Posts filed under 'network'
A number of my friends of long standing and colleagues are looking for jobs. (Friends of long standing is another way to say old friends without calling them old 
They all have over 20 years of experience. The way they used to find jobs–through recruiters–is not working. Sure, recruiters have some openings, but most organizations are not advertising and not using recruiters even for senior-level jobs.
Here’s what I know about:
- Network with everyone you know. Don’t forget school and previous employer alumni groups.
- Make sure you are on the job boards suitable for your potential positions.
- See if any local or national associations or user groups have job boards you can use.
- Use social media to connect with people.
I’m sure there are more options. Do you have any ideas? My friends and colleagues would like to know. Please comment. Thanks.
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April 2nd, 2009
So the economy isn’t so hot right now and you’re looking for a new job. Not the easiest of circumstances. You’re calling people to network. You’ve updated your resume. Maybe you’ve even called me. I looked for you on LinkedIn, but I can’t find you because your name is Tom Smith and there are several other people with your name in my area, you all do similar work, and each of you have 10 or 12 connections, and I can’t tell which one is you.
Dear colleague: Please fill in your LinkedIn profile. Please fill in your FaceBook profile. Please fill in any profile on any social media network. How can I network with you if I can’t find you?
Once you’ve filled in your profile, add some people. I can’t believe you’ve been working for 10, 20, or 30 years and have 10 people as connections. You don’t have to be me–I’m a promiscuous networker . But, please, add people who are your colleagues. You can add people with whom you have social relationships. You can add your family. (Do you think I’m not going to add my daughters when they graduate from college?) You can add all your friends from college, even if you haven’t talked to them in 20 years. (What a great way to network, catching up with college friends. You think they don’t know about jobs?? Sure they do.)
I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care that you haven’t thought about social media before. If you are unemployed, you have a responsibility to make it easier to network with people to find that next job. Your responsibilities:
- Make it easy for people to find you online, at least at social media outlets
- Help people know which Tom Smith you are
- Listen to your children about how to use the Internet
I want to help my friends find jobs. I want to help acquaintances. But I can’t help if I can’t find you. Yes, call. Yes, send resumes. Yes, use recruiters. But for heaven’s sake, use social media. Use it, don’t just play with it.
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March 31st, 2009
While I draft an answer to George’s fake audition question, let me address Alex’s question about using LinkedIn for recommendations.
I use LinkedIn, especially for coaching recommendations. I don’t know if it helps me get more clients, but I keep thinking it should
Just remember, a recommendation is not a reference. A recommendation does not address any specific concerns you might have about a potential candidate (or a potential employer). A recommendation is just that: data that one person liked something about another person.
So use them, but don’t rely on them for references. After all, how can you tell if what one person liked is something you would like?
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December 10th, 2008
I was talking with a junior colleague recently. He can’t find a job. I offered to help network with him. He said no, he’d look for a job himself.
Big mistake. If someone offers you help networking, take it! No matter who you are, how many years of experience you have, how sure you are you can get a job by yourself, take the help.
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August 14th, 2008
I found my first job with the help of an on-campus recruiter, and with a local Boston-area recruiter. I found my second job through the newspaper. I’ve found all my other jobs (all of them, including my consulting engagements) via my network, which does include recruiters. That’s about 25 years of jobs.
Louise Fletcher has a great post about companies responding to online applicants, Is there Anybody Alive Out There? Sure, companies are not responding, so what’s a candidate to do? Network.
Candidates: Let me echo Louise’s advice: If you’re not on LinkedIn, join now. Stop reading and go there, join, fill out at least part of your profile, and then come back here. Find the people you’ve worked with before, invite them. Recommend a few of them. The more you recommend, the more likely they are to recommend you. (I’m not affiliated with LinkedIn. I receive no money from this endorsement.)
Is this a pain in the tush? Yup. And, it’s worth it. I know that some of my recommendations have made a difference in people calling me for consulting engagements.
If you’ve been working for more than 3 or 4 years, you’ll need your network just to find good recruiters, if that’s one of your job-seeking strategies.
Hiring managers: If you want the ability to know a little about a candidate before you phone screen or interview them, or if you want to do a behind-the-scenes reference check, you need to be on LinkedIn also.
I don’t recommend Facebook or Myspace for professional networking. You can’t see the connections or recommendations. My kids use Facebook to post pictures and gab with their friends. It’s for social networking, not for professional networking. No, I’m not friends with my kids. That’s just wrong. But when they graduate from college and are ready to increase their professional networks, I will connect with them on LinkedIn, offering them the use of my network.
You need to be ready to offer something to your network connections, and a recommendation is a great way to start.
It’s rare for a more senior person to find a job without networking, so make sure you pay attention to your network (whether you are looking or not), and manage it.
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May 13th, 2008
I’m one of the folks writing a monthly column over at Recruitingtrends.com. My first column is Exploiting
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May 13th, 2007
I just spoke with someone who’s looking for a project/product management job in the Boston area (my area). He hasn’t been attending local dinner meetings of the PMI or the PDMA or any other professional society, so I suggested he start.
Making contact with people, networking, is the single most important a hiring manager or a candidate can do to start the search (from either side). Meeting a person, seeing that person face-to-face provides the hiring manager or candidate subjective and objective data that an email or a phone call just can’t do.I have a few guidelines for me when I meet people. (I developed this little checklist because I’m a hopeless geek and can appear rude when I’m not thinking about the other person.)
- Keep a smile on my face. If I’m distracted by my drive or work or the kids, I’m not going to look approachable and/or relaxed. I want to be approachable.
- Use a firm but brief handshake. I hate those limp-fish handshakes, and they bring out the child in me–I want to grip the other person’s hand harder and longer. (Go ahead, shake your head. I am So I use a firm but brief handshake so I don’t do the macho thing with the other person.
- Hug the other person if they start it. I’m very lucky and have had a wide network of people I’ve met and worked with over the years. We have personal friendships as well as professional relationships. So we hug. But I’m geeky enough that I have to wait for the other person to start it.
Making contact–real human contact–with someone is a skill that every hiring manager and candidate needs to develop. You may not need a checklist. If you do, yours may be different from mine. But make human contact with everyone you meet, and you’ll find sourcing or searching for a job much easier.
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April 14th, 2006
Too often, people think of conferences as boondoggles. As a frequent conference speaker, I can tell you that it’s possible you’d encounter a marketing presentation devoid of technical content at a conference–once. I doubt that speaker would be allowed to return.
As a result, conferences are a great place to start learning about new things, and they’re a great place to network with other people interested in learning.I can’t possibly list all the conferences here. But I will list the conferences I tend to speak at on a yearly basis, where I think the networking is good.
- SQE hosts the Better Software, and STAR conferences. Better Software is for the whole gamut of software development. There’s something for managers, project managers, developers, testers, release engineers. (I don’t think there’s much for product managers.) STAR conferences are focused on testing and management of testing.
- Software Development hosts the SD conferences. These conferences are for the whole gamut of software: managers of many stripes including project managers, developers, testers, release engineers. (Again, I’m not sure about product managers.)
- AYE conference is about developing interpersonal skills, and is for anyone. It’s limited to 99 people, but we have reports that a number of the people who’ve met at AYE have networked with each other to find jobs.
- Many local chapters of ASQ, PMI, IEEE, ACM also hold one-day conferences, aside from their national conferences. Most of them charge a nominal fee for a booth. I find the local one-day conferences a great way to network.
If you read a magazine or belong to a technical society, chances are good that magazine or society is affiliated with or puts on a conference. I particularly like local conferences, because it’s more likely the delegates are local.To use conferences for networking, consider all these alternatives:
- Make up flyers with your open positions/ads/whatever will attract people. Include a URL to the full job description. Post a flyer on the message board. Include ways to contact you.
- Take advantage of each session and any networking opportunities to talk to people. You don’t have to “sell” your company; you just need to let people know you’re looking. Keep your introduction low-key; let other people help sell you.
- If you take a booth at a conference, bring plenty of flyers so people can take one (and maybe pass it along). Be willing to talk to anyone who stops by. Practice your job fair skills before the conference.
- If you have a booth, make sure you make the decision early enough to be part of the program.
- Give a talk. Your talk about something you/your group has done at work is a huge attractor to potential candidates.
If you use other techniques, please comment. But don’t discount conferences. Conferences can be a great way to source candidates.
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September 6th, 2005
I’ve received at least a half-dozen requests for help finding people in the last week. So it’s certainly time to think about ways to find candidates. (I have a whole chapter on sourcing strategy and examples in Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds
).
In the meantime, if you just want to consider technical societies, consider these:
- For developers, try local chapters of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) or IEEE. Here in the Boston area, the GBCACM (Greater Boston Chapter of the ACM) holds 3 days of training in the spring and another 3 days in the fall, along with a variety of meetings. The Boston section of IEEE has a bazillion SIGs (Special Interest Groups), and monthly meetings on almost anything you can think about that’s a technical field.
- For process, QA, test, and metrics people, try your local (or relatively local) Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN). The SEI has some resources for getting SPINs started. But once the SPINs start up, they take on the local flavor of the community, and especially the program chair. (I was program chair for Boston SPIN for a few years, and I definitely tilted the program towards more pragmatic approaches to process improvement.) I’ve spoken at a number of SPINs across the country. Some have more orientation towards process, some have more for testing, some are much more interested in metrics.
- For project managers, try the local chapter of the PMI (Project Management Institute). I’ve spoken at a number of PMI chapters, so they’re not all PMBOK-by-the-book
- For testers, try the SPIN meetings, possibly some IEEE meetings (depending on the topic), ASQ (American Society for Quality) and QAI (Quality Assurance Institute).
- For writers, try the Society of Technical Communications.
- For support staff people (especially senior staff and managers), try local chapters of the Help Desk Institute
- For specific tools, look for user groups. For example, if you’re looking for a configuration management person, (build or release engineer), consider the user group for the tool you’re using.
When you network at a local chapter, remember that you’ll have more success if you attend a meeting rather than just send/email a position description. And you’ll have more success if you attend meetings on a regular basis, rather than just when you need candidates. The more frequently you attend meetings, the more people will remember you and the more likely you are to have other people suggest you as a possible employer.If I’ve forgotten your favorite technical society, please comment and/or send me email. I’ll add it to the list.
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August 30th, 2005
I’ve said before that networking is critically important to finding a job and finding candidates. A colleague of mine has just sent me an email explaining her predicament,
I am currently looking for a job and networks are important to me. I you are interested in the resume of an experienced problem solver, a generalist with a passion for organizational development, agile methods and happy people, please let me know. And don’t hesitate to contact me or tell your friends about me. I am on some kind of a timebomb, having h1b status.
I know this person fairly well. And note how she describes herself with those qualities (experienced problem solver), preferences (agile methods and happy people), and skills (passion for organizational development) that are the heart of what makes a person right or wrong for a given context.If you would like to contact my colleague, click here to send me an email, and I’ll forward your email to her.
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April 12th, 2005
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