Well, hello there and thanks for surfing my wave!
Some school of hard knocks advice: If you’re struggling to develop a job network, or if you’re new to this game, start one and start it today. If you’re in a school setting, fresh to the workforce or just plain not well-connected, fear not. As I have studied and learned over the last several months, waiting until you need one is a bad business decision. If you’re in the process of building a network, keep at it; it’s hard work, but essential more so today than ever before.
Unemployment Bailout Advice: Start Career Networking Before You Get Laid-Off
We should be starting business partnerships early on; don’t wait to develop these until you need one. Try to figure out as soon as possible during your education what you want to do for the rest of your life. Contact career resource centers, volunteer in organizations related to your interests and see if that’s where you want to work. Experiment while you can and as often as you can with employment possibilities. We must constantly work our business contacts and exchange ideas and information with everyone we see whether we’re working or not.
If you’re in school now and studying for a specific trade or profession, immediately email companies you’d be working for and ask to meet them to gain an insight into what’s happening in that sector. Through your studies, you should be getting a practical handle on what that particular world has to offer. Target several businesses and ask if you can intern during breaks to see if it’s really what you want – take the risks now before you need to make final decisions.
I suggest when we all get jobs, don’t stop career networking ‘cause you never know. Instead of emailing or using interoffice mail (like mailrooms are going to be around in the future), walk (get some exercise) to the designated office and introduce yourself and get the contact information of every department head you can; don’t brown-nose but be professional about it. You’re “learning” the company and want to put names with faces kind of thing. Again, this is tough stuff but we can’t let ourselves get lazy and complacent.
With the current state of technology, everyone must have a professional on-line presence; and please, keep it that way. So many folks are getting caught and sent to pasture for being dumb with what they say. No matter what your age, on-line platforms in which to share industry information are keen and must be an integral ingredient in your marketing strategy. I don’t like calling it “social” networking because it isn’t. There are sites for business and sites to waste your time. They should be separate and content therein should be identified.
Job networking will always be a work-in-progress. If our rolodex is ever complete, we’re doing it wrong. If it’s been awhile since you’ve been in touch with past colleagues, reach out to them now – chances are it won’t take you more than 10-15 minutes to conduct a reasonable search for them. Who knows, they might be looking for you as well!
If you start now with creating strong, long-term business contacts, if you should ever taste the fate of unemployment you will have plenty of resources on which to rely and decrease the likelihood of long-term unemployment.
Why Just Look For A Job? Create One!™
TheUnemployMENTOR – email@theunemploymentor.com
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }