Health & Fitness
Knowing Specifically What to Ask of Your Job Search Network Contacts Maximizes Success!
Make the most of your job search network connections. Telling them what you need and being specific maximizes your success! Peg Titus-Hall discusses ways to help your network contacts help you.
Hi there. Remember me? So sorry I haven’t kept in touch lately. Lots of eventful things happening at the household, including home repairs from a lightning strike, vacations with family, and general “stuff.”
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In my previous blog entries, I talked about ways to keep track of your networking contacts (see “Organize Your Network – Part 1: You Know Many More People Than You Think You Do,” posted July 17, 2011, and “Organize Your Network – Part 2: Keeping Track of Your Network Contacts,” posted July 26, 2011).
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So by now you’ve developed a spreadsheet that includes a list of all the people in your life with whom you can talk about your job search needs, plus ways to keep track of how, when and why you connected with them.
Now you need to determine what you want. Well, we all know that some of you want a “job.” However, asking your contacts to keep a lookout for a job is like asking them to go out and find you a job. If you’ve already used this approach, you have probably seen your contacts’ eyes glaze over, watched them smile, nod and say, “Sure!” and waved to them as they made a bee-line for the door.
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It is critical to successful networking to be as specific as you can about what you want. Specificity allows the contact to state whether or not s/he is able to help you. If s/he can help, that’s great! If s/he is not able to or unwilling to help, then you say, “Thank you for your time,” and move on to the next contact. (This is primarily why you want your network to include lots of people, so when you say, “Next,” you’ll have a “next” person to turn to.)
So what should you be specific about? Here are some possibilities:
- Planning a career change
- Planning to stay in the same career but wanting to change organizations
- Moving up the corporate ladder
- Targeting specific companies or organizations where you want to work
I’ll be breaking these down these topics in detail over the next few weeks. If there are any other specific topics that you feel need to be discussed, please let me know. I welcome your comments!
Regards,
Peg
coachpeg@peoplegrowthllc.com
www.peoplegrowthllc.com
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