Do

• Create a complete profile on each site. Make yourself appealing online. Make sure that your professional image on these business networking sites isn’t tarnished by radically different portrayals of your personality on some of the personal networking sites. Consistency in your profile, site to site, is also important, so ensure the same level of detail and quality regardless of the site it’s on. If you can’t keep your profile up-to-date on multiple sites, it’s better to stick with just one site (or just one personal and one professional).
• Grow your network. Whether you subscribe to the “bigger is better” theory or are more comfortable with the “close and personal” strategies for growing your network, you need a reasonable number of connections to make good things happen. How you define reasonable depends on your field and your needs, but for many people, a reasonable size of an online network might be at least 50 to 150 people.
• Facilitate introductions. As part of a large online network, you should help other people connect. You can recommend them if you know them and are comfortable doing so. Or just say “for your consideration” if you don’t know them well. The old theory about “my reputation is on the line” when making introductions is, in our opinion, just that—old! Networking introductions are much more fluid online.
• Remember your manners. Treat people virtually as you would in face-to-face gatherings—kindly and with respect. Don’t wear out your welcome or bombard them with repeated requests for introductions to others. They are likely to drop you from their networks.

Don’t

• Be selfish. Remember that networking is a two-way street. You need to give as well as you get, help other people, and not just be looking selfishly at how you can benefit from the interaction
• Have unrealistic expectations. Don’t expect something good from every connection. Just as in live networking settings, not every contact is a helpful contact. But even if you don’t see yourself doing business with someone, you never know whom that person might know or how you might provide assistance to him or her or one of that person’s contacts in the future
• Try to accomplish too much too fast. Build rapport first. Just as you wouldn’t walk up to someone at an initial meeting and immediately ask for favors, introductions, jobs, or business deals, you shouldn’t do that online, either. Wait until the person knows you and has some investment in helping you connect, likely in a second or third conversation or exchange
• Spend all your time online and ignore offline networking strategies. Both are important, and the need to meet people face-to-face or by phone.

Excerpt from Find a Job Through Social Networking: Use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, and More to Advance Your Career (© JIST Publishing) by Diane Crompton and Ellen Sautter.

As a master networker, remember that just as you are looking for individuals to be in your network, others will be looking to put you in theirs. If you meet someone you know you would like in your network, be mindful of their time. Engage with them and if it is going well, ask if they would like to have lunch to continue the conversation. If they seem vague or unresponsive to your suggestion, leave it alone and follow up with them later.

Whatever your strategy is, remember to respect the other person and his or her time. Keep in mind that even though the person may not be a candidate for your network today, he or she may be one in six months. People remember how you treat them much more than what you say.

Here are some more tips to help you on your way to becoming a master networker.

Get to know your boss’s core network. When the people your boss listens to become part of your network, you have an alternate route to get your boss information he or she needs to hear.

Be a giver. Offer to help individuals in your network as often as you can. They will be inclined to reciprocate.

Trade your network wisely. The most efficient way to expand your network is to trade networks with others. But remember that quality is more important than quantity—trade only when the other person has something valuable to offer you, or you to them.

Treat the “gatekeepers” in an organization like gold. “Gatekeepers” are personal assistants whose job it is to make sure their bosses see only who they want to see. They are well connected, helpful, and have subtle influence over their boss.

Join a group where you have something to offer. And find out what the group can offer you: contacts, exposure, and experience.  Remember, when you are on a committee with a CEO, you are equals. You never get that opportunity in any other setting.

Keep an electronic record of your network partners. Include birthdays, hobbies, special events—any information that can help you be a better and more connected network partner.

Use social networks, but not exclusively. Social networks such as LinkedIn or Plaxo can be powerful tools as well giving you a larger reach than you could physically manage otherwise. But meeting people face-to-face leads to stronger connections.

Never underestimate someone’s influence. Don’t make assumptions about who they know and how they can help. Social networks can take some of the mystery out of that as your contact’s contact list becomes available to you.

Don’t let your network go static. Review it often and add people who fulfill a specific skill or set of contacts.

Deepen existing relationships. Networking isn’t just about what others can do for you. It’s about developing long-term relationships based on mutual help and support.

Diversify your reach. Look in unconventional places to add new perspectives. Look outside your demographic and comfort zone. Here are some ideas about groups you can join for networking advantage: Company-sponsored functions; professional and trade associations; workplace committees; chambers of commerce; civic and service organizations; hobby/health/sports activities; college/university alumni groups; and religious organizations.

In order to thrive in your career, you must become a master at networking. Your network is your “net worth”—and it is the single most important skill you will learn in the world of work.

Beth Banks Cohn PhD is a leading expert in change management and leadership development. Roz Usheroff is an internationally recognized communication expert and personal branding executive coach. They are coauthors of the new book, Taking the Leap: Managing Your Career in Turbulent Times…and Beyond.

It’s disturbingly easy to spend hours watching and responding to your Twitter stream—it’s as easy as spending hours applying to positions online, or as easy as spending far too much time Web surfing. We like the concept of spending 15 well-planned, solidly productive minutes a day on Twitter, at least initially, because it imposes a strategy and discipline that keeps you focused on the big picture—your job search—rather than the procrastinator’s playground of the Web.

These nine steps will make your 15-minute-a-day Twitter approach simple, swift, and strong:

• Know what you want to accomplish and track your progress. Monitor your momentum and value. Twitter provides instant feedback: You can tell if you are reaching your intended audience by the number of @replies, DMs, and retweets you receive. Who needs Nielsen research?

• Know your limits. What’s your attention span? Should you be tweeting at work? Do you get lost Web surfing? Are you easily distracted? Don’t let yourself get sidetracked dreaming of tweets while you are taking care of other things. Bookmark or star favorites online, and keep a notebook or file of topics and themes that you would like to tweet about later.

• What’s your best time to tweet and how often? When are most of your targets online? Are you going to break up your tweet times during the day? Are you going to tweet once a day? Of course, you’ll have a better chance of having your tweets seen if you tweet several times throughout the day or schedule tweets to be sent later. (If you are in an active job search, your Twitter time may be fundamentally different than using it for your job or for fun.)

• How will you schedule your tweets? You don’t need to be online to tweet. You can do so from your mobile device, or jot down what you want to share and tweet later.

• Find and create content. Tongue tied? You’re not alone. That’s often what halts people in their tracks as they begin to use Twitter. If you find yourself on the verge of tweeting about what you had for lunch, take the advice of Heidi Richards Mooney of SpeakingWithSpirit.com, who recommends getting up from your desk and getting a breath of fresh air.

• Find and follow people. Be selective about whom you follow. If you have too much information in your stream, you’ll miss much of it and risk overwhelm. Use Twitter Lists or Twitter APIs to organize and review your stream by follower, topic, and more.

• Share the glory. Maximize your time—and develop your community—by making it more about them and less about you. Don’t spend all your time creating your own tweets; participate in the community dialogue and disseminate ideas and news from others by retweeting.

• Don’t share too much! Don’t populate your entire Twitter stream with retweets or @replies. With too many retweets, people will think you don’t have anything to say, whereas too many conversational @replies will make people feel left out—neither of which are great impressions for a prospective hire.

• Give of yourself. Join @JobAngels and other philanthropic groups and give back when you can.  Watch for opportunities to offer a tip, insight, job lead, or helping hand.

Although much of the power (and fun) of Twitter is in its spontaneous conversation, there will also be times you’ll want to schedule tweets to go out later.  SocialOomph, formerly TweetLater, allows you to do just that. Set up an account (it’s free); then schedule a few tweets of an informative nature to go out throughout the day.

The Twitter Job Search Guide: Find a Job and Advance Your Career in Just 15 Minutes a Day is available at Amazon.com, in all major bookstores and from the publisher (www.jist.com or 1.800.648.JIST).  The authors are three of the career industry’s most renowned leaders. They possess extensive career and personal branding expertise and social media savvy and have empowered thousands of people across the nation to find good jobs more quickly.

This means you and your communications are likely to be considered spam and sent to a place that will get you blacklisted in more ways than one. There was a guy in Chicago who did this at practically every event in town and was on so many blacklists that I’d been warned about him repeatedly weeks before I even encountered him.

What do you do when you encounter someone like this? If they shove their card at you, go ahead and accept it so that you’ll know to keep an eye out for them in the future, but don’t feel like you need to give them a card in return.

Just smile and say thank you, but if they ask for a card, and you don’t want to give them one because you know nothing about them or how you might be able to collaborate with them, just say, “I’m sorry, but I’m almost out and I have another event to go to,” — which at some point you will — smile and move on.

Don’t Be a Hit and Run

Make an effort to stay in touch or in occasional contact with folks you meet with whom you want to stay connected. Make notes on the back of the business cards they’ve given you about what they need help with or what their interests are. Then continue to pay attention to things that matter to them. This is the way to create quality connections and trusted new contacts.

For example, after you have followed up with a new acquaintance, and are now perhaps linked on LinkedIn or BizNik, when you notice updates or changes in their status, go ahead and message or email them to comment on their change. It might be congratulations if you notice a new job, name change (perhaps they got married) or maybe a promotion. Or, if you know they’re looking for a new opportunity or hinted that they would be soon, it might be to offer a suggestion about a good job board you spotted in their field or to connect them to someone new you have met. And, if you see that a contact is traveling or moving to a new town, offer to connect them to whomever you may have a quality connection with there.

Also, be sure to reach out to people when you don’t need anything. Networking is about creating, nurturing and building relationships, and they need care and feeding. The whole idea is about not waiting until you need something to build a network; it’s about continually cultivating and engaging in that network. The wider your network, the more people you know whom you’ve worked with. This also implies that all these people know the kind of person you are and the work you do.

Don’t Waste Your Time

Remember, have a goal or goals so you don’t waste your precious time and energy. Don’t go to a networking event unprepared. As mentioned earlier, try to research the types of people who will be there, and the format of the event. Also, focus on making connections of quality, not quantity.

It’s also just as important to disconnect from the unproductive or overly opportunistic and one-sided networking relationships you’ll unfortunately come across. And, for the latter, often, just by association, you could attract more unwelcome attention or unwanted perceptions.

Don’t spend any more time on connections you make when you recognize that there’s a suspicious or questionable agenda, or they simply aren’t reciprocating or paying it forward. Just move on, and whatever you do, don’t take it personally. Today’s economy has many people coming from a slightly desperate position, and it’s best to just forgive their tactics and practice empathy when you can, but you don’t need to let others take advantage of you. Trust your gut and move on.

Like most folks I know, I’d much rather have someone who’s not interested in building a quality connection with me, come right out and tell me they want to meet my brother-in-law (BIL), the head of Engineering at Motorola. It’s much better than them stalking my connections list on LinkedIn, and then trying to reach him by dropping my name during a cold call or email. My BIL, of course, tells me about it, and then I have that person’s eyebrow-raising methods reflected on me (“Nice friends, Sandy,” he says). Not to mention that they will now likely have my bad mojo out there on them.

Please don’t misunderstand. I recommend being an “open networker” in that you are open to helping people get what they are looking for; they just need to tell you what it is first and at least offer a two-way street if they can. I say be happy to connect with people if they manage to build a relationship through the getting-to-know-you process. Just don’t let people “leverage” your contacts without your permission or take advantage of your generosity by trying to get for free what you actually charge others for.

Action: Identify someone who is better than you at networking, and attend an event with him or her. And if you really want a good mentor (to your wingman), offer to pay their way to the event. Then watch the way they work the room, and their approaches. You will learn a lot by watching and listening and you won’t be any different than the other 80% of people in the room, who aren’t totally confident in their networking skills either.

Sandy Jones-Kaminski, author of the book, “I’m at a Networking Event–Now What???” is a self-described networking enthusiast and accomplished business development professional who owns Bella Domain, LLC. You can connect with her at (sandy@belladomain.com) and buy her new book via Amazon.

In a recession jobs are last to get hit, yet are the slowest part of business spending to recover. This is the time to develop or revise an escape plan to insulate you from possible downturns or unforeseen changes at work.

“I don’t know if I would go so far as to call social networking a safety net,” says Kelly Krebs, Senior Account Executive at Horn Group, “but it can help if you if you are looking to move into a new career or if you are looking to expand your customer or partner base.”

Even though the economy is slumping that doesn’t mean you should stop expanding your web of contacts. While ultimately you will find & add contacts one at a time, the truth is you can better leverage your resources by joining social network-based communities.

Most social networks are the sum of many groups, specialized around regions, companies, alumni networks, plus personal and professional interests. How do you tap into these communities? It’s fairly easy on Facebook and LinkedIn (and now FastCompany.com too) – you can search by topic area; see network “newsfeeds” listing which groups your contacts have joined; often groups are listed in your contacts’ profiles too.

While identifying and joining a community is fairly easy, the reality is that one generally needs to invest a bit of time and energy building a community presence. In other words, before you tap a community (unless yours is a particularly touching story) the best strategy is to “pay it forward” – help others first.

We’re not talking about Karma – in the sense of what comes around goes around. Rather we’re talking about building your presence (also called your brand) in an online community. This requires an investment of time, usually two or three months, before your comments in discussion boards become familiar and respected by the group.

“For the network to be of value it needs to be cultivated through selfless acts of service and mutual benefit,” says Alan Farhi, Staffing Manager at Epiq Systems, whom I met on LinkedIn. “Trying to cultivate a network in order to find a career opportunity when you’re desperate or have lost your job is generally a little too late and a little too transparent.”

How will you know? Other members of the group will want to connect with you, even if you have never met offline and wouldn’t recognize them at the corner store.

“I often see new salespeople attend one or two networking events and say ‘networking doesn’t work’, says Cathy Jo Morris, Regional Sales Manager at AAA Washington. “Of course it doesn’t work after one or two handshakes – you need to give something to the group first before you can expect anything back. Networking is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Farhi agrees. “Social and Professional Networks work best when you don’t really need them,” he says. “A safety net seems like a last-resort measure.”  In other words, don’t wait until you need your social network, start deepening it now.

Every unemployed person I interviewed for the piece had a LinkedIn profile prior to their layoff but hadn’t developed it sufficiently. They were making up for lost time quickly. But still, it’s difficult to pull together good recommendations in a rush. A good profile is best phased in over time.

The moral of the story is to feather your nest before you need it.

With the considerable aid of Jason Alba and Alison Doyle, the article addresses important questions such as:

• What can your contacts do for you?
• How do you approach people in a social networking group?
• What’s the right size network of connections for you?
• Should your profile disclose your unemployed status?
• Does it make more sense to start out on Facebook or LinkedIn or do both?

My piece on this topic is available on msnbc.com.

]]> http://www.myglobalcareer.com/2009/09/09/how-newly-unemployed-use-linkedin/feed/ 1 http://www.myglobalcareer.com/2009/06/24/do-jobs-spread-virally-over-social-networks/ http://www.myglobalcareer.com/2009/06/24/do-jobs-spread-virally-over-social-networks/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:01:44 +0000 Rusty Weston http://www.myglobalcareer.com/archives/2007/08/22/do-jobs-spread-virally-over-social-networks/ Continue reading]]> When the scientific study hit the wires establishing that obesity spreads virally across large “social networks,” I figured that science was simply appropriating a popular cyberspace term.

After all, if obesity could spread across Facebook, or MySpace, science would have a larger problem on its hands than excessive girth. Are my contacts on Facebook really that susceptible to my suggestions? If so, I have a get-rich-slowly scheme to sell them.

Still, it’s obvious that some news and ideas spread virally over the Net; think about how many times you have spammed your friends or associates with jokes, links to articles, blog posts or videos. Before there was e-mail there were fax machines and (lawyer) jokes made the rounds pretty quickly, too.

Are there limits to this principle? For instance, does news about job vacancies spread virally over the Net? If I were fired from my job I imagine that word would spread quickly by voice, IM or e-mail between my friends and colleagues. But what if it’s simply “news” about a job opening in my company?

I might not spread that news unless I knew someone seeking that information. By contrast every one of my friends is constantly looking for a laugh (it’s a pre-requisite).

In this sense, maybe job vacancies are a bit different than jokes. And maybe that’s because there’s so much noise in the job world – job ads are always in our face – on search engines, e-mail advertising, website homepages, and, of course, on job boards, too.

Yet, here’s how job openings move virally on social networks:

• When you’re seeking work, you put out feelers, especially among your network of contacts, and if they hear about an opportunity they notify you.
• You can be a passive job candidate – and if there is compelling information about you in your social networking profile, a recruiter might find it and contact you. (Odds are multiple ones will.)
• For those more actively seeking employment, on social networks you can send appeals to your contact list’s contacts – an exponentially larger universe.

Rohit Bhargava, who leads the interactive marketing team at Ogilvy Public Relations in Washington DC, is an avid blogger and an adept social networker. He believes that social networking is making it possible for job searches to become viral. “It used to be that you would send an email to everyone you knew and they might send it to somebody else,” says Bhargava. On Linked-in, for example, Bhargava says you can “very easily reach [your contact's] second tier of network,” meaning friends of friends.

Although at times it may seem that there’s a bright line separating social networks in the ‘real world’ from those in cyberspace, the truth is much blurrier than it appears. Job searches fall into the category of ideas that can spread virally. Especially if you lose a job and everyone hears that you’re a free agent – that’s the tipping point.

Here’s something for social scientists to puzzle over: one of my real-life friends (a Linked-in connection) just became CEO of a company. Does a rising social connection lift all of his or her network contacts – or only the suggestible ones?

Like most people in my age bracket, I have held lots of positions. In my case, in publishing, I survived stints at CMP, Ziff-Davis, IDG and McGraw-Hill.

I’m occasionally invited to real-world reunions for one defunct magazine or another. These are strange gatherings because while there is often a friendly exchange of business cards, what happens down the road is usually nothing whatsoever.

Enter Web 2.0 and social networking. These days you can quickly form or join a social network made up of other former employees. Think of these cyber-gatherings as another form of an alumni network, even if your corporate exit may have been involuntary – without so much as a farewell lunch at T.G.I. Friday’s.

To find out what’s different, I joined After Ziff-Davis a social network started (on Ning.com) by Joe Panettieri. While the Ziff site is a nicely crafted, stand-alone social network there are countless, corporate-alumni discussion groups happening on places such as Yahoo! or Facebook, too. Many of these groups sport just a few members, some with fetching names such as “ACME employees who hate ACME.”

I compiled a list of all the things to do on an “ex-employee” social network. I’ll rate these activities as career enhancements on a scale of useless to useful. (Please weigh in if you see it the same way or differently.)

• Reconnecting with former colleagues. Gratifying and useful, I hope.
• Complaining about the sorry state of tech publishing. Gratifying but useless.
• Gossiping about people we used to work with who we thought were weird, wrong or worse. Gratifying but useless.
• Telling old war stories. Gratifying but useless.
• Looking for work from these social connections. Unexpected yet useful if it happens.
• Sharing a few laughs. Gratifying and useful.

Granted, sharing laughs with former co-workers isn’t definitive proof that you have moved on with your life, but it works for me. Would you feel compelled to join an “ex-employee” social network?

If Groucho were on e-mail today he would be spammed by invitations from friends, acquaintances and total strangers to join dozens of social networking sites. I picture him rolling his eyes at the pointlessness of belonging to clubs that don’t serve cocktails or fat cigars.

Unlike Groucho, I am checking out multiple social networking sites as part of a careers research project. One observation: Social networking sites are often the first place where professionals actively manage relationships that can advance their careers.

It’s no secret that quite often in life who you know is more important than what you know. These sites help automate the former so efficiently that I would unhesitatingly recommend them to everyone.

Choosing the right social networking site to advance your career isn’t a serious problem. If one doesn’t pan out, you can always try another, perhaps more or less specialized one.

The biggest problem is a lack of differentiation between the sites, although each has its own peculiar rules of engagement. There’s no getting around the fact that it’s boring to set up a profile on multiple sites.

For some social butterflies the process of amassing contacts, especially experts or old friends, is a bit addictive.

Chuck Hester, corporate communications director at iContact in North Carolina, has gathered more than 1,800 connections on Linked-in. I’m one of them. “I constantly receive invitations from Linked-in contacts that are on XING, Blue Chip Expert and other social networks, but my standard response is I only have time for Linked-in and Facebook,” says Hester.

To understand why Hester uses two networks it helps to know that his 22-year-old boss, CEO Ryan Allis also uses Facebook. Apart from that, says Hester, “What I look for in a social network is the value of the connections, the ability to connect with like-minded individuals I can help and can help me in business and in my personal life.”

Makes sense, but of course time is an enormous consideration for Hester and everyone else. If the sites offer similar benefits, such as access to recruiters in your field, access to your alumni network, or people to date, why bother with multiple sites?

B. Lee Jones, a CIO in the Bay Area who found his most recent job on Linked-in, has grown his network of connections to more than 1,600. He followed me over to Xing and then invited me to join him on a new network called Doostang. I’m tempted to up the ante by inviting him to join me on eCademy or maybe Orkut.

“Do I want to go through the pain and suffering of building up on another site to that kind of level?” wonders Jones. “It can be fairly consuming to add people and maintain it.”

Though they seem similar, social networking sites aren’t interchangeable, meaning that joining one site doesn’t open you up to others. Don’t be afraid to try something completely different – like an online club that isn’t your usual fare. Sometimes a new set of connections is the perfect way to broaden your horizon.

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, an Internet entrepreneur based in Amsterdam, recently posted a job listing on Twitter that caught my eye:

Wanted: CTO type for new secret project. PHP, MySQL, CakePHP knowledge important. Money + shares.

“People always know people and telling it to 450 people makes sure that the word gets out,” explains Boris, who has openings for three ventures at the moment and lots of evangelists among his connections. “And – don’t tell – [Twitter] is a cheap way of finding people too.”

Boris says he’s more likely to find partners rather than employees on Twitter, and that his blog yields even better results. He also holds unique live events such as bowling tournaments with US and Dutch techies in an effort to expand his universe of connections.

But Boris fears that if the secret gets out Twitter won’t be as effective anymore. “Once everyone starts doing it Twitter will be unreadable because of all of the commercial requests,” he says.

“Each social network has its own crowd, etiquette and advantages,” says Boris. “I use different ones for different purposes,” he explains, such as checking a social network profile before talking to someone new.

As someone who recruits talent in both Silicon Valley and the Netherlands, Boris is attuned to changing attitudes and best practices. “Job boards are not very interesting in my social circle – among other entrepreneurs,” he says. “In fact, I don’t even regard them as a serious way to find people.”

If you’re looking for a job on Twitter you still need to know the right people. A search on the keyword “recruiter” yielded only 75 responses – a drop in the bucket compared to LinkedIn or Facebook. Looking at Twitter from Boris’ perspective, the site is arguably a ‘green field’ for job seekers and employers.

Let us know if you find success or failure using Twitter for your job search.