Jeremy Johnson has a new guest blog post this week on how to be a farmer, not a hunter in your networking approach.
Jeremy is a recruiter in Kansas City for EHD Technologies, a recruiting, staffing and managed services company serving the IT, Engineering and Automotive industries.
Job Networking: Be a Farmer, Not a Hunter
Anyone worth their salt in dishing out job search advice will no doubt stress the importance of networking. It’s good advice and I completely agree with it. It’s just too bad so many people approach it the wrong way.
That approach usually ends up with someone attending networking events and/or dialing strangers or distant acquaintances and making the entire activity a numbers games. This is especially true for the most gung-ho first-time job networkers, as their primary goal is just talking to as many people as possible – whenever and wherever – because, after all, “you never know who could help you get a job!”
Don’t get me wrong. I admire people willing to step completely out of their comfort zone and be proactive in their job search, especially when so many others just send applications and wait for the phone to ring.
The approach I’ve just described would be what I consider a “hunter’s” approach. You may have heard the term in sales. “We’re looking for a hunter! We need a hunter!” What they’re looking for is someone who’s aggressive, who will constantly dig up new people, new prospects, new business – new, new, new! For them, it’s all about finding the new and then moving on. Hunting really is a good analogy here. “I’ve speared THAT person, and THAT person, and THAT person. Okay, where are more people I can spear!?” That may be a great philosophy for sales, but it’s a terrible approach for job networking.
If you’re trying to network with people you don’t know well or at all, they may like you but after your conversation, they’re going to forget about you pretty quickly. Don’t take it personally. It’s human nature. If there’s no relationship or they’re not vested in you in any way, don’t expect them to do much on your behalf. They have their own lives to live, their own problems and you’re going to fall off their radar. You need to be more than just someone they met, spoke with or got a resume from. You need to be someone they’re thinking about and actively cheering for. But, that takes time and a different approach. It takes being a farmer, not a hunter.
Farming’s a laborious process and it takes multiple touches with your crop before you can reap a harvest – tilling the soil, planting the seed, fertilizing, watering, weeding, watering again. This is what you have to do in networking. You have to speak with people, meet them face to face, seek their advice, find common ground and continue finding legitimate reasons to stay in touch and build the relationship. That’s the only way to significantly increase your odds of having a networking contact help you in landing a job.
Think about it. Most people know of at least one person who got a job through a networking contact. It happens ALL THE TIME. That contact is rarely – if ever –just some person you quasi-randomly spoke with at some point during your job search. That person was more likely a family member, former coworker, good friend or friend of a good friend (where you’re borrowing the ‘relationship capital’ that your good friend has with that networking contact). In these cases, the networking contact doesn’t just see you as someone looking for a job; they see you as someone who they’re willing to go to bat for because they’re cheering for you. The common ingredient in all of these cases is they’re acting off of a relationship.
So, just like a farmer builds a good relationship with his crops – through time and multiple touches – so should you do the same with your networking contacts. (If you care to know, it’s how I got my last two jobs!)