Reaching out
Today I re-learned the importance of reaching out. One should never underestimate what a phone call, and extra email or one of those from a mutual contact.
My morning started when an auto insurance broker called me. We had played phone tag yesterday, and it was my turn, but he took the initiative and called me again. He followed up later with quotes, that were still more expensive than my current carrier, but it got my day off right.
Today’s job search started by googling “product development los angeles” which led me to a number of local companies and an organization called Product Development and Management Association’s Los Angeles chapter. They had a contact number about an upcoming certification class and rather than emailing, I picked up my phone and made direct contact. The organization representative I spoke with was very helpful, referred me to a free networking event they were having in a few weeks, their national job board, and a product consulting company called MSquared (msquared.com) that he said is often looking for consultants. I created a profile on their site and signed up for an upcoming networking event for their group as well. By submitting my credentials, and for some reason having a resume that uploaded incorrectly, I was emailed directly by one of their managers who’s direct contact information I now have. I left her a message asking her to call me to explain more about the Msquared process, and hope to hear back soon.
I also called three of the local companies I found, and though none of them were looking for anyone, I was amazed as to how nice they were on the phone and how they offered to “keep my resume on file”. I am fully aware that this does little for me right now, but if I reach out again in a month or two, there’s a better chance I won’t be a complete stranger. Finally, I called an owner of a small web design firm I had contacted about a project at my last job to see if he had any openings. Though he didn’t, because we have mutual connections, he offered to send my resume out to a few of his connections in case they had openings.
Then I went to my favorite job board… LinkedIn. Yes I use indeed.com as an aggregator to look at other sites, but LinkedIn is my personal favorite. Why you may ask? Because it allows me to see how I might be connected to but it also allows potential employers to see my recommendations. It’s my perspective that recruiters appreciate knowing that the quality of my work and my professionalism is getting the seal of approval of others. A communications manager posting at a local startup pops up and I submit my resume. Then, LinkedIn helps me look at the company and the person who posted the position for potential connections. It turns out the the VP of Business Development and I are in a few groups together, so I send him a friendly email explaining that I had sent in my resume and I was requesting his help in getting in touch with the hiring manager. Within minutes he sent me back a personal email requesting my resume directly and offering to hand it personally to the hiring manager. Once sent, he then cc’ed me on the email he sent to the hiring manager which said “I like Tami’s resourcefulness in also sending an email to me. She’s also a UCLA grad. I also printed-out a hard copy of her resume for you.” Now, I don’t know if I’m going to get the job, but I got a lot further by sending that extra message than I would have without it.
My afternoon surrounded an informational interview I had with a high ranking non-profit consultant who now works in house at a prestigious hospital in community relations and donor development. Important tidbits that came out of my meeting: 1) a product centered consultant for non-profits does have a place, 2) I do still need to find a place to learn, even if my next job is only a 2 year position, and 3) though being a generalist now may seem like a problem as everyone is looking for specialists, in 10 years my variety of skills and experiences will look great.
During my evening of returning emails and researching, my friend Andrew Warner of mixergy, the professional networker, reached out to me today to help him find lead generation companies I might now for an event he’s running next week. Not surprising to those who have been reading this far, one of my best friends is a silent partner for eleads.com, so I’m connecting them. I also emailed Andrew to follow-up with him on his offer to introduce me to any LinkedIn connection I thought would be helpful, and he publicized his connections for me. In my effort to understand his job a bit better I snooped around mixergy and came across the best listing for tech networking events in Los Angeles that I’ve seen: http://blog.mixergy.com/events/ it’s a very impressive list.
Finally, I have been working with some Iphone application developers on my “One Status” concept that works off of the ping.fm platform. We were about to sign a contract when I decided to reach out to a few people. First I checked out the ping.fm blog and got in contact with a very tech savvy individual who’s working on a similar application. As I looked through his open source specs I became aware that he’s a few steps ahead of me right now. I also talked to my long time mentor Marcy Hoffman who a few years back started a company called I-ligher, it allows you to highlight online text and have it automatically saved into files without copying and pasting. It’s a very cool tool that has one many awards, yet still hasn’t been picked up in mass. She reminded me to look at Alexa for web traffic comparisons, and I assessed that Friendfeed is probably going to continue to grow and the ping will not grow fast enough to make my investment in the application worthwhile, especially if there is direct competition for the same small population. So we killed that project and moved on to another Iphone application idea that came from my friend Jamie, a “To Call” list that works with your contacts and allows you to set repeating reminders for calls.
Thus today’s phone calls and emails might get me a job, saved me a large investment, and helped me help a fellow networker.
