seemed interested in helping, there's nothing wrong with following up though give it at least 7-10 days. You don't want to be that person who hands off a resume to your contact on Monday, expects him to hand it off to his contact on Tues and expect to be in touch with the other co. by Thursday. Sometimes it works that way but more often people do those calls/meetings when their schedules allow which may not be immediate.

It's a balance between not falling off the radar and waiting so long that people forget.

[Anonymous]

I'd say give it at least two weeks. One week for me to send it on, one week for the other person to decide whether to take action. Unless there's an active job posting out there, people who follow up too soon fall lower on my priority list our come across as pushy.

[Anonymous]

I'd also write your email to him so he could forward it along vs having to figure out what info to pass along.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd say give it at least two weeks. One week for me to send it on, one week for the other person to decide whether to take action. Unless there's an active job posting out there, people who follow up too soon fall lower on my priority list our come across as pushy.

OP here - thanks. He said last week that he would send it but I obviously don't know if it's out yet or the other person has responded. I agree that I don't want to be pushy. As for a job posting - I want to chat w this place because my contact said they may be looking and I'd like to see if my skills match up in any way but I've looked and I don't see any actual job posting anywhere - on their website, linkedin, the major job search aggregators which pick up postings etc. I'm not surprised as it's a 10-15 person company which I think gets resumes by word of mouth often. So there's no active "deadline" that I must meet and this isn't a matter of my contact pushing a resume for a posting. I don't want to wait so long as to miss a shot, nor be so pushy that either party is annoyed enough to not want to chat - as I find this co interesting for the long term as well.