Are You Sowing Seeds or Salt?
Yesterday and again today I was contacted by recruiting professionals asking for my assistance in helping them find a new job. Both were recently laid off by their employers after years of service. I feel for both of them. There is never a good time to be laid off, but especially not in a volatile recession like we're experiencing right now.
The point of this blog entry isn't to criticize these two professionals but instead to use their behaviors to illustrate a point. I've been trying to talk with both of these people for years about how CollegeRecruiter.com can help their organizations hire college students or recent graduates through one or more of our products including job postings, targeted email campaigns, cell phone text messaging campaigns, and more. Neither returned any of my calls or emails. Not even to say, "Thanks, but no thanks." Nothing. Zilch. Nada.
But now that these individuals are in need all of a sudden I'm their best friend. Well folks, it doesn't work that way. This isn't how networking is done. Networking is not about what others can do for you. Instead, it is about what you can do for others. Some of those others will someday return the favor and some won't. You don't worry about which ones which and which ones won't because you need to remember that with networking it is all about giving away nickels. You see, they tend to come back as dollars. Not all of them. Not even most of them. But enough of them that networking is a valuable activity both for you and those in your network.
Recruiters always talk about how much they prefer passive candidates and complain about how college students don't network well. Interesting that as soon as the recruiters are the ones looking for work their job search skills don't hold up so well. Next time you talk with someone who is complaining about the networking skills of their candidates, turn the tables on them and ask them about what they've been doing for their network. How many nickels have they been giving away? That might be a hard conversation to have, but perhaps you'll be helping them not be the third recruiter who calls me looking for help.
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