Chapter 5 – Networking 101

When Craig said “hit it hard” on Monday, he meant it.  The day started promptly at eight o’clock with a fast-paced online meeting with Craig.  After a brief discussion about their respective weekends and Bob’s progress of telling his friends, Craig got down to business.

“Bob, before we begin the process, I want to make sure you understand our focus and strategy.  Make no mistake.  Genesis Career Counseling is not going to find you a job.  We are not going to represent you to companies.  We are not going to knock on doors for you.  We are not going to negotiate for you.  What we are going to do is teach you how to do those things for yourself.  Over the next week or two we’ll do quite a bit of training.  We’ll help you evaluate your career interests and put together a career search plan.  After that, we’ll help you execute your plan.  I’ll be here to give you feedback and encouragement, but beyond that, this is your job.  The harder you work the process, the better the process will work for you.  Like I told you last week, looking for a job is a full-time job, and it may be one of the hardest jobs you’ve ever had.

“There are two faces to the job market—the public face and the private face.  The public face is represented by help-wanted ads and Internet job postings.  This is the side that we find most of our clients are familiar with when they get here, and it’s where they want to spend their time.”

“That’s what I was expecting,” said Bob.  “Don’t I just post my resume on Monster.com or CareerBuilder, and then do some follow up?  I assumed you would help me with that.”

“Well, we will help you with that type of activity, but there is much more to it than that.  Only about twenty-five to thirty percent of jobs are filled through the public side of the job market.  You do need to be active there, but the key is to tap into the private side of the market.” …

Click here to return to the Table of Contents.