Today, in 5 minutes or less, you’ll learn the 3-step “CBA” framework to land job referrals, which can increase the odds of landing a role by as much as 85%.

Plus, the best links and resources on remote work. You’ll learn:

• 💰 The hidden cost of RTO
• 💤 What Gen Z wants out of work and remote work
• 🇯🇵 Japan’s invitation to digital nomads: work remote, live rich

Let’s jump in:

Landing a remote job is hard.

Fully remote LinkedIn job postings are down by 57% from the peak.

Yet remote jobs still get 50% of the applications.

How do you beat the odds?

By getting a referral.

Pretty cool. But… how do you get referrals?

Here’s the 3-step “CBA” process I use (and teach to clients) to land referrals. This works whether you’re reaching out to acquaintances, second-degree connections, or you’re sending a cold DM.

CBA stands for:

• Capture attention
• Build rapport
• Ask

By the end of the newsletter, you’ll have everything you need to land 3 referrals this week.

Let’s jump in.

1/ Capture attention

Before you can do anything, you must capture the reader’s attention.

Nothing else matters if you can’t capture attention: your experience, your resume, your interview skills, etc.

What’s the best way to capture someone’s attention? By talking about their favorite subject:

Themselves.

Here are two scripts you can use:

Script 1

Script 2

Why do these emails capture attention? Because they’re personal. They get surgical about why I’m reaching out to this person, with minimal word count

For example, here’s a cold message I received:

How could I not reply to a message as thoughtful as that?

“Okay Chris, makes sense! But how do you know all of this stuff about this person?”

The answer: research.

Research is the secret sauce. Research is the difference between a delightful treasure waiting for them in the inbox and a piece of spam that deserves to be deleted without a second glance.

Fortunately, we live in a world where people love sharing their favorite moisturizer + sunscreen sets, childhood traumas, and not-so-hot takes with millions of strangers on the internet.

All the tools are free. Take advantage:

• IG
• TikTok
• Google
• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Blog/Medium

Do your research. Dive deep. And you’ll capture their attention.

You’ve captured their attention.

You’ve scheduled a call.

Now what do you do?

You build rapport.

About 20 years ago, there was an entire cottage industry devoted to the art of building rapport. Practitioners were encouraged to “neg” their targets and memorize “openers.”

Fortunately, you don’t have to do any of that. Instead, you can focus on three things:

1. Look for common ground. What do you have in common? If you did your research (see step 1) this is easy.
2. Ask genuine questions. This person has a wealth of experience you can benefit from. Take advantage while you can. Do not ask questions for the sake of asking them.
3. Be interested. Listen. Learn. Ask follow-up questions. This is a skill. Practice it. People can tell when you’re just waiting for your turn to speak. 

Here are 8 questions I use during these types of meetings. These questions focus specifically on remote work cultures. Take what’s useful, discard the rest.

3/ Ask

If you mention you’re interested in an open role at the company, you’ll get 1 of 3 outcomes:

• They offer a referral.  If you impress them, they may offer to refer you for a role.
• You ask for a referral. If you feel you have built rapport, ask.
• They don’t offer, you ask in a follow-up. If you didn’t build enough rapport, you can still ask in a follow-up email.

The ask itself is simple:

Don’t do THIS

No relationship = no referral ask.

If you haven’t, at a minimum, had a conversation with this person, do not ask for a referral.

You haven’t earned it yet.

How to land 3 referrals this week

I’ve been using the CBA framework for years. I’m good at it. And I know it’s never a guarantee.

At best, I expect a 50% response rate and a 50% referral rate. So if I send 10 messages, I expect 2-3 referrals. That’s it.

So if you’re new to this, give yourself a haircut on these percentages and do the math.

For example, let’s say you get a 30% response rate and a 30% referral rate. So for every 10 messages, you can expect 1 referral.

That means to get 3 referrals this week, you need to reach out to at least 30 people.

By following the “CBA” framework (Capture attention, Build rapport, Ask) you’re strategically positioning yourself to receive referrals that could lead to your next opportunity.

This is a game of quality, not just quantity.

Get after it.

That’s a wrap. See you next week 👋