Job Hunting - 10 Tips to Build Your Network

 

 

March 22nd, 2010 by Sergey Novoselov

You’ve been working for the same employer and didn’t update your resume for a few years. Now all of a sudden you have to start job hunting again. You’ve contacted your former colleagues, all the people you know and, after a few months, finally realize that it’s not enough. You need to start getting in touch with people from professional groups, your alumni association, etc.
The trouble is, you don’t know those people and not sure how to approach them. You’re certainly not alone. Probably every other person has the same problems. Like anything else, however, networking gets easier the more you do it.

 

 

We’ll give you a few tips to get started.
1. Rank your contacts by your level of comfort and start from less difficult to most difficult.
2. Tell them that you’re looking for a job. The worst mistake is to avoid admitting that you’re out of work. If you pretend you’re not unemployed, you may never learn about certain job openings.
3. Prepare your “elevator speech”. Everyone is busy, so catching someone’s attention as quickly as possible is vital. Practice to introduce yourself in a way that immediately tells the other person about you and what you have to offer. Of course, there is no a universal speech and you might have to change it depending on your audience.
4. Ask for advice rather than information. It might produce useful insights or suggestions about other people you should contact.
5. Don’t forget to ask for additional contacts. It also makes it much easier if you can start your conversation saying that somebody recommended you to contact that person.
6. You never know unless you ask, so never assume a negative answer. You’ll be surprised how many people are actually pleased to hear from you.
7. Offer something in return whenever you can. The fact that you’re out of job doesn’t mean you have nothing to offer - any information can be useful.
8. Keep track of all you contacts and email them periodically to update them on your job search. This keeps you in people’s minds and lets them respond quickly if they hear of anything that might help you.
9. Don’t stop networking even after you get a new job. Statistics tells us that the average tenure in a job is about four years. You don’t want to start building your network from scratch.
10. Share your ideas and personal experiences. It will help you and others to gain the confidence in this process.

Mots clés Google : Job Hunting, Network, Resumark Blog, Jobs Online