How to Find a Job Through Networking

Very few professionals know how to network effectively. Most think that networking is letting people know what we are looking for and motivating them to connect us to the right people and opportunities. This is not the optimal approach to network into a job.

Hitting People up for Favors Doesn’t Work Well

We have all gotten requests like this: Hey there stranger, I know we haven’t talked for four years, but I just got laid off. Do you know of anyone looking for a (fill in the job title)?

As anyone who has used this line knows, it rarely works because the likelihood of a specific person knowing about an open job that lines up with your background, at your level, in your location, right now is needle in haystack stuff.

As a result, presuming that your outreach isn’t ignored, the response will likely be: “Great to hear from you! Sorry to learn that you are on the market. I am not aware of anything open right now, but I can certainly keep my ears open.”

This response is a low-effort, polite way to clean up an inbox. Most people won’t take the time to deep think this if nothing comes to mind at the time. Don’t get me wrong, there are some people out there who do like to help, but they are becoming more and more an endangered species. People are always going to be more interested in helping themselves than helping others. But, you can leverage this dynamic by reverse engineering the approach.

Be a Solution, not the Needy Job Seeker

The key to leveraging a network to get a job is to embrace the concept that the first step in the hiring cycle isn’t the posting of a job, it is that an employer has a problem that they can best solve by hiring someone. This problem could be that someone just left and must be replaced or that the organization has established a goal that requires more talent to attain.

Typically, when the employer identifies the need, they have only two requirements: that the person can (a) solve their problem, and (b) fit in with the team. Most of the requirements we see in job postings are therefore not true requirements; they are filters devised to help the staffing team manage the flow of candidates through vocational profiling.

Every career changer I know, which are many, got their jobs at this stage, as have people who got their job because a former colleague gave them a tip that their new employer was going to be hiring.

Two Key Concepts

Therefore, developing an effective professional networking strategy requires doing two things well at the start:

1. Defining the problems, events, or opportunities that an employer would pay to solve

2. Identifying networking partners who are likely to experience these issues as well as their internal and external business connections with whom they may share

The Pitch

While there is nothing wrong with telling your network you are looking for a job, it is critical to avoid doing it the way mentioned earlier. The key is to embrace the fact that it is infinitely more likely that a networking partner will know of someone who has (or will have) a problem than it is that they know of an open position that you haven’t already seen on Indeed or LinkedIn.

Once you are clear on the problems you can solve, you will most likely discover that there are people who may hear of a problem that someone else will need to solve. Vendors, partners, funding sources, and consultants can make great networking partners because they are often targeting the same kind of problems that you are but are offering a different solution. To gain optimal benefit, it is important to tailor the way you define your solution in a way that each networking partner can put it in context of what they are likely to see and hear.

Networking Can be Empowering!

Ensuring that people in your network think of you when the need originally arises enables you to get ahead of the competition, avoid perceived “gaps” in your skillset, and influence the definition and scale of the job responsibilities.

Most people are going to be uncomfortable hitting up a boss, colleague, partner, client, or friend to make an introduction to help you find a job. But those people can get very excited to help that very same boss, colleague, partner, client, or friend solve a problem by introducing them to you.

And… it is quite empowering to talk about the help that you provide instead of making everything about the help that you need.