Tap Your Network: Part 1
We’ve all heard the saying, “its not what you know, but who you know.” Well, in the case of your job search it may not be “what you know” or “who you know” but who knows what you know.
It has been reported that 80% of jobs available never get advertised. So how do you find them?
The answer: Networking.
According to CareeXRoad’s 8th Annual Sources of Hire Survey (Feb 2009), referrals made up 27.3% of all external new hires.
So, you may be asking, “what is networking?”
“How do I do it?”
And, “Where do I network?”
These are all great questions and the rest of this article will provide the answers, along with a few resources to help you network with the best of them.
What Is Networking?
To put it plainly, networking is developing and maintaining, personal and professional contacts with a variety of people who might be helpful to you and your career. And what is really important about this definition is the “developing and maintaining” part. Networking is not just contacting everyone you know when you are looking for a job. Networking starts long before you ever need a job. Networking happens in your everyday life. You probably don’t even realize you are doing it. Every time you talk to another parent at your child’s soccer game, you are networking. Every time you talk to your neighbor, you are networking. Attend a trade show…networking. Talk with someone waiting in line at the grocery store…you guessed it…networking.
Networking happens constantly in your day-to-day life and if leveraged correctly, networking can be the difference between unemployment and your dream job.
Tap Your Network: Part 2 (How Do I Network?) will be posted 7-7-09
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[...] our first post, Network Your Way To Work: Part 1, we discussed what networking is and how important networking is to your job search. In this [...]