These are the artifacts of aggressive networking, the "data dump" where all of the information you've been collecting is first stashed. This is raw information: un-tabulated, disorganized, often undated or unattributed. What separates systematic and effective networkers from bulls just crashing around in contacts' china shops is how these raw materials are processed and managed. Unless religiously controlled, integrated and planned, networking can produce too much information, rather than too little.
When this happens, many networkers, deluged with data and faced with far more to do than time to do it in, throw in the towel. They grab for the latest or most promising information and let the rest drift out of sight and out of mind. They forget to follow up or forget whom they were supposed to follow up with. They may give themselves a "well-deserved" day of rest or perhaps more.
When they decide to regain momentum or try to regain control, they're confronted with all sorts of time-consuming tasks that include developing, integrating, purging and updating the networking master list, making phone calls to schedule meetings, and calling back on the phone calls that don't connect.
Moreover, they have to keep track of how often the calls have been made; writing request letters to the contacts who should be seen in person. To ensure that scheduled meetings are not forgotten, they must maintain an accurate calendar of meetings scheduled, "drop dead" dates for follow-up letters, conferences, lunches and conventions are a must. Keeping a current tracking system that allows retrieval of information on the people seen, when they were seen, what was discussed in the meetings and what action steps come next. These steps include maintaining a current list of networking names, addresses, and phone numbers and taking the time to summarize and synthesize all that has been learned as the job search has progressed: objectives, attractive target industries or organizations, people, and personalities are all information that a networker must synchronize and coordinate.
For many networkers, the confrontation with all of these administrative tasks is followed by what computer types call a "head crash." The whole system shuts down, circuits take themselves off-line, and an overwhelming urge develops to watch the afternoon ball game on TV. This denial response usually is accompanied by a pervasive sense of guilt and the horrible fear that other people out there aren't goofing off and are therefore building a competitive advantage in the job market.
When networking, it's absolutely essential that you have systems in place, both to schedule future activity and to trace every single past call, letter or meeting. For most people, this means having a number of systems running in parallel:
- A month-at-a-glance diary to give you a quick and global look at your past and future meeting activity.
- A week-at-a-glance diary that shows your schedule of immediate meetings and provides a little space for an address, the referral's name and any other relevant notations regarding each contact.
- A daily "to-do" form that charts first calls, call-backs, meetings, follow-up calls and other activity ticklers. Prior days' lists should be kept chronologically, for historical purposes.
- A current Master Networking List, usually updated weekly, that records and prioritizes each contact.
- A chronological Master Activity Summary that tracks, for each contact, the dates of (a) the initial referral; (b) the initial and all subsequent phone contacts, with a summary of the purpose and outcome of each; (c) a summary of the content of each meeting; and (d) the names of referrals obtained in each meeting.
- A 5X7 card-catalog or electronic address list of every contact and referral. You may also use it to note "care and feeding" contacts for your existing network on a long-term basis: when you called, when you sent congratulatory letters, when you sent greeting or holiday cards.
Detail-oriented people who love structuring things say that they get excited just looking at the list of all of these control mechanisms. Their minds fly immediately to how they will format them, how long it will take to make daily entries, and even what time of day will be set aside to keep the tracking/planning system current.
Concept-oriented people say the prospect of all of this record keeping is daunting; a common rationalization is: "It looks like it may be more trouble than it's worth."
What you choose to do is a function of your temperament, your innate organizational abilities and your need for a sense of control. The record shows, however, that superbly organized and controlled searches tend to end faster and produce more choice than the throw-all-of-the-cocktail-napkins-and-matchbook-covers-into-an-accordion-file approach. The more sophisticated your systems, the more demanding they are of your time. Once set up, they won't update themselves.
Some networkers set aside one morning a week for updating and cleaning up their tracking/planning systems. The problem with this approach is that one missed week produces a deluge of data to process the next week. In the face of spending many hours making and updating entries, some job seekers let it slide.
The magnificently planned systems are abandoned; the job search becomes a day to-day, make-it-up-as-you-go-along affair; and valuable information disappears from the job seeker's grasp forever.
Whether you prefer manual tracking systems where you push paper or automated programs or apps where you manipulate bits and bytes is pretty much a matter of personal preference and your level of computer literacy.
Beyond the bulkiness of maintaining manual files, just knowing that the hard copy is forever retrievable may be comforting. Networkers who are adept on the PC or smartphone find "working in paper" incredibly archaic. They report that it's fun to design their own database filing system, use one of the increasing number of user-friendly database software programs or apps now commercially available, or take an existing system and adapt it for the demands of networking and job search planning.
If you're going to track activity manually, it makes sense to design and use a series of forms that promote uniformity in the way that you elicit structure and retrieve information. There's no particular magic to the layout of such forms, as long as they work for you. A weekly job search plan, while resembling a standard week-at-a-glance calendar, forces the job seeker to review and think of each of the many interrelated activities that go into a comprehensive job search. A condensed form can easily be scaled up. One job seeker who has a background in military project management created a continuous wall-chart timeline that now extends across two walls of his basement. It's his "life-at-a-glance."
A trip to the local PC dealer or software vendor may either delight or bewilder a networker looking for organizational aids. The trade-off usually seems to be between user-friendly applications that can be learned quickly but don't allow much custom-tailoring and highly sophisticated interactive database products that can be expanded, contracted, folded or pleated to present information in almost any form the user finds most practical.
Many bundled programs contain basic word-processing, spreadsheet, calendar and list generation functions in one package; in some programs, it's possible to move rapidly and easily from function to function: composing letters, doing merged mailings or updating lists. The downside of many of these simpler programs is that they require item-by-item information entry, and the information is presented only in a certain prescribed format. For more sophisticated computer jockeys, highly interactive databases can be developed that distinguish between summarizing past activity and tackling future tasks, such as generating daily "to-do" lists. Smartphone apps can provide similar functionality.
