Network,
network, network, and let people know you are out of work. They can't help you if they don't know
you need to make a change.
--Academic administrator, after a
successful search
In one of the many
conversations I had with knowledgeable advisers during the design phase of this
project, a good friend who is also an experienced human resources professional,
told me, "You're going to hear some harsh judgments leveled against corporations that let someone go 'just
before Christmas;' it often happens that way, and when it does, the corporation
could be doing the person a favor." He went on to explain that waiting until mid-January to break the news
may appear to be more "humane," but that would mean "depriving the person of the
chance to take advantage of the many networking opportunities that the holiday
social events offer." The parties
and the social contacts tend to dry up in mid-January; that means fewer
opportunities to tell the world you are out of work and looking for a job.
"Networking,
networking, networking," was the
drum-beat reply I received to inquiries made of managers who successfully
negotiated their respective transitions. I asked, of course, what they considered essential for an effective job
campaign. No one failed to stress the importance of networking. One of America's top corporate
executives, who had been through a couple of involuntary separations, told me:
"The only way you get a top job is from people you've met somewhere along the
way." The people you meet "along
the way" make up your network. A
senior financial executive, adding his voice to the "Network, Network, Network!"
chorus, added the homey reminder that you have to "kiss a lot of frogs to find a
prince."
The term "networking"
is self-explanatory. It means
assembling an initial list of contacts and broadening that list
continuously. One relatively young
and very systematic job-seeker told me he simply placed 26 dividers (one for
each letter of the alphabet) into a loose-leaf binder and then went back through
his telephone logs for the past five years. He lifted all the names associated with
calls placed or received, arranged them in alphabetical order, put them in the
binder, and started to make the calls.
Others begin at
home--with their Christmas-card lists and their high-school and college alumni
directories. At the office, often
when "cleaning out the desk," departing managers sometimes discover to their
surprise that they have accumulated hundreds of business cards. Unmarked, unannotated cards offer mute
witness to the no-longer working hypothesis that "it can never happen to
me." If you had the foresight to
make notes on the cards and arrange them in some kind of order by industry or
geography, you will have given yourself a head-start on the important
construction project of building your network.
The outplacement firm
Jannotta, Bray & Associates provides its clients with an "Executive
Workbook," fourteen chapters of detailed and helpful information designed to
facilitate the job search. An
entire chapter is devoted to "Contacts," what I've been discussing here as
networking. The higher a client's
last salary, according to Jannotta Bray, the more likely that the next
opportunity will be identified as the result of a contact. Why? "Because only 20 to 30 percent of the
available executive positions are ever advertised in a publication or listed
with a search firm. The other 70 to
80 percent are frequently referred to as the 'hidden job market.'" You find your way around in the hidden
job market with the help of friends, persons whom others are asking, "Who do you
know who might fill this position?"
Jannotta Bray has the
most extensive memory prompter I've seen to assist a person in putting together
a network. Here are the categories:
Friends (take a look at your holiday card list); Neighbors (current and past);
Social acquaintances: golf, swim, tennis, social club members, PTA members;
Classmates: from any level of school; Other college alumni (Can you get a list
of those living locally?); Teachers: your college professors; Your children's
teachers; Anybody you wrote a check to in the past year (tradesperson, drugstore
owner, barbershop/hairdresser, doctor, dentist, optician, therapist, lawyer,
accountant, real estate agent, insurance representative, stock broker, travel
agent; Manager of the local branch of your bank; Co-workers and former
co-workers; Current and former employees and bosses; Relatives--even your
in-laws; Politicians (Local leaders often are business people or professionals
in town and know everybody); Administrative assistant to your Congressional
representatives; Local town council members; Chamber of Commerce executives in
town; Clergy; Members of your church or synagogue; Professional organization
executives; Trade association executives; Other members of your professional
societies; People you met at conventions; Speakers at meetings you have
attended; Business club executives and members (Rotary, Kiwanis); Other career
transition clients and consultants; Salespeople, customers, clients, suppliers
you dealt with in previous positions; Spouse's contacts; People whose business
cards you have collected; Others.
Phew! They advise that you
arrange the contacts in order of likely effectiveness, but warn: "Be careful,
however, not to eliminate people too quickly.... Often a fairly unlikely source
may have a relative or friend, unknown to you, who can open that key
door."
The point of it all is
to find more and more potential contacts to potential employers. They are not likely first to contact
you, unless those who know you well also know you have been or are about to be
separated. Few will be as fortunate
as a very senior executive at one of America's best-known corporations who,
shortly after learning he had been by-passed for the chairmanship, received a
call from a nearby university president who told him, "I hear they're about to
make a big mistake over there. I
can't do anything about that and didn't call to discuss it. I'm calling to
invite you to take a professorship here." This, of course, is far from the typical case.
I should note, by the way, that when I
spoke to this executive six years later and found him happily ensconced in a
business school deanship at another university, he remained warmly appreciative
of the call that came when he was "tired, disappointed, and in need of someone
to verify my capabilities." We all
know the feeling!
He also told me that
his experience convinced him of the importance of having diverse interests while
holding a top-level executive responsibility. Executives who provide leadership in the
local United Way campaign, for example, or who are involved with universities,
hospitals, civic groups, the arts and other forms of public or community
service, will be working with other influential volunteers who easily and
naturally can become part of one's network. Pity the isolated, workaholic executive
who remains aloof from outside involvements only to find, when involuntary
separation comes, that no outside involvements then means no outside contacts
now. Even worse is the discovery
that the inside, on-the-job contacts have vanished with the disappearance of the
job. Those who have "been there"
will tell you that outside involvements are in your personal as well as
organizational interest. As an
ex-IBMer told me, "Most businesses, and most positions within them, focus
inwardly, despite their claims to be always 'scanning the environment.' Your
contacts tend to reside within the business. These inwardly-focused people are the
least helpful when it becomes necessary for you to 'network' in order to find a
new position." Constructing the network is a pencil-and-paper project that can begin
immediately, even before you feel like talking to anyone. The computer enables you to do the job
in more sophisticated fashion. You can, of course, use a personal computer
simply to compile and organize your list of contacts. Or, if you are capable of logging-on to
computer on-line services like CompuServe and Prodigy, you can utilize "bulletin
boards" and on-line job banks for an electronic job search. The task, whether
high- or low-tech, involves memory, records, and reaching out--not as a
mendicant (although you should never be too proud to ask), but as a merchant of
your own potential either to meet the needs of a potential employer, or match
the strengths of a potential business partner, or find the investors you need to
back you in a new venture.
In Parting
Company (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), William Morin and James Cabrera
draw on their extensive outplacement experience (they describe themselves as
"career continuation" specialists) to make two important points about
networking. First, they know from
the experience of their Drake Beam Morin clients all across the country that
networking--personal contacts--accounts for 70 percent of the success stories in
finding new jobs. Second, before
any clients place calls or send out resumes, they must "memorize the first two
rules of networking: Never ask for a job; always ask for suggestions. Don't ask for favors; ask for advice."
Asking for advice sounds to me a
lot like asking for a favor, but I wouldn't strain over the distinction. The point to keep in mind is that you
need network contacts to point you in the direction of jobs, not to provide you
with the job itself.
People Like to Help
A "Job Search Skills
Workbook," placed in the hands of clients by Jannotta, Bray & Associates,
points out that networking is "the fastest way to locate a good mechanic, a good
doctor, and a good job.'" And then these outplacement experts explain that networking is a request
for information, not a straight-out request for employment. "Networking is asking for a small
favor--some time, information, and advice." The Workbook reminds the job seeker that
asking straight-out for a job in conversations with network contacts seldom
works for two fairly obvious reasons. First, chances are small that an available job is there waiting for
you. Second, people tend to shy
away from job requests, even people who want to help you. They feel uncomfortable listening to
your "pitch" when aimed directly at them. They do not, however, mind responding to a request for a "small
favor." And it is safe to presume
that just about anyone you know wants to help.
A woman of 42, who lost
her job as corporate manager of communications, told me: "I was really burned
out. I'd worked 11 hour days for
seven months. I took time off
before I started looking, because I needed to recharge my batteries." When she was ready, she discovered that
"networking is the way to go. It is
the most effective job-hunting technique. It also gets you out talking to people; it keeps you
sharp."
Networking works in an
infinite variety of ways. A human
resources executive who had personally benefitted from networking resolved, in
the spirit of gratitude, to make himself available to assist others in the Tampa
area where he was then working. He
received a call one day from a woman he did not know; she had been referred to
him by a mutual friend. Just from
talking to her on the phone, he knew she was really down so he decided he would
call her about three times a week, around 9:30 in the morning, and ask: "What
are you doing today? How many
people have you called? How many
resumes have you sent out? I'm
going to call you in a day or two and find out where you are." He did that three days a week for about
six months, and finally she found a job. She thanked him, of course, but the two had never met face to face; he
did not know what she looked like. Nor did he know that the job she got was in the same office tower where
he worked.
Some months later the
company he worked for was acquired by another company and he, along with three
other top managers, was let go. "I
was lucky enough to be a top manager," he commented to me. And he went on to say that somehow or
other, the word of his job loss went back to the woman he had helped. She called
a friend of hers in Nashville, who in turn called a friend in Tampa, "and that
guy called me out of the blue to say, 'I understand you're looking for a job;
so-and-so has recommended you and I'm wondering if you would like to come and
talk to me.'" He still hadn't met
the lady whom he had helped and who was now trying to be helpful in return; nor
was he immediately inclined to go for the interview, so he deferred. Continuing
the story in his own words: "Then at a Christmas party that I had not wanted to
attend because I was unemployed, and low, and all that--you just have to kind of
force yourself in those situations because it's an opportunity to meet people,
that's why I went. She was at that
Christmas party and we met for the first time. She pressed me to follow up on
the call I had received. I went for
the job interview and learned that the job was way below my background. But the problem that the guy had was
that they were selling the company and his director of human resources left in
the middle because he didn't want to have to deal with laying off his
friends. So when the job-offer was
made to me, I said, 'The pay is about half of what I have made and would expect
to make, and you know the job will run only for a year, at best. Here's what I'll do.
I'll consult with you three days a week
and charge you an hourly rate that will amount to double what you are
offering. Don't pay me any
benefits; for the next ten months you need the top end of the job. You need communication, you need
compassion, you need people talking to managers. I will attend to that as if I
were your director of human resources, but I'm only going to come in three days
a week. Let's sign a ten month contract and see where that goes. At the end of ten months, you won't need
me any more." They agreed; he had
two days a week for other pursuits--"and that was the beginning of my consulting
business."
The most valuable part
of the consulting, he told me, was the personal reassurance. "Instead of being on the street, I was
in an office where somebody cared about what I said, and I was earning good
money during a ten-month job search. He interviewed on Mondays and Fridays and was working Tuesday through
Thursday, and "feeling a lot better" about himself.
The network linkage to
the person in Tampa he hardly even knew gave him the consulting job. The firm for which he was consulting was
bought by Cigna, a Philadelphia company, which had a job they couldn't fill in
Philadelphia. "I had lived in Philadelphia for 43 years before moving to Tampa,"
he said. "When they came to me with
an offer, that conversation was over in 15 minutes and I soon found myself back
in Philadelphia in a major job." It
all began with one link in a network chain.
Since "consulting" was
part of that story, this is as good a place as any to pass along advice offered
by a communications executive to persons in transition who write "Consultant" on
the top of their resumes: "Never say you are a consultant, unless you are.
And if you can't say, 'I'm consulting
for...' a corporation you can name, don't say anything at all about
consulting."
Those who believe
"consultant" sounds impressive should talk to a friend of mine whose son injured his leg
during a family skiing vacation. When the father took his son to a nearby
hospital Emergency Room, an admitting clerk asked what he did for a living.
"I'm a consultant," said the
father. "Is anyone in the family
employed?" the clerk inquired. He
had Blue Cross/Blue Shield coverage, but the hospital would not take it. He had to put the charge on his
(verified) VISA card.
A healthcare executive,
who turned to consulting in New Jersey while hoping to return to permanent
hospital-based employment, told me he found the work to be "like Mexican
stoop-labor; I now feel very close to the asparagus cutters."
Enough for the moment
about consulting; one additional Christmas story is worth repeating. It involved me personally and
illustrates how networks function.
For many years, during
the week after Christmas, I've been joining about a half dozen of my close
friends from college days, and their wives, for a dinner party. Many years ago, as one of those pleasant
gatherings was breaking up, a classmate took me
aside, pulled some folded papers from his pocket
and, out of both sight and hearing of the others, asked if I would take his
resume with me and keep him in mind if I heard of an opening for someone with
his background and experience. He
had liquidated a successful automobile sales-and-service operation about a year
before, thinking he would have no difficulty finding something new and
challenging to do. One of the
reasons he decided to get out of the automobile business was the very high
interest rates then prevailing; the "floor plan" offered by banks to dealers
squeezed profit margins excessively. That and other pressures convinced him it would be a good move to get out
of automobiles. He had been out for
about a year.
As we spoke, I glanced
at the resume and noticed that it was not possible to estimate his age from the
information summarized there. When
I commented that if a career summary raises questions instead of providing
answers, it could hurt more than help, he replied: "Who wants to take a look at
a guy who is 51?"
The very next day, in
another city at a Sunday brunch hosted by a bank chairman on whose board I
served, I found myself seated next to a man in the oil business. Someone at the table commented on the
high interest rates that showed no sign of breaking and were hurting
business. I mentioned that I had
just been talking to a friend who was a "refugee" from the automobile business
because of high interest rates, among other things. The oil man expressed interest and
inquired about my friend's identity. When he heard the name, he asked if there had been a leasing business
attached to the sales-and-service operation. It turned out that he knew my friend
slightly, was aware of his reputation, and wondered if I could obtain for him a
copy of my friend's resume! He had
a friend, a major manufacturer of gasoline service-station pumps, who was
looking for a general sales manager. My classmate got the job.
Your network should not
be limited simply to what I've referred to earlier as "functional friends,"
those you meet on the job or get to know through your work. Special links in anyone's network will
be those close friends to whom you can turn when you want to talk and need
advice. A construction company
executive put it succinctly: "Networking works--keep up those contacts at all
times." Expanding a bit on that, he
made that point that you should "talk to everyone, and from those conversations
you will learn what your main assets and talents really are; then you can devise
your marketing strategy. Your
hardest sale is selling yourself."
A fired company
president, the one whose chairman thought he ought to get all his bad news on
the same day, told me how he had been supported by many good friends. Two, he told me, "were fantastic."
One was the first he called when he lost
his job. They went for a walk together and had an hour's conversation before the
ousted executive went home. After
several consulting jobs and the erosion of savings, he met with this same friend
again and disclosed his plans to move in with relatives and rent out his
home. "No way," said the friend,
"I'll pick up your mortgage payments." Another friend simply gave him an envelope containing a letter of support
and a check for $20,000, which the surprised and grateful recipient eventually
returned. More important to him, he
said, was the reassuring support of personal friendship.
After talking it over
with close friends, this job-seeker decided to remove "president" from his
resume. He didn't attempt to disguise the fact that he had been with that
particular company, but he had come to see the company that fired him three
weeks after giving him the largest salary increase he had ever received, as
"dysfunctional," and thought it better to describe himself as a person having
"ten years of sales and executive experience." Through another friend, a financial and
legal consultant to a company that was being sold, he was invited to join that
organization as a senior sales and marketing executive.
In the same vein, a
corporate communications executive found that "friends were not only key in
terms of personal support, but also key proactive network enlargers. In fact, a friend uncovered for me the
job I now hold." A repositioned
personnel director told me, "Support from friends and business contacts was
overwhelming to me; they kept me afloat, helped me retain my self-worth and
dignity, and--above all--my hope."
"Given my search
experience, I'd say forget replying to classified ads even in local
publications," said a college vice president and treasurer who lost his job due
to "personality differences." "Network, network, network, and let people know you are out of work.
They can't help you if they don't know
you need to make a change." He went
on to relate an interesting story in tracing the "helps" he received. "I have a friend whom I was able to help
when he was a student and I later employed him on my staff. Eventually, I had to terminate him in a
staff-reduction situation, but brought him back as a consultant. By the time my termination was at hand,
his business was flourishing. He
provided me with a base from which to operate, encouragement to keep me going,
and an opportunity to get some health insurance when I was out of work." Your network can become your safety
net!
Some Thoughts about Outplacement
I've mentioned
"outplacement," the professional service aimed at facilitating career
continuation, at various points in this narrative. It is a service I knew little about as I
began working on the book; it is one I've grown to respect a great deal as I've
met men and women who are its beneficiaries. Strictly speaking, outplacement
counselors are not part of your personal network. But they assist you in building a
network of contacts and normally become so supportive and helpful in motivating
you to pursue your job campaign that they become significant "reference points"
on that 360-degree circumference of your personal job-finding compass. In effect, that circumference traces out
all your network contacts, so you find yourself thinking of your outplacement
counselor as part of your own personal network. A general manager, out of work at 51
after 33 years with the same company, found outplacement services so valuable he
now says, "If you don't have outplacement counseling provided to you as part of
your severance, it may be wise to pay for it yourself as an investment for the
future."
Outplacement amounted
to a "life raft" for one of my respondents; it enabled him to feel secure while
being "forced to think of what I really wanted to do." A less appreciative and far less
optimistic viewpoint is reflected in another's comment that the outplacement
office is "death row--where the living dead get buried." I also heard an in-house outplacement
center like the Hawaiian Room you read about in the Foreword to this book,
referred to as "the silver bullet room." A corrective to that viewpoint was provided by a former industrial
executive, by-passed for the chairmanship of his manufacturing company, and now
a consultant and provider of outplacement services. I interviewed him in the conference room
of his office suite. "We hold the
wake," he said, "here in this room." And with a sweep of the hand added: "We take care of hanging the crepe;
we then help the client get on with the business of life."
On the wall of her New
York City office, outplacement counselor Rose Begnal, of Jannotta Bray, hangs a
print of the familiar Norman Rockwell painting of himself in front of an easel
and mirror, doing a self-portrait. Imposed on the print, for Rose Begnal's purposes in working with clients,
are the words: "Every job is a self-portrait of the person who did it." She assumes, she told me, that her
clients bring with them good reputations or "portraits" from past employment;
the trick is now to project that portrait into another setting. "I try to put a tourniquet on the
negativism," she said, "so that it doesn't bleed into the job search." And she begins by asking them what they
would like to say to the person who fired them. With that out and on the table, she
tries to frame the problem as a business decision, the result of downsizing or
relocation, to explain why the client is sitting there. And then she asks them, "Now look, are
you going to be fun to work with?"
Dr. Robert M. Hecht, of
Lee Hecht Harrison, Inc., another top outplacement firm, explained to me the
three elements of outplacement: (1) one-on-one counseling and advice about "what
to do next;" (2) the provision of support services--secretarial, phone, fax,
research; and (3) providing office space, a base to work from, a place where
clients can interact with job-seeking peers as well as with professional
counselors. (One executive in my sample related to me how important it was for
him to get out of his house each working day because the house, in those
daylight hours, had become for him a symbol of his personal failure.) The employer usually pays for this as
part of the severance package; a typical fee would be 15% of one year's cash
compensation for continuous outplacement service until a job is found, although
fees and length of support service vary.
Recently, outplacement
firms have become active in "job development" initiatives; they call around and
inquire about openings that can be brought to the attention of their clients,
but responsibility for "going out to get the job" remains with the individual
client. This "job bank" is
typically updated every few weeks.
Periodically, Lee Hecht
Harrison circulates among potential employers at no cost and with no fee for
use, a "Directory of Executive Talent." It lists clients by number code along
with a four-line profile of their skills, experience, and most recent
compensation levels. Interested
potential employers can fax requests for the full resume and then follow-up as
they wish with the job-seeker.
In these days of mass
white-collar layoffs, these firms are doing group outplacement, running seminars
and offering related counseling on the employer's site for employees who have
been or soon will be told that they will be released. (Lee Hecht Harrison's brochure
advertising its "group services" offerings, reads: "Plotting a steady course
through untroubled waters is challenging enough...but holding steady in the
winds of change that accompany a corporate restructuring requires an expert at
the helm." The message is enhanced
with photographs of sailboats on both calm and stormy
seas.
Bob Hecht tells anyone
willing to listen that it is essential "to keep your network up." He adds, "The worst thing you can hear
as an outplacement counselor is 'I don't know anybody.'"
A woman who was at
first "devastated" by loss of her executive position told me that someone
advised her to sit down and "make a list" of everyone she knew. "I don't know anybody," was her response
to that suggestion. But she was
pressed to do it and eventually produced a list that ran 56 pages in
length! She later found herself
advising others who were looking for work to "tell everybody; tell absolutely
everyone you need a job." When she
finally found her new job, she told me, "I had to go all over the place to
spread the good news--the pet store, the shoe repair, the Chinese laundry, the
liquor store; all those people knew I was looking for work." The day she got her new job she made 92
phone calls to people in her network. "And this is someone who didn't know anybody," she said with a
smile.
An outplacement
counselor told me he thinks women are better than men at networking. Men have more of a problem, he said,
"because of the macho thing." One
of his clients did exactly what millions of moviegoers saw Jack Lemmon do in
"The Prisoner of Second Avenue"--he went six weeks without even telling his wife
that he had lost his job. This
real-life macho later realized, "I
denied her the opportunity to mourn with me." He should also have known that the job
quest goes better and faster when the spouse is involved in the process.
Richard Hanscom, a vice
president for production at a large bakery corporation in Cleveland, lost his
job and was given outplacement assistance. He found it unsatisfactory and in the process came to see a need for
"something better" for unemployed managers in the Cleveland area. So he wound up running the
not-for-profit Career Initiatives Center. His own separation taught him how important it is to "constantly
network." He adds: "When no actual
job interviews are coming your way, you can always network. When doing your job search, you have to
get out of the house and go to an office facility with people around. From that kind of base, go anywhere that
jobs are being discussed. That kind
of activity together with research, occasional interviews, regular exercise, and
building your network contacts, amounts to a full day's work, and that's exactly
what you need in those difficult days in between jobs." He estimates that about 80 percent of
new jobs are obtained through networking.
At the Career
Initiatives Center (CIC), Dick Hanscom defines "networking" for his clients this
way: "Meeting people who you have selected to get you into your target
companies, or referrals you get from 'advice/referral interviews' that can
introduce you to opportunities in the hidden job market." An "advice/referral interview" is a
method for enlarging your network. You ask to see someone, a person who has or is close to one who has the
power to hire; you want to see that
person not to ask for a job, but to get advice. You thus gain more accurate and current
information about the workplace. You get help in defining or redefining your job target, and, in the
process, you keep your interview skills sharpened for the real
thing.
CIC clients, who need
to be convinced, are presented with a sheet listing a dozen reasons why they
should network:
1. To identify unadvertised
jobs.
2. To obtain names of company contacts
and bridge contacts.
3. To identify
and learn about specific hiring agents.
4. To come face-to-face with potential
employers.
5. To demonstrate visibility and
availability.
6. To increase list of target
companies.
7. To identify changes and needs in the
workplace.
8. To stay current with economic and
industry information:
competition, markets,
products, services, trends,
developments, changes, and technology.
9. To learn about specific companies:
markets, competition,
organizational structure, people,
culture,
and needs.
10. To create a new
position (your job).
11. To determine market
salary range for positions.
12. To develop a
relationship with networkers and to meet
someone who may recommend
you for an open position.
In the view of one of
my respondents, a systematic, highly technical person, today's job-seeker is
confronted with a "terribly inefficient system" within which to look for work.
"As crazy as it seems, we really do have a paleolithic job search/connection
process in this 'high tech' country. Personal networking, which has been done for centuries, still yields most
job contacts--70 percent or so, by most accounts."
For a development
officer who experienced a long stretch of idleness between jobs at a university
and a healthcare foundation, "networking was the key. Every friend, associate, acquaintance,
et. al. were part of the network." Once the phone numbers and addresses are lined up, he said, you should
"try to set up three appointments every day. I spent too much time alone.
In one hour of idleness, I can put
myself in a negative- thinking mode for a day--or longer." A publishing executive, who has been
through all this himself, now spends a lot of time helping others through
support groups. He remarked, "You
have to have something to counter the loneliness; being unemployed is like
having leprosy."
A creative form of
networking was devised by a dislocated manufacturing manager who belonged to a
Chicago support group of unemployed white-collar executives. At first, he declared himself to be a
"consultant" and had a business card--his name "& Associates, Management
Consultants" printed. Not an
uncommon step for ousted executives to take as part of a rebound strategy.
It then occurred to him to form a "firm"
with four "partners," all four being out of work and members of the same support
group. The firm's name, derived
from the first initials of the four founding partners' last names, appeared on
an attractive business card; an informative brochure made the rounds of
potential clients known to the partners from their previous bases of
employment. As engagements came and
went, so did "partners," who were free to follow any employment leads the
consulting opportunities produced. As partners rotated in and out, new business cards were printed up.
The "firm" served as a mini-support
group and a locus for the exchange of ideas and encouragement, not to mention
occasional consulting fees.
The First Move Is Yours
Although networking, by
definition, requires interest and activity on the part of many other people, it
depends entirely on you to make the first move. You have to find someone who is willing
to serve as a point of entry, a "contact." You cannot expect that person to find a job for you; you simply want that
person to open a door, or make an introduction, or a discreet inquiry. You have to be ready to help that person
by putting into his or her hands a one-page resume to pass along or send, with a
cover letter, to someone else. That
third-party cover letter, sent to someone your contact knows well, should take a
simple, direct, non-coercive approach: "This will serve to introduce you
to...." Some highlights of your
education, experience and interests, together with a comment on why your job
search is in progress, make up the next paragraph. "If you know of anything that looks like
a good match for these credentials, I'd be grateful if you would give him (or
her) a call. If not, thanks for
taking the time to review the resume."
End of letter. Opening,
perhaps, of the door to your next job.
Your contact made it
clear that the recipient of the letter (or the call) is expected to act if, and
only if, that person chooses to act; otherwise, he or she is "off the
case." No one objects to receiving
a letter like that; many recipients of such inquiries will respond if they have
any way of being helpful. The
resume provides the information needed for getting in touch; it is also
something visible and tangible that can jog the recipient's memory and trigger
subsequent action. Networking rests
on the assumption that people like to be helpful; they want to help. The problem for the job-seeker is
getting up the courage to ask for help and finding someone to broker the
contacts.