STOP looking for employment POSITIONS and start looking for employer COMPANIES. Ask yourself and friends: “What are the 10 companies in this area that everyone LOVES working for?” Then, network your way to people who are working in those target companies. (Try using www.LinkedIn.com in addition to traditional networking.)
See if you can grab coffee with those people to learn more about the company and what kinds of positions are open. If you show your enthusiasm for the company, people are more likely to recommend you, regardless of whether your experience is an exact match for open positions. Here’s why this works: Companies hire attitude. They know that if you have the right personality, they can teach you the job. If they know you’re pre-sold on their company culture, they’re much more likely to consider you for a job.
Seeking out companies rather than positions also gives you a good way to expand your base of contacts, and a growing network is the essence of every good job search. Most people ask friends and relatives to “keep an eye out” for job openings and, having made that request, feel that they have exhausted their networking. However, done properly, a network is ever-expanding.
So, in addition to getting introductions to people at your new list of target employers, build your network by doing more than attending the meetings of professional associations – get involved, volunteer for committee assignments. Hey, you have the time. Doing so, you’ll get to know a number of new people in your profession. Ask them if they know anyone in your target companies, and you have gracefully opened a conversation about your job search and tapped into the profitable process of contact multiplication.
From the great site: JT & Dale Talk Jobs
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