Let’s say you want to work at Company X.

But you don’t know anyone at Company X.

How do you approach Company X directly, rather than submit your resume by email and hope to get noticed … like all the other supplicants? 

You do it the same way the Army crosses a river: You build a bridge.

Here are smart, specific tips to help you build bridges to employers you want to work for — even if you don’t know anyone there — from a posting by tech recruiter Tyler Colby Hill on LinkedIn Answers:

Choose a company you think you would like. Then, using LinkedIn, find someone within that company who already does the job you think you would like.

Send an email asking for specific advice (not a job).

Be up front in your first sentence about who you are and why you are writing. (Example: I’m a student at … interested in entry level PR work. Could you help me with a couple of questions?)

Then say why you selected that person and be specific. (I found your profile in LinkedIn and the work you doing at … really interests me … something that I am considering doing.)

Then ask specific questions, i.e. How did you land your first PR job right out of college? What key things do you look for in an entry-level person? Who should I speak with about intern programs? Make your questions about things you really want to know.

Sometimes people worry about “bothering” someone but what you are doing is exploring a possible business transaction which trades your time, skills and talent for their money.

The idea is to show respect for the person and their time and still get best possible advice there is … from someone really doing the job.

Resource: Guerrilla Job Search Home Study Course.

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These tips, from Barry Miller, interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, are excellent (italicized emphases are mine; my additional comments are in brackets):

What should job hunters avoid doing during the holiday season?
Don’t push for decisions. Many line managers are away, so no final decisions can be made. Focus on relationship-building instead. Also, holiday parties are not a good time to air your problems or to ask for help.

[Don’t ask for help at any party, any time of the year, for God’s sake. Pick 3-5 people you think will be attending whom you want to meet. Research what they do for a living. Find one bit of news, information, or person in your network that you think might help those 3-5 people in their job. Bring that valuable item to the party and give it to them. Do this for 5 people and you canNOT help but get valuable job-search help in return.]

How can job seekers be more productive at a time when many hiring managers are taking time off?
Spend time building your network online — using such professional and social networking sites an LinkedIn and Facebook. And offline, make those calls. There is a myth that holidays are a bad time for networking. It can be a great time, especially after Christmas. Some people are in the office, but there’s not a lot of activity at work, which is a perfect opportunity to set up meetings for January, or perhaps before the new year. Many professionals that I know are also online on the weekends and holidays. Sometimes, that’s the only time they have (to catch up).

Many companies don’t make hiring decisions during this time, so what should job seekers expect?
Even though most companies wait until after the new year (to make a hire), they do interview during the holiday period. They like to get candidates lined up for meetings after the first of the year. And if recruiters are in during the holiday period they like to do screening interviews.

Are there any other things someone who is currently unemployed should be doing over the holidays?
Send greetings and updates to your network. Just by contacting people it reminds them that you are still out there. Often there may be opportunities that are being generated, but people don’t think of you, because they haven’t heard from you.

[The LAST thing you want to do if you’re unemployed is avoid going out to holiday parties, despite how uncomfortable you might feel initially. People want to help. As long as you can clearly tell people what kind of job you seek and the 10-20 employers where you’d be happy working, you’ll be giving others enough information to go on. If nothing about your ideal job is clear to you, on the other hand, it won’t be clear to any of your current friends and potential bosses. So get clear on what you want, then go to more parties — that’s where the people are.]

I have been going through some of my contacts on LinkedIn and Facebook every day, wishing people happy holidays and asking them how they are doing. Opportunities surface when you do this. I’m getting very valuable “free information” about what is happening in the job market. These contacts tell me things that are not in the public domain and you learn things that your competition in the job market may not know.

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Just got back from a networking meeting over coffee with two people: my neighbor and a client.

Both are in the job market.

By the time I had to dash out for another meeting 45 minutes later, I had written down the names of 10 different people I will refer them to and call on their behalf. In addition, they exchanged about 5 names with each other.

That’s 15 solid job leads from one 45-minute networking meeting — one lead every 3 minutes.

How many emails and phone calls would you have to do to get 15 job leads? I estimate 15 phone calls and/or 30 emails, based on my experience helping folks do this since 1996.

That makes networking meetings a pretty valuable use of your time, eh? And don’t even get me started on the difference between meeting live humans and surfing inhuman employment web sites …

How did we come up with so many job leads in our meeting?

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Linkedin is one of my favorite job-hunting tools — it’s a fantastic way to connect with new people who can help you meet your next boss.

But are you using it as a research tool, to uncover new ideas and ways to find jobs?

You ought to — the Answers function is chock full o’ ideas to unblock your creativity and re-energize your job search.

In the example above, look at the two circled areas:

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