Career Management Alliance Blog

Every 25 days or so, I get an email from a professional contact I have never met and with whom I had only a brief professional relationship in 2006. His emails often start out with “Hi Jean, how the hell are you?” and he follows up with a one- or two-sentence update that is either professional or personal or both. I can usually count on a crack about his mother-in-law.

It turns out I love these emails! They aren’t looking to sell me anything, ask me anything serious, or do anything in particular at all. They make me happy. They make me laugh. They make me feel connected. And if I were looking for a job, he’d be one of the first people I’d call!

So this guy is part of my network. I’ll bet he nurtures a network comprised of a great many people. I’ll also bet that he sets up his Outlook to alert him every few weeks that it is time to dash off a quick email to Jean. This is an old-fashioned (but still great) way to network.

How about using one of the newer networking tools defining people’s interactions? According to Fortune Magazine’s Josh Quittner: “Facebook’s got Google running scared.” Why? Facebook is turning the World Wide Web open-to-everything model on its head. He dubs this new direction the Innernet.

Quittner says that Facebook enables you to put boundaries around your own personal network (and thus control who sees what about your online identity). It give you a place “…where you exercise almost absolute control, showing the world only as much of your true self as you care to while protecting you and yours from the evil that lurks on the wider web, from spam artists to identity thieves. Whoever builds that walled garden stands to make the next great Internet fortune.”

The upshot? Whether you use one of the social or professional networking sites or use a simple mail or phone call approach, if you have a job now or ever want to have one, feed and care for your network(s)! With networking accounting for ~80% of new hires, jump on the Innernet bandwagon now - and keep on networking!

Posted by Jean Cummings