December 2002
'Tis the Season for Social Networking
By
President of Workforce Associates
and author of
NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet
Available online and in print from Author House
December 2002
'Tis the Season for Social Networking
By
President of Workforce Associates
and author of
NetWork: Maximizing Your Career Resources on the Internet
Available online and in print from Author House
Regardless of your religious faith, December is probably the best month to network your way into a new job. Think about it. How many times have you in fact found your current job through the classified or cold calling a company? If you’re honest, you’ll conclude that any job that will give you more than survival wages was garnered through networking, i.e., personal contacts.
As I work with companies around the country in workforce development projects, I always ask the question: What is your most effective way to hire your best workers? Time and again, they’ll say employee referrals or contacts through a local professional group or someone that they knew through university or graduate school. They’re using the time honored, inexpensive but effective means of finding new talent. For example, Disney recruiters told me that they had completed 40% of their hiring through employee referrals. Hospitals around the country pay their employees generously for referrals, especially during this shortage of nursing personnel.
So how do you get into someone’s radar screen this holiday season? Here are seven activities to make your holidays merrier:
1. Take full advantage of your local Chamber’s monthly meet market get-togethers where folks can boldly and baldly market their talents and skills. These are generally free events or for a small fee that is well worth it.2. Another avenue is to attend the social events at your local professional association. December tends to be the month when business is not conducted, so it’s easier to circulate in a room and find out what’s happening in the job market in your field. Remember to bring business cards, introduce yourself, stay for a few minutes to determine if the folks are candidates to help you in your job search. Before you disappear, introduce someone to another person and then move on to another circle.
3. If you have some extra free time, volunteer at a food bank or at your church. Fellow volunteers tend to be social people who want to help. Why wouldn’t they want to help you?
4. Join a reading club or language group or outdoors club to improve your ties with the outside world.
5. Contact your alumni association at your university and high school. Now is the time for parties for old timers to reconnect and share the holiday cheer.
6. You might want to consider having an open house at your home for friends and neighbors. That’s an inexpensive way to bring potential job contacts to you!
7. Read an outstanding book about networks and networking. An example is the new provocative book that has been reviewed by all of the major print press. It's called Linked, The New Science of Networks by physicist Albert-Laszlo Barabasi which describes how financial, software, biological, and even terrorist networks (and many more) follow the same basic rules - rules that Barabasi and his students at Notre Dame are largely responsible for discovering.
The world, argues Barabasi, is not random. People who want to sell their junk on the Internet click to eBay; there are dozens of websites to buy books, but most people click to Amazon. While trying to map out the links on the World Wide Web, Barabasi discovered the mathematics behind what many people seem to know instinctively. That is that some sites on the Web are immensely more popular than others. These sites Barabasi calls "hubs."
We are all familiar with hubs. They're the points on a network that are responsible for the mass movement of money, ideas, and materials. For example, the network of Hollywood might have nodes that represent each actor, with lines drawn to connect the actors who have worked together in the same movie. The more popular nodes are called hubs; in Hollywood, these are the popular actors who get all of the good roles. But what makes them a hub isn't the fact that they have a lot of connectors - it's the fact that when new nodes are added to the network, these new nodes preferentially attach to hubs, rather than to a random node.
So your homework assignment this holiday season is to work hard to become a networking "hub" that will secure you a great job and will help you become indispensable in that job because of your extensive contacts. Ask for Barabasi's book and thank you cards as stocking stuffers and critically evaluate the strengths/weaknesses of your current networks. Like public speaking, social networking only improves with practice!"
Whatever and however you connect this holiday season, be sure to send out handwritten thank yous to those who were particularly helpful in referring names. Keep in contact with these folks after the holidays about how your job search concludes. Offer to help them in their own job search, if that should become necessary.
It's tempting to think these networks are all so different that the term "network" has become meaningless. In fact, the reverse may be true. In his provocative book, Linked, The New Science of Networks, physicist Albert-László Barabási shows how all of these networks (and many more) follow the same basic mathematical rules — rules that Barabási and his students at Notre Dame are largely responsible for discovering.
The world, argues Barabási, is not random. People who want to sell their junk on the Internet click to eBay; there are dozens of websites to buy books, but most people click to Amazon. While trying to map out the links on the World Wide Web, Barabási and a student discovered the mathematics behind what many people seem to know instinctively: Some sites on the Web are immensely more popular than others. These sites Barabási calls "hubs."
We are all familiar with hubs. They're the points on a network that are responsible for the mass movement of money, ideas, and materials. For example, the network of Hollywood might have nodes that represent each actor, with lines drawn to connect the actors who have worked together in the same movie. The more popular nodes are called hubs; in Hollywood, these are the popular actors who get all of the good roles. But what makes them a hub isn't the fact that they have a lot of connectors — it's the fact that when new nodes are added to the network, these new nodes preferentially attach to hubs, rather than to a random node.
So your homework assignment this holiday season is to work hard to become a "hub" that will secure you a great job and will more importantly help you become indispensable in that job because of your extensive contacts. Get a hold of Barabasi’s book as a stocking stuffer and critically evaluate the strengthes/weaknesses of your current networks. Like public speaking, social networking only improves with practice!
Here are some resources to help you in finding out about networking opportunities this month and well into 2003:
American Society of Association Executives
Sales & Marketing Executives — International
Association for Finance Professionals
College of Healthcare Executives
Here's an exhaustive list of alumni associations across the country
Your local library and newspaper often have lists of volunteer opportunities, holiday happenings, and lists of clubs of all kinds in your community. Also check out Library Spot, Career Builder, and bizjournals.com.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce for the local chamber closest to you; ask them for names of entrepreneurial, business networking, and/or venture clubs which are great venues for networking.
Keep sending me your inquiries and electronic resumes to vet. I greatly enjoy getting to know my readers and helping you through the job searching quagmire. Please contact me at jlommel@WorkforceAssociates.com
Have a safe and happy Holiday Season!
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