I was at a focus group of business school students last week and they talked a lot about networking into a job search. They verified something that I’ve been thinking for a while: we each keep circles of networking contacts. There are not enough hours in the day to stay close to everyone that you meet, so everyone comes up with ways to manage the network.
The first step of this is categorizing your networking contacts. Some people do this formally, others do it more ad-hoc, but everyone does it. It’s a little-discussed topic, but even my 12 year old daughter can quickly sum up her school relationships based on whether the person eats lunch at her table (her inner circle), is a friend who eats elsewhere (her outer circle) or someone else.
The interesting thing is where do the job search networking contacts fit in? I always envision them as a box or circle that sits on the side of my networking circles. Many of the contacts I have during my job search are transactional – I need something, or they need something, we communicate and there is either a match or not. During the course of my job search, I keep track of these people both as background for my search and so I can thank them at the end of the search.
But at the end of the search, what happens to the people you have met during your search? If you are lucky, a few of them will join your inner circle of friends – these are the people who were part of your job search group, or folks with whom you had a strong connection. Others will go into your outer group of friends, and some of them you will have a tenuous connection to, and will let drop from your network altogether.
How do you maintain those contacts so that the next time you are thinking about starting a job search, you have a warm network to work with?
For me, I contact my inner group of friends all of the time – I am drawn to them and even if nothing is going on for me, I will call them to see how they are doing. The challenge for me is always the outer group of friends – and this is where most of the new contacts from a job search will end up.
Here’s what I do:
- Set up communication targets for each person, and put that communication on my task or activity list. That way I get reminders about contacting them.
- When the reminder comes up, I think about whether there is anything I can do for them. If I have something, anything from a business lead to job opening, or information in an area they have interest, I will send or call them to see if it would be helpful to them.
- I look for materials to send them, or important dates for them as a reason to call or e-mail. I’m not good with just calling up this outer group of friends to say, “hello.” But if I’ve seen an article about a topic they’re interested in, that is enough for me to send.
- I track what I sent or why I contacted them last time. I don’t want to be sending an old joke every time.
I’ve found that just doing this is enough to keep my network of friends growing over time. I’ve also found that the people I connect with in my outer circle are as interested in keeping in touch as I am. So as long as I have some reason to reach out occasionally, the contacts are great and the relationship builds over time. Finding those reasons to call is a little work, but it’s also incredibly rewarding as well.
