Visiting with about 20 recent graduates of Baruch College in Manhattan, Donna Sweidan asked who in the group had participated in any events held by the college’s alumni club.
“Almost no one had been involved,” said Sweidan, a career counselor and coach from Stamford, Conn.
All the graduates from Baruch, the City University of New York’s main business school, attended the recent meeting to discuss strategies for job hunting in the current market. But they weren’t taking into account the maxim “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” by seeking out other graduates of their alma mater.
It’s not impossible to find a job by replying to Internet job postings or other methods, Sweidan said, but it’s much easier to mount a search for a new or better job through people with whom you already have a relationship.
“I think that’s where a lot of people fall short, is that they don’t realize how important it is to engage in active networking activities,” she said, estimating that 75 percent of people find their job through some kind of personal connection.
The national unemployment rate is now at 6.1 percent and has been growing fairly steadily since mid-2007, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 24 percent of people surveyed in a recent poll on the economy said their top concern in the current economic turmoil is their job.
“Who you know” soon may become an even more important factor in a job search, as competition for jobs becomes even tougher in the weakening economy.
“My recommendation is always to make sure you’re building and nurturing a network before you ever need one,” said Jocelyn Lincoln, an executive with Kelly Services, the Detroit-based staffing agency.
The approach matters
Many people hesitate to use professional connections to generate job leads, especially with someone they’ve met recently, but Sweidan said it’s the approach that matters, not the fact that you’re asking someone for help.
“You don’t go out and ask, ‘Do you have a job for me?’ That’s the worst thing that anybody can say,” she explained. “You want to go out there to cultivate relationships.”
Nevertheless, if at the same time you’re getting to know someone, you make it clear that you are looking for a new spot, you could find yourself tapped into what Sweidan calls the hidden job market — jobs that are not advertised, but that companies need to fill.
“Many of the jobs that are available are never at times posted,” echoed Lincoln. Some companies even offer referral bonuses to employees who help recruit new talent.
Sweidan recommends asking a person who works for a company, or in a field, that you’re interested in for a brief meeting to share some advice, rather than specifically to help you find a job.
“They can’t close the door on you if you’re asking for advice,” she said. On the other hand, if a few requests go unheeded, she advised moving on to the next person.
One step that brings together traditional face-to-face networking with more modern methods is inviting new contacts to join an online business-related network like LinkedIn. Launched in 2003, LinkedIn now has more than 30 million users and adds about 1 million every two weeks, according to spokeswoman Kay Luo.
Join professional groups
Debby Afraimi, a recruiting consultant in the New York, said she uses the site as a follow-up to each interview she has with a potential client. “I always send my follow-up e-mail as an invitation to join my network on LinkedIn,” Afraimi said.
Afraimi encourages job hunters to join professional groups or other more traditional networking organizations.
But unlike Sweidan, she doesn’t think a face-to-face relationship is needed to leverage contacts, or that it’s entirely necessary to establish personal contact before seeking help from someone you find online.
“We really are sort of a short attention span culture, and I think that getting straight to the point is what we do,” Afraimi said. “I just think the key lies in how you make the approach, not so much what you’re asking for in the first e-mail.”
It’s more important, for instance, to make sure your first note to someone doesn’t appear to be a mass e-mail or is something very generic, she said, and to reference something you’ve learned about the person in your first contact. “We establish relationships (online) I think much faster than we do in the real world,” Afraimi said.
