Networking! Let's talk about it it's important always when you're job searching but it's
important in life in general to maintain a healthy network now i just want to impress upon you
uh the importance of doing it now people are not mailing it in
i talked about this a couple days ago where i i actually uh sent you a video on on i think it
was uh tuesday a couple days ago about why now is such a great time to be job searching and if you
haven't seen that i would highly recommend that you watch it and i go through my entire rationale
about why this is such a great time i don't want to revisit that right now because i did it all
for you nice and like an eight minute video a couple days ago but if you haven't seen that
maybe maybe stacy can drop that in the chat but why now is the best time of year to job search
now just go with me on this but one of the things that i i want you to do is i want you
to always target organizations reach into bosses target recruiters target teammates and i talked
about uh you know who i would target inside organizations that they will be receptive but
one of the things that i would also make sure that i'm doing this time of year so kind of tip tip and
reminder number one make sure you are reconnecting with people that you've worked with in the past or
friends you've lost touch with or or p even people that you are still in touch with because now
is the easiest time you've got the best excuse to send them a message to say hey it's november it's
december it's the holiday season it's the whatever you however you want to open it up you know merry
christmas happy this or that whatever it is and i'm i just i wanted to reconnect with you i miss
you it's been a long while i'm trying to do better about staying in touch with the people i love i'd
love to know what you're up to and if you you're up for a quick check-in before the holidays or
maybe in 2022 or the new year or whatever it is i'd love to i'd love to you know reconnect with
you that's it just get just get reconnected you don't need to tell them that you're job searching
you don't need to tell them any of that stuff just just try to get reconnected with them don't make
it appear as though it's anything more than you just want to get in touch and then start to build
rebuild those relationships or or or re-establish those relationships you will be amazed at how many
people will say hey you know what i was thinking of you i wonder what the heck you're up to it's
great to hear your voice it's great to see your email it's great to get your text it's great to
whatever okay so i i just i really want to impress upon you that now is is the golden time to do that
and it's it's it's really uh you know november december january are the three months where you
can really use that as you're open or hey it's a new year i'm turning over a new leaf it's the
holiday season i want to get caught up with long lost friends whatever it might be believe me
there are a lot of people last year when i when i impressed upon you this tip that got jobs this way
who reconnected with old company alumni or friends that they used to work with now i want to give you
a couple of stories uh networking related i just i i'm always trying to give you different examples
to illustrate my points or to serve as reminders and one of them is with a um
he's a boot camper she's in my job search coaching program we call them boot campers
because it used to be called the job search boot camp he's also in my a lifetime leader
in my leadership coaching his name's art and art actually uh joined me last year in 2020
and he jumped into the into the boot camp and he went through the training and wouldn't you
know it he got a job very quickly so he did this in the last quarter of 2020. he took a new job
in in november of 2020 here we are now november 2021. in november of 2020 he took a new job with
a pretty good company and he said i was in this uh and he and i were doing a coaching session
a couple weeks back because he was interviewing with a couple of very prominent companies one
of them was is google and one of them is another very very reputable organization and they were um
he s i asked him how did you how did you get the this opportunity with this with this current
company that we were mainly focusing on this wasn't google and he said well it was interesting
he said last year after i i joined your boot camp i got a i got a job and i started in november and
december rolled around and we were in one of these these meetings and we were on as we were
on a zoom session and one of my co-workers who wasn't really on my team he was somebody that we
interacted with we had a multi-you know group um zoom session to run over some things and he said
they were really you know they were really kind of brow beating this guy so after the session i
reached out to him and i said hey you know hang in there uh you know i'm sure everything's gonna
be great this that and the other thing and uh by the way would you be open to sharing with me
your address i i'd love to put you on my on my christmas card list something like that
so the guy gave him his his address so art said so i i i sent him a bottle of wine and a note and
a couple other things uh just as a you know kind of a pick me up and he said and and that spawned a
great friendship and the guy ended up leaving the organization not long after but we stayed in touch
so now i would like to leave this organization for various reasons and so i reconnected with
this guy and this guy used to work at this other company and so he he reached into that
other company and he said he called four bosses he called the recruiting department the hr department
he kept on him that they need to talk to me i got an interview i went in for interviews and i didn't
get a job they actually chose somebody else but i built such a great relationship with these people
in the interviewing process because i had a great introduction and i i really spent a lot of time
with them through the interviewing process that the boss called me back and he said look we really
would like to work with you we've got these other challenges could you create a job description for
an opportunity for you to work with us he ends up creating this job and then he ends up getting this
offer and he ends up doubling his pay and all of this occurs because he established a relationship
with somebody that he he was working with that he barely knew but it was it was tis the season it
just coincidentally occurred at that time but the point is whether you are job searching or not this
is a great time to be planting seeds and building relationships with people because these things
you just never know when you're going to need help right that expression about when's the best time
to plant the tree 20 years ago when's the next best time today right and and the other expression
about well you don't eat get to eat from the fruit from the tree on the day you plant it
kind of thing you get you get you get the idea and as a matter of fact um art is now i think
going to get an offer from google next week and he and i are going to be getting together next
week i don't know when you're watching this well i know you guys are watching this right now but if
you're watching this on the recording uh and i'm gonna i'm gonna spend some time with him because i
think his story is so awesome how he went through this process and there's so many golden nuggets
in there i want to i want to interact with him and maybe profile his case for you so i i hope you'll
be hearing more about that but my point is just don't don't gloss over what's going on around you
okay in anything that you you do really experience what's happening and also try to take that
opportunity to get with others and build those relationships you just it's it's just good to
do to support each other but you also never know when you might need to tap into that and so that's
a great networking example but i have another one and i really had to chuckle with this this one's
even a little closer to home it has to do with my niece marissa who is a a teenager in fact and
i'm always looking for ways to drop parallels for for the for the for the professional stuff that i
i teach you guys and the widespread applicability it has but i i this one goes out to everybody from
an analogy standpoint i hope this cements what i'm about to tell you but but people in the academic
profession in other what they consider to be maybe non-corporate professions is think about this
so my brother i have i have a brother and two sisters they're all younger my brother's
nearly 10 years younger than i am the three the three siblings of mine have nine kids
between the three of them uh they're a fertile bunch and so i have nine nieces
and nephews ages say 12 to about 18. and uh you know they're the nicest most respectful
kids they're all hard workers and i think probably the most important thing for you to know about my
nieces and nephews is they all think uncle andy is famous and that's really all that matters is
that they all now want to be youtubers because they think this is the greatest thing ever
but they got to go to school first and marissa is a teenager and she's about to go to she's in
her senior year in high school so my brother and i were talking a little while back and he said uh
you know we visited some of these big schools in the local area they live on the west coast
as you know they're expensive and uh you know she she likes the campuses but
you know i think she really wants to play lacrosse now i know i don't think of my niece as
like this super duper athlete or anything i just i see the pictures on the family texts from her
scoring you know goals in lacrosse and you know doing other things but i i never really imagined
this and i don't even think my brother did either and he said well she really wants to play lacrosse
i said okay and he said well i don't really think she's i don't know that she's any good and i know
she can't play in a division one school probably not even a division two college maybe we need
to think division three uh i said well you know you know if you're going to go investigate these
maybe you ought to think about her having to put a list of of target schools together
to see if you you know as you investigate them what does that sound like right a
target list you want to you want to reach out to somebody we target lists to companies target
lists of people but but have her put this list of schools together you know there's going to be
company or organizat or universities that you've never heard of so she comes up with this list of
division two and division three schools and i said don't ever fill out the application don't
go through the application process heaven forbid you need to do some investigation what does that
sound like right you do a little research before you start shoving your resume into an applicant
tracking system which isn't very good so you know these high school students that have to put their
applications into these systems that terrorize these kids but before you do all any of that
figure out you know reach out to these schools and and and perhaps reach out to the coaches
so was that sound right the boss hunting techniques targeting teammates and and so
on right so so go to the people who do the hiring so to speak so he reaches i said just reach out
to a handful see what kind of responses you get he reaches out to a handful of them and one of these
coaches was at a school that he'd never heard of in fort lewis in durango colorado and he said so i
i reached out to her i had no idea who she was he i said i explained who i was and he said i have uh
i have a daughter and she would like to play lacrosse uh she's i don't know if she's any
good but what is this process that we would go through could you give me some help would you
would you let me know you know what the process would be with you or just in general any any
help you can give me i would welcome something like that does that sound like a networking
template that i would give you so if you haven't seen my networking messages and and the emotional
trigger points that go in when you need to open up a open up a dialogue go check that out so he
sends these messages and the the the coach in in in durango gets back to him and says
is your daughter's name marissa so now obviously my my brother is like what ha ha you know how
could you possibly know my kid we live you know multiple states over and uh the coach wrote back
is your daughter's name marissa if it is she's plenty good to play here how about we set up a
visit and you come out and you know we'll set you up for a couple days and you can meet some of the
players and and me and we'll give you a tour and all that other good stuff i'll send you a packet
arrange a date she went out there and had a you know overnight stay my brother said it was
unbelievably organized he said i was talking to the coach and the coach said to me you know
normally uh when you know in la crosse and some of these schools especially the the the smaller ones
like us he said you know and then the girls come in and as freshmen and sophomore they don't really
play a lot on the team because they're they're just not as good as as the girls who are juniors
and seniors they develop a bit more but since we have a new program and your daughter's plenty good
because i i was aware of her because i had coached her in some summer camp the year or two before
so she'd known my niece so that was how she made the connection and my niece just signed her you
know commitment letter or whatever it is uh going that route to this school so now she's going to
get to go to a nice school it's not terribly big uh they'll probably pay about a third of
her tuition and room and board and all that good stuff and so you know this is the way the world
works but it doesn't work this way if you don't take the five minutes to send the message to
somebody to put yourself in play the art of the possible is always out there the reason it might
not be happening for you is because you're not taking enough chances so i just this is another
another view at how the world works if you if you give it a chance to help you
uh i just and i think now is just a great time of year to do this i think people in general
do want to help you in general but i think this time of year they especially want to help you
so so i just i really want to encourage you to do that and i hope art's story and marissa's story
inspires you to to just take those steps now but at a minimum it doesn't make any difference how
reluctant you are i think there's nothing wrong and you would agree with me that sending a message
to a long lost colleague or somebody you enjoyed working with and just saying hey i'm so sorry
we lost touch and i'd love to get reconnected and i'm trying to turn over a new leaf or whatever you
want right we call it falling on the sword so to speak but it's just a great technique to be using
now it's a great technique to be using always but i think you can take advantage of it for the next
10 or 12 weeks so i hope that helps and i hope that encourages you but i just i wanted to warm up
you know this this session with uh with those stories i mean they just happened over the last
couple weeks and i just i i just was thrilled with with both of them and i i appreciate you know all
the all the success messages that have been coming in from my boot campers and my leaders and other
people in the community who are job searching and i just i encourage you all and i'm going to be
here with you a lot during this holiday season so i hope you enjoyed that and if you're here with me
live let's go to the chat if you're watching this on the recording i'll see you next week
you