Generational Gaps in Job Searching
Every day or two one of my parents calls to ask how my job search is going. They want to know how to job boards are looking. They come from an older generation, one that used to look at the classifieds in newspapers, circle a bunch of listings, and mail out resumes and cover letters.
I have learned from friends that work in recruiting that posting a job on Monster, Careerbuilder, the Ladders, Dice or other career sites all aggregated by Indeed.com is often a last resort, and that often they get bombarded with so many responses most resumes are never read. The percentage of applicants’ files reviewed is slighter higher for posting on corporate career sites, but there you stand up against the issue that chances are there is already an internal recruit, they are just going through the motions.
Today’s job hunt is about connections. I don’t just mean LinkedIn or Plaxo, but who you really know and who they know.
How connections have worked for me in the past week:
1) I had lunch with the director of User Experience for Mahalo, the user powered search engine brain child of Jason Calacanis. How did this happen? Though my friend Andrew Warner, founder of Mixergy a networking afficianato.
2) I have two meetings setup this week with non-profit consultants who are some of the biggest names on the west coast in this field. How did these get setup? Herb Tobin, the east coast non-profit guru made a few calls, and with his backing, the two others were happy to help. From my initial interaction with them it seemed they would have been happy either way, but I think they were quicker to return my call with his stamp of approval.
3) A boyfriend of a college friend of mine owns his own company and has offered to let me do some consulting on their product and operations, hooray for building that portfolio.
4) For my bar concept “The Hub” a friend of mine in real estate development who is also ridicuously connected (2,000 phone numbers and counting) will be introducing me to the restaraunteur behind the pay by the ounce wine bar in Culver City.
5) A friend of mine that does PR for SBE Entertainment (yeah the Hiedi and Spencer one that opened SLS hotel most recently) has warned me that they are going through a reorg and that I should hold off. She offered to introduce me to another similar restaurant concept innovators once she thought of a nice one.
My mother jokes that I’m her only daughter (out of four) that believes a connection is better than broadcasting my talents to every employer looking, but she see that it does work.
Problems with relying on connections include that often you could have made the call yourself, or that your connector has their own agenda and will delay your introduction until they have completed their business.
Paul Graham blogs that Los Angeles is a city that is based around fame (http://www.paulgraham.com/cities.html) but I think he meant connections. Though a network is loosely defined as who you know and who knows you, we are equaly if not enamored with personal celebrities as we are with those whose faces are plastered on TMZ. Personal celebrities being people who you know that have social networks that include friends with boats, houses in vacation destinations, can get your resrvations at Mozza, can get you into Foxtail, or that knows all the temples in town to match you with the right High Holidays service for your budget.
Time to make some more connections….
