We outline a hypothetical plan for conducting an effective job search on page 54. This plan incorporates the individual job search activities over a six month period. If you phase in the first five job search steps during the initial three to four weeks and continue the final four steps in subsequent weeks and months, you should begin receiving job offers within two to three months after initiating your job search. Interviews and job offers can come anytime - often unexpectedly - as you conduct your job search. An average time is within three months, but it can occur within a week or take as long as five months. If you plan, prepare, and persist at the job search, the pay-off will be job interviews and offers.
Networking plays a central on-going role in moving your job search to its final goals - job interviews and offers. While three months may seem a long time, especially if you have just lost your job and you need work immediately, you can shorten your job search time by increasing the frequency of your prospecting, networking, and informational interviewing activities. If you are job hunting on a full-time basis, you may be able to cut your job search time in half. But don't expect to get a job within a week or two. It requires time and hard work - perhaps the hardest work you will ever do - but it pays off with a job that is right for you.
DO YOUR HOMEWORK
One word of caution before we proceed further. An important lesson we and others have learned over the years is this: effective networking and job interviewing are based upon a strong job search foundation of self-assessment, skills identification, objective setting, research, and resume and letter writing. Don't short-change yourself by failing to do your homework by completing each step in the job search process. If you do this, you should become a very effective networker who will find jobs that you both do well and enjoy doing.
COMMUNITY LEVEL NETWORKS
At the community level, networks consist of different organizations that define the structure of communities and enable individuals to gain access to new job and career opportunities through the combined processes of individual, organizational, and community networking. Bach community, for example, has its own social, economic, political, and job market structure. The degree of structure differs for every community. However, one thing is relatively predictable: most communities lack a coherent structure for processing job information efficiently and effectively. Identifying these organizations and knowing how they interact with each other is a key to making a long-distance job search in an unfamiliar community where standard networking strategies designed primarily at the individual level may or may not function well in reference to the local power structure.
Let's illustrate this level of networks with a few examples. Each community is made up of numerous individuals, groups, organizations, and institutions that are involved in pursuing their own interests in both cooperation and competition with one another. The Yellow Pages of your telephone book best outline the major actors. Banks, mortgage companies, advertising firms, car dealers, schools, churches, small businesses, industries, hospitals, law firms, governments, and civic and voluntary groups do their "own thing" and have their own internal power structure. No one dominates except in small communities which also may be company towns - mills, mining companies, publishing firms, universities, and the military. At the same time, the groups overlap with each other because of economic, political, social, and professional needs. The bank, for example, needs to loan money to the businesses and churches. The businesses, in turn, need the educational institutions. And the educational institutions need the businesses to absorb their graduates. Therefore, individuals tend to cooperate to ensure that people playing the other games also succeed. Members of school boards, medical boards, and the boardrooms of banks and corporations will overlap and give the appearance of a "power structure" even though power is structured in the loosest sense of the term. The players in this game compete and cooperate with each other as well as co-op one another. The structures they create can become your opportunity structures for penetrating the hidden job market
Take the example of Washington, DC. The opportunity structures for your job search networks at all three levels - community, organizational, and individual - are relatively well defined in this city. While government is the major institution, other institutions are also well defined in relation to the government. Within government, both the political and administrative institutions function as alternative opportunity structures in the Washington networks: congressional staffs, congressional committees, congressional subcommittees, congressional bureaucracy, executive staff, departments, independent executive agencies, and independent regulatory agencies. Outside, but clinging to, government are a variety of other groups and networks: interest groups, the media, professional associations, contractors
For years Washington insiders have learned how to use these "opportunity structures" to advance their careers. They illustrate how networks at the individual, organizational, and community level are used simultaneously for getting jobs and advancing careers. A frequent career pattern might be to work in an agency for three to four years. During that time, one would make important contacts on Capitol Hill with congressional staffs and committees as well as with private consultants, contractors, and interest groups. One's specialized knowledge on the inner workings of government is marketable to these other people. Therefore, it is relatively easy to make a job change from a federal agency to a congressional committee or to an interest group. After a few years here, you move to another group in the network. Perhaps you work on your law degree at the same time so that in another five years you can go into the truly growth industry in the city - law firms. The keys to making these moves are the personal contacts - whom you know - and networking. Particular attention is given to keeping a current SF-171 (federal government's application form) or resume, just in case an opportunity happens to come your way. Congressional staff members usually last no more than two years; they set their sights on consulting and contracting firms, agencies, or interest groups for their next job move.
Whatever community you decide to focus your job search on, expect it to have its particular networks. Do as much research as possible to identify the structure of the networks as well as the key people who can provide access to various elements in the opportunity structures. Washington is not unique in this respect; it is just better known, and Washingtonians talk about it more because of their frequent job moves.
