Why Networking Fails Most of the Time

Many candidates wonder why they don’t get more job lead referrals and opportunities. Many assume that if they get an account on Twitter, Facebook, and Linked, attend networking meetings, and call all their friends/relatives/former co-workers – the referrals and opportunities should have the phone ringing off the hook.

Not likely!

Even if you have 2000 followers on Twitter, 500 on LinkedIn, and attend two networking meetings a month.

One of the desired outcomes from job search networking is to obtain qualified referrals and opportunities for jobs for which you might like to apply. Why then do very few of these trickle through your network?

The reason very few people are willing to refer job leads and opportunities is because they don’t yet trust you enough to make a referral.

Now you might ask, how do I gain that trust.

One of the ways to gain trust is to start giving back to your network before you start taking. This might take the form of referring job leads you hear about (that you’re not interested in) to others in your network. It might take the form of helping someone in your network develop a better 30 second elevator pitch. It might take the form of tweeting useful tips and suggestions from the job search you’re currently conducting.

The more people in your network see you as a giver, a “connector” of others, and a resource for information, the more they will begin to trust you and want to be givers to you.

This process of building trust within networking to generate referrals takes on average 3-6 months of very active and disciplined work. The result is that you can reduce your job search time dramatically.

We’ve got a very active discussion going on in our LinkedIn Discussion Group for Job Search regarding networking. Join us for that discussion by clicking here.

We also frequently discuss job search networking in our Internet Talk Radio Show on a weekly basis. Grab one of our audio downloads and start networking more effectively. You can listen and download the audio programs from our weekly show by clicking here.

Comment on this blog post about how you go “above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty” with your network to be a giver/connector/resource. Post a comment about the plan you just put together to change the way you network to generate referrals.

Barry

graphic credit Nima

Your Personal Brand

Having a personal brand that differentiates you from the 100’s of resumes is critical to your search. Especially during this economy.

So how do you make yourself different? By establishing your unique competencies, why you are relevant to the person reading your resume and how you have consistently demonstrated these competencies. These must be aligned with and relevant to the company or person.

For example, if you brand yourself as a “Sales person with exceptional negotiating skills dealing with multi-million dollar and multi-year contracts.” then you become relevant to those types of companies and industries. However, you become irrelevant to high volume low dollar companies.

Too many candidates see this as a negative because this eliminates these companies. In fact, you would be eliminated anyway because your expertise isn’t aligned. On the other hand, you become more valuable to those companies that do align with your brand. The more valuable you become the more the company is willing to pay.

A strong brand is always beneficial to a candidate. Every candidate has a brand. Most don’t take the time, reflection, and in-depth research to identify what their brand is. We aren’t suggesting that your brand will eliminate every other person conducting a similar search, but it can move you to the “A” stack of resumes. We have a free complete audio presentation on personal branding. Click here to download it is free.

Try these practical steps as you develop your unique brand:

1. Conduct a brainstorming exercise with yourself. List out all the things that make your experiences, values, passions, etc unique to you. Unique doesn’t mean exclusive. It is just what you bring to the party that some others won’t.
2. How other perceive you is the most critical. So start asking co-workers, past employees, ex-bosses, friends, networking connections to describe how they see your unique experiences, values, passions, etc.
3. Consolidate these and develop a branding statement.
4. You may have more than one statement depending on circumstances.

For more on personal branding CLICK HERE

Leave a comment with your personal brand. We may even be conducting an active search for your brand.

Brad

Building Your Personal Brand- Audio File

Being different from the rest of the crowd is critical, not important – critical, during a job search. We discuss not only how important it is to develop a personal brand, but the steps to doing it and finally how to get your brand into the market place.

If you want to get noticed by recruiters, hiring managers, CEO’s and referrals, you have to brand yourself so people remember you and refer you. We give two resources in this talk that will make sure you are different from the rest.

Don’t be the same- – be different and download this show.

Every Monday from 11-noon Pacific time on www.latalkradio.com we talk about what’s important in your job search. To download this show or any of our radio shows go to our audio library. CLICK HERE.