Job Referrals – Do you base them on luck and hope?

Do you get enough job referrals in your job search?

Are you willing to roll the dice on your network?

Is the quality and quantity of job referrals based more on hope and luck than a consistent and focused effort on ensuring you’ve got the right network in place to deliver the outcomes you absolutely must have?

When was the last time you gave your network a check-up?

One of the services we offer is a Networking Assessment and Strategic Networking Plan to measure the strength of your network and recommend solutions. Through this service, we’re stunned by the lack of proactivity and initiative in a job search by candidates to continually tweak and improve their network.

Here are a five key questions you should be asking yourself about the quality of your network. We’ll discuss these 5 questions about your network and much more in our weekly Internet Radio Talk Show on Monday June 8th at 11 AM PST on LATALKRADIO.com. Join us for an hour of an in-depth discussion around “Generating Job Referrals in your Job Search“.

1. Do I have a large enough network to generate the referrals needed for the type of job I’m interested in obtaining?

2. Are there a significant number of hiring managers in my network who hire for this type of position?

3. Is there a significant number of people in my network who know on a 1st degree basis the hiring managers who would hire for this position?

4. Are there trusted advisers in my network who provide services to my ultimate boss that might hear of opportunities and make job referrals (One example might be a advertising account manager selling advertising services to the marketing promotions manager who would be your direct boss at a consumer products company. Another example might be the CPA auditing a company who is working directly with the Controller who might be your potential new boss?

5. Are there a large number of people in your network who are not competing directly with you for the position, but might hear about the job opportunities due to their proximity to the type of work you’re interested in obtaining (For example, the engineer in the R&D function might be aware of a product development role in marketing or the materials specialist role in the supply chain department).

Try ranking yourself on these 5 core questions about the strength of your network on a scale of 1-5 (1 being you’re a long way from completing your job search and  5 makes you a rock star in networking). Which one of these 5 components of an effective network should you spend time developing.

Are there gaps in your network that you should be focused on filling?

I hope these questions stimulate your introspection about the quality and strength of your network to generate good job referrals.

Barry

Why Networking Fails Most of the Time

Many candidates wonder why they don’t get more job lead referrals and opportunities. Many assume that if they get an account on Twitter, Facebook, and Linked, attend networking meetings, and call all their friends/relatives/former co-workers – the referrals and opportunities should have the phone ringing off the hook.

Not likely!

Even if you have 2000 followers on Twitter, 500 on LinkedIn, and attend two networking meetings a month.

One of the desired outcomes from job search networking is to obtain qualified referrals and opportunities for jobs for which you might like to apply. Why then do very few of these trickle through your network?

The reason very few people are willing to refer job leads and opportunities is because they don’t yet trust you enough to make a referral.

Now you might ask, how do I gain that trust.

One of the ways to gain trust is to start giving back to your network before you start taking. This might take the form of referring job leads you hear about (that you’re not interested in) to others in your network. It might take the form of helping someone in your network develop a better 30 second elevator pitch. It might take the form of tweeting useful tips and suggestions from the job search you’re currently conducting.

The more people in your network see you as a giver, a “connector” of others, and a resource for information, the more they will begin to trust you and want to be givers to you.

This process of building trust within networking to generate referrals takes on average 3-6 months of very active and disciplined work. The result is that you can reduce your job search time dramatically.

We’ve got a very active discussion going on in our LinkedIn Discussion Group for Job Search regarding networking. Join us for that discussion by clicking here.

We also frequently discuss job search networking in our Internet Talk Radio Show on a weekly basis. Grab one of our audio downloads and start networking more effectively. You can listen and download the audio programs from our weekly show by clicking here.

Comment on this blog post about how you go “above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty” with your network to be a giver/connector/resource. Post a comment about the plan you just put together to change the way you network to generate referrals.

Barry

graphic credit Nima

Building Relationships Gets Job Leads

STOP NETWORKING TO FIND A JOB. Instead learn how to develop relationships so you have people marketing and selling you. Interview with Dave Elliott. Learn how to convert networking contacts that forget about you, into a relationships that become advocates for you. The key to successful networking is getting a 100 or 200 people that know you to become your sales team. Dave Elliot will show you how he does it and how you too can take networking contacts and turn them into relationships.

Every Monday from 11 – noon Pacific time, on www.latalkradio.com you can listen live as we discuss every aspect of your job search.

To download and listen to this show and all our radio shows just go to our audio library.  CLICK HERE

STOP Job Search Networking: Complete Waste of Time

Networking is one of the most important first steps in a job search. However, the manner in which most candidates approach job search networking is horrific. It’s useful, ineffective, and frustrating to watch. STOP conducting traditional job search networking — it is a complete waste of time.

In our LIVE Interent Radio Talk Show, we’ll show you how to build a powerful job search network that quickly begins to yield an abundance of job search leads, referrals, and opportunities. If you missed our LIVE Internet Radio Talk Show which we conduct every Monday 11-Noon PST on LATALKRADIO.com, you can still listen to the audio recording. We post all our Job Search and Career Management Radio Broadcasts within 24-48 hours after the LIVE show in our FREE Job Search Audio Library.