• Updating contact information: Safani suggests that when candidates start their new job they contact their network about their new address and email.
• Staying connected to colleagues: Safani suggests that by staying connected to colleagues candidates can put themselves in a position to return favors, should any previous colleagues decide to look for work.
• Keeping professional memberships active: By candidates staying up to date on association newsletters and event networks are more easily contacted and grown.

Some of the other areas to consider when keeping up with and staying connected include inviting some of your key contacts to lunch or dinner. Individual meetings outside of the workplace can be very effective in developing and maintaining key connections.

If you have difficulty remembering to keep up with your network, set up reminders in your work calendar so that when you do have some open time, you can use it wisely by contacting someone you have been meaning to call or email. Many people now have their own blogs or pages on social networking sites, such as Facebook or MySpace, that also serve as an easy way to stay in touch with your network.

And remember, if you stay in constant and sincere contact with your network of connections they will be more willing to help out when you really need them.

Originally
from Spherion Career Blog - The Big Time

by Steve Wajda

The first step toward getting the assistance of your co-workers is to accept others uniqueness and idiosyncrasies. People come from many different national origins, races, genders, and ages. Corporate America calls this “diversity”.

You may think an individual with a different race or national origin is peculiar or has strange habits. I find that all people, regardless of race, national origin, gender, or age, want the same things. All people want a safe place to live and employment that gives them the ability to provide for themselves and their family. What a boring world this would be if we all dressed the same, acted the same, and had the same ideas.
If you have an attitude of discrimination against a co-worker because of their national origin, race, gender, or age, I’m not going to try to change your mind. I WILL advise you that if you want to succeed at work, you better at least act like you are on the diversity bandwagon.

The real difficulty in relating to fellow employees comes from differences in emotional maturity, intelligence, and level of dedication to the job. Emotionally immature people may not want to cooperate with you because they feel threatened. They feel that if they help you or reveal any aspect of their job function they may lose job security.
Other symptoms of emotional immaturity are the inability to accept criticism, feeling that the company should do
things the way that makes THEIR job the easiest, and just plain bossiness. Other people’s emotional maturity is one of the most difficult things to deal with on the job.

It’s also difficult to deal with co-workers who don’t have, or don’t want to have, the intelligence required to do the job. Sometimes people fain ignorance in order to avoid work or responsibility. Sometimes an individual is in a job position that they are not suited for. Your job may provide your life with meaning and purpose.
Professionalism and pride in your work may be important to you. But don’t expect everyone to have those same values.
Some people are more focused on friends, family, or other preoccupations outside of work. They come to work only for
the paycheck. They want to make the least amount of effort required to get the paycheck.

Your happiness and success at work requires you to accept and embrace the uniqueness of other individuals. You need to form good relationships with any co-worker whose cooperation you need in order to perform your tasks. The best way to do that is to care about them. Engage in small talk and learn what their interests are and what motivates them. Approach them with an optimistic attitude, praise, and compliments. People gravitate towards other people who make them feel good. You must impress upon them that you are not a threat. You will not criticize them, nor threaten their job security.
Help them understand that cooperation would be mutually advantageous. Let others in the company compete and vie against one another, while you team up with your co-workers for your mutual success at work.

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Online Social Networking (OSN), a form of viral marketing, is a better way to hook up to opportunity. Done right, it’ll do wonders for your self-esteem and warp-speed your contact development.

Viral marketing is a marketing phenomenon that’s used to facilitate and encourage people to pass along a marketing message. Comparable to throwing a match into a parched forest, the resulting wildfire rapidly propagates itself as initial targets pass the promotion onto others. Achieve the same results through OSN and watch your career search efforts heat up.

Online social networking has the same element of exponential marketing. Used in a job hunt, OSN by its infrastructure eliminates many of your hassles of connecting with people of influence, and vice-versa, but not in the way you think.

Andrea Connell, Director of Marketing for R.L. Stevens & Associates Inc, http://interviewing.com/ a leading international career marketing firm headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, explains, “The viral capabilities of online social networking works best when it’s designed around your ability to give, not your need to receive.” You’ll reap better rewards when you share what you know with others and help them to succeed first and foremost. Focus on their needs over yours.

A seasoned contributor to several of the popular online social networks, Connell regularly offers mini-bites of free job search advice to inquiring minds. Some of those people end up becoming company clients. “Online social networking is one of many multiple marketing strategies you should use to expedite your career campaign,” she says. “When OSN is used simultaneously with other personal marketing tactics, you position yourself as an expert in your field and widen your exposure to opportunity and decision makers.”

Online social networking can build affinity for your talents or repulsion. Connell relays a story about an aspiring musician who wanted to maneuver his way into the music world.

Newbie located a high-level music executive on one of the well-known online social networking sites. He then emailed an inquiry soliciting advice about how to break into the business.

Mr. Top Dog graciously responded. Unfortunately, instead of asking a few well researched and targeted questions, Newbie wore out his welcome by relentlessly hounding the executive. He lost his golden opportunity to make a favorable impression with incessant requests for more and more information without offering anything in reciprocity. Mr. Top Dog, whose executive schedule did not permit this kind of self-centered babysitting, finally demanded to be left alone. Game over.

Relational spamming is a complete turn-off to others. “Don’t bombard any contacts or business relationships you forge on online social networks with continued requests for insider info or high-pressure sales tactics. No one likes to be “forward-sold,” Connell cautions. It’s far better to give than receive.

Here are nine cool career tips to ensure you’re more than just a pretty interface while conducting online social networking:

• Google and find the best and most user-friendly online social networks
• Create a Profile that self-markets your premium talents and knowledge
• Don’t copy and paste your resume as a replacement for a OSN profile
• When building your OSN Profile, be careful in giving personal information
• Don’t relationally spam others; respect their time and privacy
• Become the “go-to person” by providing useful assistance to members
• Maintain professionalism throughout OSN communications
• If you have a personal website, “link back” for search engine optimization
• Make sure your boss or co-workers aren’t on the same OSN if you’re in a job search

Social networking gives your contact development efforts more velocity and vitality because it removes traditional hierarchies. Those who join them are those who want to be connected to others, including decision makers. And, as with viral marketing, the more you’re known in these networks as a consummate, solutions-oriented professional, the greater likelihood people of influence will swarm to you like moths to a light bulb.

About the Author

With busy schedules, effectively staying in touch with people and using connections to get doors opened is difficult. Just within the past few months, technology has been developed to meet these challenges and help people make the most of their social networks. This technology is appropriately called “social networking software.”

Of course the most basic technology in this area is having an electronic address book. Microsoft Outlook is basically the industry standard program to use. After inputting your contacts in Outlook, you can synchronize with a personal digital assistant (like the Palm pilot). You can also use Outlook to interface with any of the major social networking applications out there, including all of the ones mentioned in this article.

Keeping in Touch

If you have 300 contacts in your address book but you only keep in touch with 40 of them on a regular basis, the remaining 260 contacts are in danger of going “stale.” Think of what happens when you flip through your card file or rolodex and come across a contact you haven’t heard from for a couple years. Unless you knew the person well, chances are you’ll just throw out the card. You may not ever remember how you met them!

A social networking software program called RelationshipSecure was developed to address this specific problem. It provides several features that help you maintain your existing relationships and keep them from getting stale. It provides a verification feature that lets you send out e-mail mailings to your contacts asking them if their information is correct. If it isn’t, they can make any changes necessary and your Outlook address book is updated automatically. It also lets you send out other mailings like Birthday and Anniversary e-greeting cards.

To find out more about RelationshipSecure, visit www.RelationshipSecure.com.

Expanding your Network

While RelationshipSecure is a powerful tool for maintaining your existing relationships, other companies have developed technology to help you expand your network of contacts. These concepts aren’t mutually exclusive: in fact, it makes sense that you’d want to keep in touch with people so that the relationship won’t have gone cold by the time you need to ask them for an introduction, a job, a meeting, etc.

LinkedIn.com is one of the most popular services for expanding your network by getting introduced to other people who can help you move ahead in your career. How it works is this: you enter your contacts’ email addresses or import them from Outlook. LinkedIn then gives you a window into people your contacts know and depending on their privacy settings, the ability to contact people who may be able to help you. LinkedIn.com is most popular among executives and other high-level professionals because of the exclusive nature of their service and its powerful privacy features.

Ryze.com is another service similar to LinkedIn.com, but with fewer privacy controls. It is not as popular among executives but it’s worth checking out, especially if you want to network with people who aren’t in LinkedIn’s demographic.

Reaching Recruiting Contacts

While these tools provide a powerful way for you to tap your existing networking resources, it may be the case that you have to reach out of your network to find someone who can help you. I recommend using a service like ResumeArrow.com to get your resume in front of recruiters and employers you wouldn’t be able to reach otherwise.

About the Author

Scott Brown is the author of the Job Search Handbook (http://www.JobSearchHandbook.com). As editor of the HireSites.com weekly newsletter on job searching, Scott has written many articles on the subject. He wrote the Job Search Handbook to provide job seekers with a complete yet easy to use guide to finding a job effectively.

It is your value proposition that differentiates you from the crowd; it is what stands out in the minds of those with whom you are networking. Your value proposition is the cornerstone for all self-introductory communication. It sets the tone. It’s how you make your mark. It is how you describe yourself during any networking scenario.

The best way to network is to communicate your qualities to the people you know, so they in turn will know you better. Practice doing this in as concise and clear a way as possible. When you communicate your value proposition in a lasered way, you will be extremely effective.

Networking is never about asking someone for a job. It’s about letting people in, and asking questions such as “Who do you know?” and “Who else should I be talking to?” This process can truly mushroom, especially if you don’t wait until you are out of work before making contact with people. The results can be quite amazing.

Networking is also about finding out as much as you can about the people with whom you are networking. This serves many purposes. Remembering things about a person the next time you see them makes them feel significant. They will want to do more for you. Secondly, you can begin to connect the dots between their background and your own career objectives. Thirdly, you are building a bridge of trust; your encounter will be viewed as genuine and mutually beneficial, rather than as a manipulative gesture designed just for your gain.

An important part of networking is continuance. You’re building a relationship. There needs to be planned follow-up activity and communication. The best way to accomplish this is by asking for their business card and summarizing the action steps you plan to take based on your dialog. Include a follow-up phone call as part of your summary. Once your brief meeting has concluded, send a thank-you note to the person, reiterating your appreciation for their willingness to meet with you, and any planned steps you will be taking.

Networking supports your entire job search effort. As an extremely powerful strategy which accounts for roughly 80% of all job fills, it allows you to get in doors that would otherwise be impossible to enter. You can network your way into potential opportunities that can turn into the right job created just for you. It’s a great way to tap the hidden job market!

Networking is about creating relationships which, in turn, creates opportunities. It is about connecting, which builds a network of support that can last a lifetime. Only three ingredients are required:

You will need just a bit of courage to open up a dialog with someone you already know, or someone who was referred to you. You need to be aware of your potential and worth. The final ingredient is caring - caring enough about the other person to truly be interested in them and to build a connection, to start a relationship. The results will speak for themselves.

About the Author

David Richter is a recognized authority in career coaching. His extensive knowledge and experience gained from many years in recruitment, outplacement and career management has allowed David to formulate powerful strategies anyone can use to secure interviews and receive offers. David holds Masters in both Engineering and Counseling Psychology. Visit: http://www.procareercoach.com

Wrong!

While networking can, and often does, follow such a scenario, the concept is much broader than that. The premise is that most people find a job through someone they know. It may be a direct referral or, more likely, indirectly hearing about an opening that seems suitable.

by Virginia Bola

Procedurally, networking could not be simpler: contact everyone you know to see if they have any firsthand knowledge about job opportunities. Then contact all the people they know. Obtain referrals to other people from everyone you contact and in a short period of time, you will have a veritable army of people working with you to find the right position.

An organized approach to this time-demanding but highly effective technique is discussed in depth in my workbook “The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual” (Authorhouse, 2003). Contact lists in various categories are provided as well as schedules for follow up and strategies for maintaining the strength and commitment of your lists.

For now, let’s look at the different levels of networks you can develop.

1. Sizzling Contacts.

These are the people you know personally. They include your family, friends, former coworkers, and acquaintances: your barber, your mailman, your doctor, your real estate agent, the guys you see at the golf course, the women at your club, your children’s teachers, other PTA parents - anyone with whom you have regular contact. Often, you need go no further. How many of us obtained our first job through our family or their friends? It is a common occurrence. Look for a moment at ethnic groups and how they operate. Most new immigrants find a position through personal contacts. Hispanics are famous for bringing in their brothers, cousins, and nephews when there is an opening. Most companies who hire mainly Spanish-speaking labor never advertise. All they have to do is tell their employees that they need more workers and the next day dozens of assorted relatives show up and they can make their selection. There are large ethnic communities in different parts of the country: Vietnamese, Armenian, Indian, Korean, Chinese, Irish, Portuguese, Samoan, and Filipino. In almost every group, initial job search is strictly word-of-mouth. Later, as individuals, many workers become culturally assimilated and move into more mainstream jobs but the core of the group, especially those with poor English skills, tend to remain within their original subculture. There are, for example, airlines whose entire ramp staff at some airports are Pacific Islanders, manufacturing companies where the usual language on the production floor is Portuguese, and supermarkets where the workers (and customers) are overwhelmingly Korean. Contrast the successful employment rate of these groups with, for example, African-Americans who are very loosely tied to their communities. Until recent attempts by Church and civic organizations, networking was almost non-existent in African-American culture and a consistently double-digit unemployment rate directly reflected that lack of connectivity.

2. Warm Contacts.

From everyone you seek out while you are making personal contacts, you try to obtain the names and contact numbers of people they know and if you can use their names as a source of referral. If all the people you directly know, literally dozens, give you a few names to call, you may have well over a hundred names within a few days. Frequently the first and second level contacts are all that is required. Someone you touch will know of something suitable somewhere.

3. Tepid and Cold Contacts.

If you are really unfortunate, your circle of social acquaintances is very limited, your geographic area has devastating economic blight, your have negative or limiting personal aspects (prison record, disabilities, a very poor work record), then you may need to expand an extra level or two. Secondary referrals have some potential but the more tenuous the link between you and your friends and the target person, the less effort to help you is likely to be encountered. When you have exhausted all of your contact lists, unlikely but possible, you are left with the standard job search techniques (classifieds, internet, job fairs, agencies) or cold calling. Cold calls, whether by telephone or, preferably, in person, require you to call or walk into an employer without any introduction, and with no knowledge of any openings. You are likely to receive many negative responses to your queries but sometimes you just happen to time it perfectly and there is a newly available position that suits you. While the chances are sobering, you can still feel proud that you are out in the world, taking positive actions for yourself, rather than withdrawing into the sanctuary of home where the odds against success become astronomical.

About the Author

Virginia Bola operated a rehabilitation company for 20 years, developing innovative job search techniques for disabled workers, while serving as a respected Vocational Expert in Administrative, Civil and Workers’ Compensation Courts. Author of an interactive and emotionally supportive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker’s Edge, she can be reached at http://www.unemploymentblues.com

This means the need to find a job isn’t always by choice.

Because we live in a world that is changing all the time, many of us are faced with the prospect of our current job becoming obsolete. We are likely to need to reapply our skills into different jobs from the ones we did before. The career ladder is today more like a maze. Sometimes you may go up, other times left, right or even backward.

According to Leon Benjamin, “The future of work is only about one thing and that’s change. It makes no difference if you’re an employee, an entrepreneur, a small business owner or freelance consultant, and the means by which we will secure the work we want that suits our individual lifestyles, will be by cultivating relationships.”

by Ellis Pratt
Finding a job through networking

“He or she who gets hired is not necessarily the one who can do that job best, but the one who knows the most about how to get hired.” Richard Bolles

There are times in our lives when we need to look for a new job. Sometimes this is by choice, other times it isn’t. You may have been told, “Go out and network”, but not been told why, when, where or how to do it.

Networking is one of the most important parts of an effective employment strategy. In this article we’ll look at some of the reasons why.

What is networking?Networking is “a process of interacting with people who usually share similar interests to yours”. The interactions are usually the sharing of information about those interests, and the passing on of names of others who also share those interests.” It should benefit both parties.

With respect to finding work, it is a way of getting new contacts and information. Some people love to network; others find it really hard, especially as a way to find work.

** An attitude of giving **

Dr Ivan Misner, founder of networking group BNI, promotes the philosophy of “givers gain”. The more you give unconditionally, the more you get back.

However, this goes against the philosophy of selling, and, it must be said the culture of most large organizations. Large organizations tend to reward scarcity of knowledge, so many feel they are like to get on in an organization by holding back, in terms of knowledge, as much as they can. So if you’ve worked for a large organization for most of your life, don’t worry if this feels, at first, like the wrong thing to do.

** The value is in the links **

The value of networking is not so much about the quality of the people you meet, but the quality and quantity of the people they know. The links, the connections and introductions people can make, are more important than the wealth or expertise of the person themselves.

One of our friends is a professional storyteller. As you can imagine, professional storytellers don’t earn very much money, and if you met her you might question the value of networking with someone like her. However, your attitude might change if I told you that she’s a friend of a (now former) Cabinet Minister in the British government. It turns out that a former flat mate of hers, when she lived in Newcastle, became the partner of a man who went on to become a leading light in the Blair government.

Networking is often about being a switchboard - people pass through you to get somewhere else. More often than not there’s little likely reward to you, yet the more people see you as the natural place to go to get connected, the more like that the connections you want are likely to be attracted to you. As a result, you’ll see the connections to many of the people or organizations you want to connect with.

Why Network?

** Three key benefits **

Professor Wayne Baker looked at the findings from research into networking, and found three key benefits: 1 Finding a job. More people find jobs through personal contact and by any other means. 2 Pay and promotion. People with rich social networks are paid better and promoted faster at younger ages. 3 Influence and effectiveness. People who are central in an organization’s networks are more influential than others.

** Up to 80% of positions are filled without employers advertising **

It is claimed that up 80% of all jobs are never advertised. They are filled through referrals and recommendations, direct approaches by candidates and by using agencies. For arguments sake, let us imagine the figure is half that; there are still a huge amount of job opportunities that you’ll miss if you don’t network.

According to a study by Drake Beam Morin, 64% of the people surveyed said they found their new jobs through networking. More likely than not, the best jobs are likely to be those that aren’t advertised, because they will have been filled before the organisation needs to pay for advertising.

** You’ll learn **

Networking puts you in contact with people you might not otherwise meet. You’ll increase your knowledge about the subject and be connected to more people within this community. You’ll also learn about yourself. I’ve heard one networking expert say “Until you find yourself, you cannot find work“.

Networking is also a great way to check on a regular basis your value on the open market, and you don’t have to go on a job interview to get this valuable feedback.

** Master mind group **

In Napoleon Hill’s famous book, “Think and Grow Rich”, he stated that one of the 13 Principles common to every successful person was having a “master mind group”. All the successful people he researched had people around them who provided a support structure that made them better, more successful, people.

Networking is one of the best ways to create your own mastermind group, as it brings you into contact with a wide range of potential members of your mastermind group.

** Networking is not evil **

Most of us believe in a meritocratic society. The most able and hard working people are rewarded the most, and you may feel uncomfortable with the idea of gaining benefits because of whom we know.

You can use networking to get an introduction, to get a warm referral. You can also use networking to build up your expertise and create a team that you can use as a support team: sub contractors, mentors, master mind groups and so on. After that, it’s up to you. Relationships need to be nurtured. They grow over time, and from that you develop trust and credibility. They can’t be faked.

Summary

As we move towards a relationship economy, with the nature of work changing, networking can help you connect with the people who need your skills and can also help you increase your value as an employee.

(c) Ellis Pratt 2006
About the AuthorEllis Pratt co-owns a technical writing consultancy called Cherryleaf Ltd. If you would like a free sample chapter from our self paced study guide, “Network to Get Work”, on finding work through networking, see http://www.cherryleaf.com/jobarticle. For details on the self paced training course , Network to Get Work, see