Combining Networking & Online Job Hunting For Better
Results
By George Blomgren
George Blomgren has more experience as a job seeker than he likes to think about. He's also been responsible for recruiting, interviewing and hiring. He's a widely published author on career development and job seeking. He works for a national network of employment Web sites, where every day he gets to see what works and what doesn't. George likes motorcycling, the band Yes and vegetables that start with the letter "a".
Peanut butter and chocolate. This combination was almost unthinkable before Reese's put the two together. And the world has never been the same since. (OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration.)
Most job seekers are aware that networking is a powerful technique for finding work. And, of course, almost all job seekers today use the internet to find and browse opportunities. But, consider: if you have used these techniques, you are probably well aware that each has a major weakness...
Networking. For all the great qualities that make networking the number one choice of many career coaches and mentors, most forms of networking have one serious flaw: nothing about the process "pre-qualifies" the people you're talking to or meeting with to ensure they have job openings.
Employment Web Sites. An awesome tool for seeing who's hiring (and what specific opportunities that may have open) but an unfortunately impersonal way to approach them.
If you stop and think about these two powerful but flawed job seeking tools, you may see where I'm going with this. Consider using employment Web sites to focus your efforts where opportunities exist, while tapping into the power of networking - that's right: chocolate and peanut butter in harmony, creating a powerful new synergy.
Granted, this isn't always as easy as I make it sound. Let's consider two scenarios. The easy scenario, and the typical scenario.
Easy - You hop onto your favorite local employment Web site, such as MilwaukeeJobs.com. Searching by category for the sales job of your dreams, you find it - at the respected Acme Dynamite company. "Excellent!," you exclaim, knowing that your uncle is a senior marketing executive at Acme, and he knows that you are an excellent sales woman.
Typical - Same circumstances, but your uncle drives an ice cream truck and you don't know anybody at Acme. A show stopper? Sure, if you let it be one. Granted, this will be challenging, but here are two ideas for using networking techniques to approach this opportunity you identified via the web.
1. Work your network. Send an email to everyone you know asking them if they know anyone at Acme. If you haven't been working your network all along, you may need to position yourself. Before they go to bat for you with someone they know who works at Acme, you may need to remind some individuals on the "fringe" of your personal network (old neighbors, church members, the bowling team from your bachelor days) that you are a proven salesman with impeccable credentials.
2. Figure out who the hiring executive is and target him or her. No, I don't mean stalking. Not in the conventional sense. Let's consider an example. If you are persistent and creative, a few telephone calls get you the name of the manager who is hiring. Once you have that, let's say that some creative Googling determines that the individual is speaking to a local Shriners group next week. You attend, and stay after to ask a few good questions. You then introduce yourself, tell them that you heard that they are hiring, and hand off a nice copy of your resume. You tell them you will call three days later to follow up ... and then you do so.
You may be thinking "wow, that sounds complicated!" (Or time consuming.) Well, you're right: networking is challenging and it does require sustaine d effort. The degree to which it pays off generally reflects the time you invest and the creativity you apply to it. If you are a hard working, exceptionally intelligent job seeker, advanced networking techniques are the best way to demonstrate that!
I'll be the first to admit that the "chocolate/peanut butter" approach is pretty obvious. But, oddly, it's rarely used. When I talk to job seekers who network, they often make comments like "I had 5 great networking interviews last month, and nobody I talked to even had any job openings!" And many job seekers who rely on the internet complain that they rarely hear back when they submit a resume - most of them realize it's because 400 other job seekers also applied for the same position.
Simply enough, the "chocolate/peanut butter" solution is probably the most direct answer to either problem.