When we consider a new job, we inevitably think of contacting recruiters, trawling job boards and perhaps speaking to our network. One often overlooked channel is all around you in the office – your dear coworkers. I have come up with a few ways you can leverage your colleagues to get your next job, here they are:

Volunteer to give a reference
Tell your work mates that you are very happy to be a reference at the bottom of their resume, complete with your job title, email and phone number. Recruiters and employers love to call you up and take a reference, then casually seeing what you are up to and whether you would entertain a few opportunities. This way you get a win-win situation, you help out as a referee and you get headhunted in the process. Whatever happens to your colleague’s job search, you are now on the radar screen of the recruiter and/or employer and you have established a good personal contact that you would never have got from an online application.

Let them know you are open to suggestions
By the water cooler you will hopefully get the chance to speak openly about your career with colleagues. You want to let it slip that you have been ‘contacted by a headhunter’ and they had some interesting ideas that you are considering. This will let them know that while you are not desperate for a new job, you will keep your options open – perfect information to pass on to their recruiter contact.

Track their movements
Make it your goal to know what career moves people are contemplating. What recruiters are they talking to? Where are they interviewing? Ask recent leavers how they got their jobs. Ask recent joiners what other opportunities they were considering. Again, some people prefer to keep this very hush hush and others are very liberal with information. If you don’t feel like being that nosey in person, simply do some sleuthing online by looking people up on LinkedIn and see what recruiters, HR representative and competitors they are connected to, this will give you a pretty good idea of what the situation is.

Conclusion
These were only five methods you can leverage your colleagues, I am sure you can think of a lot more. The point is that everyone around can help you with your job search, don’t just rely on one channel for your search. You will only land your dream job if you really work smart and hard at it, you owe it to yourself to get that job that you deserve.