There are four distinct categories of networks that most of us have: (1) Personal, (2) Professional, (3) Organizational and (4) Opportunistic (Community Affiliations). To develop your initial contact lists, systematically think through your networks in each of these four categories. When you first do this, go fast; brainstorm the process. Unless phone numbers and addresses come readily to mind, skip them for the moment. Don't rule anyone out, even if you think, "Ah, Herman's an uninformed boob. He doesn't know anything and he'll never know anything." At this stage, be inclusive. Set your priorities later.
Next, develop worksheets that identify your resources in the four categories. Try to enter at least two names for each fill-in, if only to demonstrate to yourself the astonishing breadth of day-to-day interpersonal contacts that most of us have and never think about.
If you don't divide your thinking into these categories, you're likely to experience a common list-making phenomenon: mind-lock. The moment you're confronted with blank sheets of paper, your conscious mind throws a few circuit-breakers and it too goes blank. You squeeze your eyes shut, tense your stomach muscles and push yourself to "think up" names.
The first time you work on your list, you'll be exhausted after an hour of pushing and you'll find that you have 37 names written on your paper. Later, after you've cooled down, gates will open and your list will swell to 73, or thereabouts. You'll say to yourself, "That's it. That's everyone I know. I'm done."
Just as you drift off to sleep that night, the relaxation of your daily defense and information-screening mechanisms will allow a whole lot of names to pop into your mind. You swear to yourself that you'll remember them in the morning, but the names will be no more remembered than the dreams you have that night. For that reason, it's very useful during list making to keep several pad-and-pencil units around: by your bed, by the refrigerator, in the bathroom and on one of those suction-cup stick-ups on the windshield of your car. When recall is sounded, you want to be ready.
Establishing Priorities: The 3 Ps:
Let's say your straining and scribbling has given you the names of 137 people whom you know at least well enough to say "Hi" to. Intimacy isn't important; you need only enough familiarity to provide license for a friendly, low-key call. You've consulted your holiday card list, wended your way through your high school and college yearbooks, consulted professional directories, reviewed your business correspondence for the past year, gone over the stubs in your checkbook and reviewed your phone log and daily planner.
Rewrite the names neatly on your listing sheets, this time with phone numbers and, perhaps, addresses. If you have a computer, key in all the information on each name on your listing sheets to develop a tracking database. Alternately, buy a little metal-box file and create a 3 x 5 index card for each name.
Do you then start alphabetically with the A names and keep wading until you reach Z? Or is there some other sensible method for assigning priorities and deciding which contacts to call first?
As a rough rule-of-thumb, think of three Ps: (1) Proximity, (2) Perspective and (3) Power. Start by seeing the people who are "proximate" to you: the people you know best, trust most and feel most comfortable with. Practicing and refining your two-minute drill will be far easier when the stakes are low and the lubrication of friendship is abundant.
See Putting It All Together: "The Two-Minute Drill" for more information.
Heed two warnings here: Your friends may take it too easy on you. They may be disinclined to really put you through your paces or to insist that you be clear, focused and succinct. Tell them at the beginning of the meeting that one of the services they can provide is to act as an objective audience and help you to refine and clarify your self-presentation as needed.
Your friends know you only one way. They may have an incomplete or significantly distorted view of who you are, what you do and what you want to do next. Take steps to make sure they hear and understand your product profile and job search objectives. Be gently insistent, as your close friends will claim that they know you well enough and don't need more details. Just tell them gently that you want to schedule a meeting and help them learn more about you.
As you schedule your first 10 to 12 networking meetings, understand that your fundamental purpose is to get practice. Don't expect a whole lot of content; just aim to get your presentation up to a comfortable level. You'll get content anyway; in fact, you might be pleasantly surprised at how well these early meetings go. As you start networking, warm up on your most tolerant contacts, or at least on those who represent no great loss if you should happen to botch the meeting.
Before you start making calls, rate each name on your list as an A, B, C or D. A's will be your most valuable potential sources of information or help, your trump cards or heavy hitters; those who owe you major favors. At the other end are the Ds, including your idiot cousin Myron. Bs may be people you haven't talked to in a long time; Cs may be social acquaintances who like you but haven't a clue about what you do for a living. Devise some criteria for systematically categorizing your contacts, and continue to rank new names that way as they come in.
When you start the actual networking process you can begin working down some of your C and D contacts. Some of these names may not be worth the effort of a scheduled, face-to-face meeting, but it won't hurt to get the word out of them and see whether you can create some antennas.
Practice your two-minute drill on them. Try some variations on the theme. Remember what countless networkers before you have learned: your hair cutter—a C contact—knows an amazing amount of gossip that may be of incredible value to you.
Once you've warmed up on your nearby leads, start seeking out your perspective contacts—the ones who know a lot, are themselves well-connected, have been around the industry for years, and are regarded by others as authorities, focal points or walking encyclopedias. These contacts include some citizens who know the political ropes and can help you distinguish the straight skinny from the sanitized information put out for public consumption.
Your perspective contacts are the wise people whose primary benefit is to give you good advice and sage judgment. They can summarize industry trends, give you behind-the-scenes glimpses, and distinguish the real movers and shakers from the phonies. Equally important, they can evaluate your past, present and future career choices within appropriate limits, and help you refine your thinking and terminology; highlight which of your past accomplishments will carry weight with employers in a new area or industry and put a new spin on your past career moves. They also can warn you away from jobs, industries, objectives or goals that are unrealistic, unpromising or more unattractive than they may seem.
When chatting with your perspective contacts, encourage their complete candor. Be frank, and ask for frankness in response. There is a fine line between being highly motivated and being so "up" that others are reluctant to rain on your parade or puncture your balloon by telling you the truth. If you communicate that your zeal will cause you to turn a deaf ear to "negative waves," your contacts may let you keep dancing out there in la-la land to your eventual regret.
If one of your contacts says that what you so dearly want is "clearly out of the question," don't accept that advice at face value and recast your dreams and aspirations. There's no requirement to suspend your judgment or ignore your research when you're networking. If someone is lukewarm about the desirability or feasibility of a proposed job choice, ask detailed questions about why your planned course seems unpromising.
In probing his thinking, not just his conclusions, you may discover these valuable lessons: that you did not communicate rightly and the person didn't understand your objectives, that certain arguments or reservations will reappear for rebuttal as you pursue your objective and finally, that you may have to acquire new skills or experience in order to be taken seriously in your new career role.
Generally speaking, it's best to reserve your power contacts until you know exactly what to ask for and how to ask for it. Power contacts are people who have the formal or informal authority to get things done: to open doors, call in favors, get you pulled through the screen and make sure you're seen by the right people. If, early in your networking efforts, you call on these people for help and don't know what kind of help to ask for, you run the risk of turning them off, dissipating the momentum they can provide and losing the benefit of their clout forever.
"It isn't my job to make sense out of your life," the president of a major pharmaceutical company told a networker, a senior manager in a related industry, when he called to ask for a meeting. "I'm not interested in helping you objectify your objectives or prioritize your priorities. When you can tell me precisely whom you want to see and why you want to see them, call me back and we'll sit down to talk. Hold up your end, and I'll be happy to open some doors. Waste my time, and you'll wish you hadn't."
There will be people who bridge all three Ps. You probably have some wise and powerful friends. The point is, networking contacts come in all denominations, and if you spend all the big bills first and don't hit pay dirt, you'll have nothing but small change left later on. For most job seekers, and certainly for the vast majority of career changers, the initial phase of networking is one of gaining confidence, focus, goal clarity and as much information as you can about where the big game are to be found. It's a time for learning new terms of art and shoptalk, for ruling out unrealistic ideas and mistaken assumptions. It is, to mix a metaphor, more likely to be a time of sowing than a time of reaping. Don't be impatient, don't go for the fast hit, don't indulge in rescue fantasies. If a heavy hitter steps in and decides to champion your cause, great. But understand that such luck is the exception, not the norm.
As you progress in your networking, the task of keeping track of all the old contacts, new contacts, call-backs and follow-ups will become daunting. The easy leverage of calling on friends will give way to second-, third- and fourth-tier networking where no prior relationship eases the way. You'll be rowing the boat entirely by yourself. If you impress, you'll get more referrals to more contacts who have perspective, power, or both.
If you fail to carry your weight, you'll know it soon enough. The meetings will be short and perfunctory, and the stream of new names—whether As, Bs, Cs or Ds—will shrink to a trickle. When this happens, a lot of frustrated networkers blame the system, not themselves. Often, the problem is inadequate preparation, pure and simple.
Effective networkers know that you can't make it up as you go along or wing it in each and every meeting. As the process goes on, the stakes get higher and the contacts are more valuable. So plan on spending as much time keeping your lists in order as you did creating them in the first place.
As you build your initial networking list and prioritize it, remember one networker's description of the whole process: "No, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes?, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. YES." As with most challenges in life, it's the last word that counts.
