{"id":4797,"date":"2021-05-11T17:14:47","date_gmt":"2021-05-11T17:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobhunt.fj-dev.com\/finding-your-network\/"},"modified":"2022-02-18T08:36:54","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T15:36:54","slug":"finding-your-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/finding-your-network\/","title":{"rendered":"What Network? Finding Your Network"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If I&#8217;d heard it once from a job-seeker, I&#8217;ve heard it a million times: &#8220;But I don&#8217;t have a network \u2013 I don&#8217;t know<em> anyone!<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, every now and then you read in the news about a person who&#8217;s been living like a hermit out in the woods for years.<\/p>\n<p>But if you have not been featured in one of those news stories, then <em>you do know people.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You just don&#8217;t think you have a network \u2013 you don&#8217;t think about the people you know.<\/p>\n<p>But you DO know people \u2013 it&#8217;s almost impossible not to, these days!<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"background-color: rgba(0, 197, 179, 0.4);\">Make a List of People You Know<\/h2>\n<p>My advice is to sit down with a pen and paper and start writing down names:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You know people you used to work with, and you know people in your neighborhood.<\/li>\n<li>You may know people at your gym, your favorite coffee shop, or your place of worship.<\/li>\n<li>You know people through your family and through your friends.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here are some other groups of people you may have met, although these folks may not be top-of-mind for you right now:<\/p>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li>People in your book club.<\/li>\n<li>People you send email jokes to.<\/li>\n<li>Your fellow college and high school alums, including roommates.<\/li>\n<li>People you volunteered with.<\/li>\n<li>People you know from your kids&#8217; or grandkids&#8217; or niece\/nephews&#8217; school.<\/li>\n<li>People who attend networking events with you.<\/li>\n<li>People you&#8217;ve met at Tupperware or other home-shopping parties.<\/li>\n<li>Your hiking, running, climbing, cycling etc. friends.<\/li>\n<li>Vendors you knew at your last or your previous jobs.<\/li>\n<li>Customers you worked with at those past jobs.<\/li>\n<li>People you perform with or do art or crafts with.<\/li>\n<li>Fellow dog, cat, or other animal people.<\/li>\n<li>Neighbors, current and former.<\/li>\n<li>Family members, current and former.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I always challenge job-seekers to list 100 names, and almost all of them can do it! We know more people than we think we do.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s one reason that modern life is so complicated &#8212; we lack the time to keep up with our friends. But that&#8217;s okay &#8212; when you are job-hunting, you have a license from the job-hunting gods to get in touch with people you haven&#8217;t seen in ages.<\/p>\n<p>You have to inquire ahout their health and their families, of course &#8212; that&#8217;s only polite. You can also let them know about your job search.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"background-color: rgba(0, 197, 179, 0.4);\">Re-connecting Provides Many Benefits<\/h2>\n<p>You do NOT want to send a resume to a person you haven&#8217;t seen in years. That would be presumptuous, because it signals &#8220;I&#8217;m only contacting you because I need your help.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rather, send a quick email or surface mail message to inquire about what your old colleague or friend has been up to. Invite a response by adding &#8220;I&#8217;d love to catch up by phone or over coffee if you have time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In that same message (or later), you can say &#8220;I was at XYZ Corp until last month, and now I&#8217;m on the job market.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As a job-seeker, you will find that refreshing your network and re-connecting with old associates is a very good use of your time. It&#8217;s energizing to check in with people who know you outside of your current job-search role and who shared good times with you on the job, at the ice rink, or anywhere else.<\/p>\n<p>These friends may have useful job leads for you, but your purpose in re-connecting isn&#8217;t just to serve your own job-search ends:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cultivate your network.<\/li>\n<li>Ask what you can do for each person.<\/li>\n<li>Catch up with their lives and their careers.<\/li>\n<li>Gain some much-needed fellowship and moral support, and give some in return.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The job-search-related benefits will come, and your friends&#8217; unique perspectives will help you work through your most vexing or frustrating job-search challenges.<\/p>\n<p>You will find that by visiting with your network of friends, you&#8217;ll enroll your network in your job search in a way that really isn&#8217;t possible over email. People who sit with you and drink or eat with you (or take a walk with you, if you&#8217;re overcaffeinated and over-lunched) will engage with you in a completely different way to solve your problems. This is a great thing.<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"background-color: rgba(0, 197, 179, 0.4);\">Goal &#8211; Once a Week!<\/h2>\n<p>There is nothing more important to a job-seeker than checking in with the network on a frequent basis &#8212; at least one lunch or coffee or walk a week is a great target. There are only so many hours a day you can spend in front of that monitor, after all. The human connection helps us in ways we can&#8217;t even process &#8212; it&#8217;s essential. Go plug into your network today!<\/p>\n<p>[Read <a title=\"Guide to Informational Interviews\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/..\/informational-interviews\/informational-interviews\/\">Guide to Informational Interviews<\/a> for more ideas and email message samples for reaching out.]<\/p>\n<h3>More About Successful Networking<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"How to Network if You Hate to Network\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/i-hate-networking\/\">How to Network if You&nbsp;<em>Hate<\/em>&nbsp;to Network<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"How to Nurture Your Network and Empower Your Career\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/nurture-your-network\/\">How to Nurture Your Network and Empower Your Career<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"7 Strategies for Painlessly Building Your Network\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/enjoy-networking\/\">7 Strategies for <em>Painlessly<\/em> Building Your Network<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"4 Steps to Build a More Effective Job Search Network\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/build-your-job-search-network\/\">4 Steps to Build a More Effective Job Search Network<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"3 Steps to a Killer Elevator Pitch\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/..\/onlinejobsearchguide\/killer-elevator-speech\/\">3 Steps to a Killer Elevator Pitch<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Stealth Job Search Networking\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/stealth-job-search-networking\/\">Stealth Job Search Networking<\/a> (how to network without losing your job)<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Guide to Job Search Networking\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/networking\/\">Guide to Job Search Networking<\/a> &#8212; more articles<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" pull-right img-responsive img-circle\" style=\"margin: 5px 10px 10px 5px;\" src=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/Liz-Ryan-6.jpg\" alt=\"Liz Ryan\" width=\"80\" height=\"80\"><strong>About the author&#8230;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/liz-ryan\/\">Liz Ryan<\/a> is Job-Hunt&#8217;s Networking Contributor. Liz is a former Fortune 500 VP and 25-year veteran of corporate human resources departments. In addition, Liz is the author of <em>Happy About Online Networking<\/em> and an internationally recognized expert on careers and the 21st century workplace. Find Liz on LinkedIn.<br \/>\n<a title=\"More about this author\" href=\"https:\/\/job-hunt.org\/liz-ryan\/\">More about this author<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You might not think you have a network, but unless you&#8217;ve been living as a hermit in the woods, never attending a school or using email, you do have a network, and it is critical to the success of your job search.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":24914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"old-site-template.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-job-search-networking","category-information-interviews"],"last_modified_at":"","edited_by":"Wendy Fecteau","acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4797"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24915,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4797\/revisions\/24915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.job-hunt.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}