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Toronto ad fish 🤠 I’ve spent most of my career working as a copywriter in London (6 years here, 2 years Toronto) and the market is pretty different here. I’m planning on moving back home but wondered….how do you find work in Toronto? Agencies barely post openings, is the recruiter scene strong? Is it mostly who you know?
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“Hey I chatted with this person and they seemed interesting. If you have something might be worth a chat. Full disclosure I’ve never worked with them personally.”
This. You can help them without sticking your own neck out.
I’ve found it’s best to interview them yourself first and then you can confirm with them if you will be able to refer them - similar to an actual interview process. If you decide to refer them, you can tell HR that you are acquaintances and they seemed good after one chat. That covers your butt if they suck.
If you’re not comfortable, just say you don’t do referrals unless you have worked together and offer to review their book instead.
I put myself in their shoes and try to help as much as possible because it’s hard to get in.
This is the way. It’s an informal vibe chat essentially.
I tell them that I can’t (and won’t) refer anybody I haven’t worked with, because it won’t have any meaning for our HR team.
I ignore them unless I know them or someone I respect referred them to me
I won’t recommend people I don’t know. You can never really verify their actual working style or see their personality or even know if their book is actually their own work, without meeting or knowing people in their circle who vouch for them.
I mentor students and always happy to recommend them, but would never put my reputation on the line for a stranger on LinkedIn. Especially considering 90% of those messages are just copy paste chat gpt slop anyways.
Community Builder
I only refer people I’ve worked with. I have a couple of students reach out and help with portfolio review, I’ll give them advice on their LI, have a coffee chat etc.
When they fix or have a good portfolio I’ll make a LI post. Btw are schools teaching portfolio classes, some I’ve seen are not good at all.
As a job seeker the only thing I ask people I don’t know IRL, but are LI connections is a coffee/zoom or maybe an email to send my resume. Even if I have an ATS optimized resume, you can’t really be sure your resume got to them. Some of their systems, don’t send the “we got your resume” conf. email.
depending
Community Builder
If I have a friend that we haven’t worked together I would ask for an introduction on Linkedin.
Community Builder
PS: I would never ghost anyone. Copy/paste hey sorry I’m busy… is better than taking the time to message and not get a reply.
Even if they used ai, use ai to write the reply. Being on the other side (job-seeker) really sucks and you never now when you can be down on your luck.