100 Job Strategies
100 Job Strategies · 57 of 100
Speaker List Farming
A conference agenda is a free list of senior people, with their interests attached.
In short
Conference speakers are almost always senior, almost always hiring or influential in hiring, and publicly identified along with the exact topic they care about. The agenda page is a pre-qualified contact list with a built-in conversation opener, and you do not need to attend the event to use it.
The situation
A conference publishes its agenda. Forty speakers, each with a name, a job title, a company and a talk title describing precisely what they think about.
Most people scan it to decide whether to buy a ticket.
It is also a free, structured directory of forty senior practitioners in one field, each one publicly declaring the subject they care enough about to stand on a stage and discuss.
Cold outreach usually fails because you do not know who to contact or what to open with. That page solves both problems at once, and it is available whether or not you attend.
Why this works
Speaking at a conference is a strong signal about a person. It means they are senior enough to be invited, established enough to be recognised, and sufficiently engaged with their field to prepare a talk. It frequently also means they lead a team.
The agenda gives you two things that are normally hard to obtain. The first is a filtered list of the right people: not everyone in an industry, but the ones with standing in it. The second is a genuine opening, because their talk title tells you exactly what they want to discuss.
That second point is what makes the outreach work. Most cold messages fail because they have no natural subject. A message referencing someone's talk has an obvious one, and referring to a person's own work is both flattering and evidence that you paid attention.
The timing is flexible in a useful way. Before the event, speakers are thinking about their topic and reachable. Afterwards, a message about their talk is a natural follow-up — and post-event is less crowded, because anyone who was going to approach them did so at the conference.
Crucially, none of this requires a ticket. The agenda is public, the speakers are named, and the contact happens by message. That makes it one of the few networking strategies available to someone with no budget.
How to run it
- 1
Collect agendas from every relevant conference
Past events count as much as upcoming ones. Several years of agendas across a few conferences produces a substantial list.
- 2
Filter to speakers whose topic overlaps your work
The talk title is the filter. You want people whose stated interest connects to what you do, not simply the most senior names.
- 3
Watch or read the talk before writing
Many conferences publish recordings or slides. Referencing a specific point rather than just the title is what makes the message credible.
- 4
Open with the talk, not with yourself
One or two sentences engaging genuinely with their argument. Only then explain who you are and why you are writing.
- 5
Contact after the event as well as before
Post-conference messages face far less competition, and speakers are often still thinking about the subject.
- 6
Ask a real question rather than for a job
A specific question about their talk gets answered. A request for a role from a stranger usually does not.
What to say
When it does not work
- Generic praise. "Great talk!" with no specific engagement reads as a template and gets ignored like one.
- Not actually watching the talk. Referencing a title without knowing the content collapses the moment they reply with a follow-up question.
- Contacting only the keynote speakers. The most famous names receive the most messages. Mid-level speakers are more reachable and often hiring.
- Leading with the job request. The talk has to be the genuine subject of the first message, not a thin pretext for a request.
- Speakers who no longer work there. Agendas go stale. Check their current role before assuming the company is relevant.
The hardest parts of cold outreach are knowing who to contact and what to say. A conference agenda answers both, for free, without a ticket.
Questions
Do I need to attend the conference for this to work?
No, and that is much of the appeal. Agendas are published publicly, speakers are named with their roles and companies, and many conferences release recordings or slides afterwards at no cost. The outreach happens by message rather than in person, so the entire strategy is available to someone who cannot afford a ticket. Attending adds the option of meeting people directly, but it is not required for the core approach.
Are past conference agendas as useful as upcoming ones?
Frequently more useful, because recordings and slides are usually available, which lets you engage with the actual content rather than just a title. Post-event outreach also faces considerably less competition, since anyone inclined to approach a speaker generally does so at the event itself. The one caution is that agendas go stale: check whether a speaker still works at the company listed before framing your message around it.
Should I target keynote speakers or smaller sessions?
Generally the smaller sessions. Keynote speakers are the most visible names on the agenda and receive correspondingly more unsolicited contact, which makes a response less likely. Speakers in breakout tracks and smaller sessions are typically senior practitioners running real teams, are far less inundated, and are frequently more directly relevant to the work you want to do. The filter that matters is topic overlap rather than prominence.
How do I avoid sounding like every other person who messages them?
Engage with a specific point from the talk rather than praising it generally, which requires actually watching or reading it. A message that responds to a particular argument, asks a genuine question about it, or offers a counterexample from your own experience is immediately distinguishable from the generic appreciation speakers receive constantly. The job request, if you make one, belongs after that engagement rather than as the opening.
More from 100 Job Strategies
- Backfill Sniping
- The Funding Lag
- The Unsolicited Audit
- The Vendor Side Door
- Repost Archaeology
- Ex-Employee Networks
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