Job Seeking Advice
I attended a presentation by Jennifer Armitstead last week. It was a question and answer forum about job seeking. Jennifer is a corporate consultant and career coach for her company Moving Forward Employment Solutions, Inc. I found her presentation very refreshing. I want to share with you my insights, but also want to let you know that my thoughts are not her thoughts. She is a great resource and if you need help in this area I recommend that you talk to her directly because she will be forward and tell you what you need to hear not what you want to hear. Her website is www.movingfowardsolutions.com. You can also find her LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/jarmitstead.
As Jennifer finished her presentation she asked for volunteers to share with the group any takeaways from the presentation. My biggest takeaway had to deal with connections on LinkedIn. I decided to leave my employment late last year and seek a new opportunity. I must preface this that each person has his or her own idea of how to use LinkedIn. My philosophy was to connect to as many people as I possibly could and by doing so people would be impressed with the number of connections I had. Jennifer’s philosophy was to think of LinkedIn as a dinner party. You wouldn’t invite some over for dinner, say hello and walk away from them for the rest of the night. You would talk to them and share stories or experiences. You definitely wouldn’t ignore them. I was ignoring people by adding so many connections and not taking the time to get to know them. This was not a really effective way to be looking for a new opportunity.
I found several things that complimented the point Jennifer was trying to get across. I found it most effective in building connections when I asked others for help, answer questions or for general information. I was not asking for them to find me a new opportunity. I would ask them questions about an industry. The blog you are reading came from a conversation I had with Dave Bascom, owner of Big Start. He created my first website 13 years ago and I saw that he was a master at internet marketing, an industry I was interested in learning more about. I called him up and asked him to go to lunch so I could ask him some questions about Internet marketing. This turned into a conversation about how I could learn it and I decided to start my own website to share with others my experiences and learn at the same time. All of this came because I asked for the advice of an expert. My questions were very targeted. I would never go to someone and ask him or her what to do with my life. You need to make sure that you are prepared when asking someone for advice or help.
People always want to feel like they are needed, but don’t want to feel used. This brings me to another great takeaway from Jennifer. The amount of effort you put into the connection will be reflective of your results. Building your connections is not about asking for advice only. You can only do this and get great results if you adopt the philosophy of “always give with no expectation of a return”. I know that I make connections to hopefully get something out of it. I think we all have that in the back of our minds, but you need to act like you will get nothing in return. That means that I need to focus on how I can help that person. When you go in for an interview for a company, they want to know how are you going to help out their organization. Get in the habit of figuring out how you can help others. As you spend your time trying to figure out how you can help someone in return you will find that you will get fabulous results.
I worked for my last company for 6 years. I made some great relationships during that time frame. I managed the sales and multiple call centers for my employer. I was always interested in the marketing side of the business. When I left I asked a member of the marketing group for advice. He introduced me to a company that had outsourced call centers that was trying to bring it back in house and there might be an opportunity for me. I went to this meeting with the idea of asking for advice on marketing because they were a marketing juggernaut. We talked about my experience and my goals, but I soon found out that they had a need to understand more about call centers. I took the next hour going over with them how they could set their business up to take that in house. From taking the time to help them out and forget myself, I created a great connection with a company that wants to use me as a consultant for their call centers.
Most of the jobs that are being filled are not coming from job boards. They are coming from connections. You need to take the time to build those connections. Remember, it is not all about you. Think of how you can help others and they will reciprocate the help.
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Great post, Andrew! I’m glad that you learned something new from my presentation and paid-it-forward by writing this blog post. Here’s to many informed and entertaining “LinkedIn dinner parties”! To your career success!