One thing I need to get my head around as I work on finding full-time employment is how different types of introductions to people and organizations have varying timelines. “Warm” introductions - personal contacts within the organization, an email introduction to the correct recruiter - have been primed when the person connecting you has high trust with both of the people they are connecting. They are more likely to move forward at the speed of a typical work conversation. The energy is more cordial and less sales-like.

Cold applying and recruiter outreach, well, there is zero priming. You’re building a relationship. The recruiter or hiring manager doesn’t know you; the person or machine sorting resumes has an internal logic you can only surmise based upon the job description. With warm introductions, there’s no sorting step at all! So assuming that you’ve tuned things with precision, that step takes even more time. Kind of exhausting, but this is the work!

In the parlance of the kitchen, we need to be putting those pans on the stove first thing - before we handle in-flight communications or initiate contact based on warm introductions. They’re called “cold” introductions for a reason, right? They’re going to take longer to get to the right temperature.

I’m sure a lot of people intuit this on their own, but I think the shift from full-time employment can be a bit jarring when it comes to communication. People dropping communication from someone who is a teammate is bad form. Dropping communication from some stranger, well that is just life.

Realizing that less certain projects take longer to develop is a skill; starting despite the nebulousness is a related but different skill. There are things I want to accomplish but of which I have little knowledge (e.g., who is the recruiter or hiring manager? Is this a place I would like to work at? All unknowns when you don’t have a connection). Taking time to research the unknown and formulate a next step before engaging in other well-defined tasks (though tempting to do these first!) can go a long way.