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Power Networking Tips
Once you have finished writing that power resume and cover letter that clearly defines your abilities
and skill sets (or had us write them for you), you will want to ensure that you have it sent out into
the real world (getting it off of your desk and into the job market). You need to have it sent to
potential employers because obviously this is where your resume and cover letter will be of the most
benefit to you. As you will eventually find out there are many different ways to accomplish this task,
especially since our technological advanced society provides us with many tools such as mail, email,
fax and the internet. However these methods, although very important to your job search can sometimes
be impersonal and you will not always know that it has got to the right person. Therefore one of the
oldest and better techniques that you should be using is the networking approach.
One of the most powerful ways to network your self towards that new position is through a career fair
or at professional conferences. You can often find advertisements for job fairs in most news papers or
on the internet and they are often held at local hotels or convention centers. Colleges and universities
also often organize career fairs before the school term is about to end to give their students ample
opportunities to meet potential employees. Conferences are also a great place to network especially
if you are still a student, because most professional organizations allow students to attend them at
very low reduced costs.
At a career fair, you may not see any advertisements for a particular job that you would like, but you
should not let this bother you, most times employers do not advertise all of their positions or sometimes
have openings coming up that are not yet available. Therefore it is still important that you attend and
distribute your resume and your business card (see my article on
why you should use a business card with your job search) to all potential employers. Remember that it is not only you that will be networking,
the employers will also network their findings throughout their departments, maybe with their affiliated
companies and possibly just through friends or their own personal network.
Keep in mid that networking opportunities allow you to let potential employers know exactly what you could
to be doing for them, and you never know, if you sell your self right then they might offer to create a
position that was not available just for you that best suits your skills, or at least agree to let you have
an interview. Unlike interviews, networking allows you to have some control over the conversation allowing
you to promote your good aspects and perhaps avoiding any weaknesses.
Professional conferences and trade shows usually cater more to companies selling their products but keep in
mind that these companies need employees and most times after communicating with them they will either accept
your resume or provide you with the contact person of whom to get in touch with. Knowing the correct
contact person in a company will allow you to research them further and give you that edge over those that
did not have this contact information. Cover letters that have Dear Sir or Madam do not nearly look as
appealing as those with the correct contact names on them.
A pretty good resource to help you find professional conferences is Conference Alerts
(http://www.conferencealerts.com/) they are a website dedicated to promoting Academic Conferences Worldwide.
(Note: they are no way affiliated with this site, but a highly recommended resource).
I highly recommend you consider adding job fairs and job clubs to your arsenal of job-search weapons! Networking
was one of the skill sets that I learned to use early on while at University and certainly has done wonders
for both my job searching skills and my career in general.
About the Author:
This article has been provided exclusively to
JobBoardSites.com website written by Ted MacKinnon based on knowledge
and experience during his career, for more information contact us or refer to his website. (http://tmackinnon.com).
