Q: I have contacted everyone I know about leads for jobs.  A few have been helpful; most have been non-responsive. What do you suggest?

A: Respectfully, stop and reassess.  When people suspect you are “using” them, they may clam up and withhold likely leads or limit communication.

Stop

You may be casting your networking too widely contacting people only remotely interested or influential in the spheres you need to enter.  Alternatively, you may be so focused on getting a job that you are ignoring other vital and viable connections.  At its best, networking is about having an influential group of people respect you and your work such that they are willing and pleased to make referrals on your behalf.  Coming across as desperate, over-eager or focused to the exclusion of building genuine ties sends a mixed message of desperation and self-absorption.  This is not a great selling point.

Stand back, and look at what you have been doing. If your methods resemble any of the aforementioned issues, stop.

Reassess

Define Clear Goals

Think about your goal, and make sure you can clearly define it. It might be something like, “I would like to speak with a senior leader at X Foundation.”  In this case, your next step is to go back to your contacts, and see if you know someone at X Foundation in a senior or junior role.  That person would be a great networking prospect.  Another possibility for networking sources is identifying someone who is a client/partner/ally of X Foundation.  All of these potential sources can offer you useful information and feedback.

Before approaching these sources, however, you have a little more work to do.  Once you have identified people associated in some way with your organization of interest, take it one step further, and assess the strength of your connection to those people.  Those on your list with whom you have a solid relationship should be marked with an asterisk and approached first as they have an interest in your relationship, and approaching them should not feel strange or desperate to either side.  If your relationship with someone on your potential source list is luke warm, defer networking with that person for a while.

Go through this process painstakingly for each of your 3 most urgent career goals.  Carefully assess your contacts and your relationships to identify the ones most likely to be productive for you in the long term.  See if you can come up with 10 relatively warm connections.

Act As If Time and Money Are Abundant

Pretend you have time even if your goals are urgent.  This will put a check on your natural impulse to contact everyone in a panic.

Make believe you are heir to a trust fund even if your funds are low.  This will preserve your sanity and give you the benefit of thinking out of a place where rational judgment prevails over a sense of dread or hopelessness.

Cull the List

Return to your potential source list.  If you have identified 10 prospects, draw up a time line that includes reaching out to them in a week.  Think about how you want to do outreach.  Email, phone and personal meetings all work.  However, it is up to you to know and decide which medium works best with each person.

Be Selective About How You Connect

One medium often neglected is the handwritten note, yet it remains a powerful communication tool.  Another way to make live connections is by meeting people for coffee.  If possible, you treat.  Your generosity sends a message that others will positively interpret.

Before meeting/contacting each person, think carefully about how you met each person, how you came to know of their professional lives and why you would like to build a long-term relationship with them.  Even if job issues are uppermost in your mind, really dig deeply to see how you can build a solid connection based on professional respect and long-term goals.

Identify Career Events/Training Possibilities

Conferences, workshops, webinars, seminars and even personal development training all create opportunities to talk about what you want to accomplish in your career.  Meeting with like-minded folks increases your awareness of yourself and of the ways in which you can contribute to your next organization.  Similarly, list online training opportunities that will make you a more desirable employee.  Many of these courses are modest in cost.  You do not need to list every one of them on your resume, however, you will directly benefit from new learning and from updating your professional skills as you work through career development issues.

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