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When Cookie Burkhalter relocated from Colorado to
Wilmington, Delaware three years ago, she thought
finding a new job would be easy. With first-rate
qualifications and more than twenty years of
professional experience at Fortune 500 companies,
she figured she would land a new position quickly by
surfing a few Internet job boards and sending out
her resume.
But
Burkhalter, an IT project manager, quickly
discovered that it wasn't going to be so easy. After
months of applying for open positions, "I never got
a single interview from a posting on the Net," she
declared. "Applying for all those jobs was a
complete waste of my time."
When things began to turn around for Burkhalter was
when she realized that the missing element in her
job search was the human factor. "Even though I grew
up in Delaware, I had been living out of state for a
long time," she recalled. "I had almost no local
contacts, so I was relying on postings and ads to
find out about available jobs. But by the time I saw
the ad, so had thousands of other people, and there
was always one of them who was just a little more
qualified than me."
So
Burkhalter set about rebuilding her personal
network. She joined two women's groups made up of
others who shared some of her personal interests and
hobbies, and began to meet new people. When she let
her new friends know about her job search, all of a
sudden, she began to hear about jobs before they
were advertised, and interviews started to
materialize. When she finally did land a new job, it
was the direct result of a referral from a friend.
You
may not recognize what Burkhalter did as networking,
but that's exactly what it was. Many women think of
networking as circulating around a room exchanging
business cards. But a broader view of networking is
creating a pool of contacts from which you can draw
leads, referrals, ideas, and information for your
job search. You can network without ever attending
an official networking event.
Texas resident Maria Elena Duron found an executive
job as a result of working as a community volunteer.
"I was volunteering at the Midlands MexTex Fiesta,
and I found myself flipping burgers side-by-side
with a board member of the Austin Juvenile Diabetes
Research Foundation," Duron remembers. "He asked me
if I had ever been involved in fundraising, and when
I said I had, he asked for my resume. He forwarded
it to the Foundation with his personal
recommendation, and three weeks later, I was hired
as Executive Director for the West Texas Region."
Your career network can and should contain current
and former co-workers, alumni from your school, a
wide range of people in your industry, and personal
friends. Making time for lunch or coffee with these
people can be much more productive for your job
search than reading the want ads or surfing the Web.
In fact, surveys consistently show that 80-85% of
job-seekers find work as the result of a referral
from a friend or colleague, and only 2-4% land jobs
from Internet job boards.
If
you have been out of touch for a while with people
you already know, don't let that stop you from
re-establishing contact when you start your job
search. Everyone you speak to will have had to look
for work at some point in their career, and most of
them will be sympathetic and helpful.
To
spread your net even wider, you may need to start
making the acquaintance of new people also. Every
time you talk to a friend or colleague about your
job search, ask for suggestions of others you might
speak to, and follow-up on their referrals.
Attending organized events may also play a role in
your job search, since this can be an easy way to
expand your network quickly. Here are some popular
choices for networking events:
-
Chamber of Commerce
mixers.
-
Service clubs such as
Rotary and Kiwanis.
-
Trade and professional
association meetings in your industry.
-
Lectures, workshops,
conferences, and fundraisers hosted by educational
institutions, community organizations, and affinity
groups.
-
Social, cultural, and
sporting events that include receptions or other
mix-and-mingle time.
-
Private gatherings
organized for the purpose of meeting new people and
schmoozing.
-
Job clubs.
You
will have more success at this kind of networking if
you go back to the same groups over and over than if
you keep going to new groups all the time. Find two
or three that seem to have the right mix of people,
and keep going back.
If
you don't follow-up with the people you meet,
though, you are wasting your time in meeting them.
You may think that once you have told someone what
type of job you are looking for, if they hear of
something, they will call you. The truth is that if
they have met you only once, they probably don't
even remember you, and it's even less likely that
they will remember where they put your number.
After meeting someone new, send them a
"nice-to-meet-you" note and invite them to attend
another event with you or make a date for lunch or
coffee. Find out what the two of you have in common,
and see if there is an activity you could share.
Building relationships like this takes time and
effort, but relationships are the core of
networking. The people in your network should be
people you truly enjoy interacting with, because if
you're doing it right, you'll be spending a lot of
time with them.
Says Duron, "Don't limit yourself to just networking
in your industry; everyone is interconnected.
Getting to know a day care director makes sense even
if you don't want a job in day care, because she
knows so many people. Waiters and hairdressers are
often the first to hear about coming changes that
lead to open positions. As long as you have your
antennae out and listen, you can connect with
anyone."
Don't expect networking to be a quick fix for your
job search. It can take time for your
relationship-building efforts to pay off. You need
to put in the effort to get to know people, and
trust that you will see results from it. But the
best time to begin building your network is while
you are still employed.
C.J. Hayden is the author of Get Hired Now! and Get
Clients Now! Since 1992, she has helped thousands of
professionals make a better living doing what they
love. C.J. is a Master Certified Coach who leads
workshops internationally - in person, on the phone,
and on the Web. Find out more about C.J. and get a
free copy of "How to Find a Job in 28 Days or Less"
at
http://www.gethirednow.com.
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