The Dirty Little Truth About Your Network

Many career-savvy people, when asked that question, say that they’ll first reach out to their networks, and let contacts know they’re looking. Good thing … or maybe not. Consider how you might feel if a long-lost colleague suddenly appeared on your radar, asking you for references or to reach out to your network on their behalf? You might feel taken advantage of. Frustrated. Used.

Plenty of people use their networks this way, granted unknowingly. If you want to succeed in job-search-networking, especially when networking with old contacts, you need to do so in a way that does not feel intrusive. And the only way to ensure your job-search request does not feel intrusive is to let that request be one small part of a much larger, longer, ongoing conversation with your old contacts.

This is why it’s so important to nurture your network before you need it. Your first outreach, especially to network members you’ve been out of touch with for a long time, should be about connecting; it should be you listening and showing genuine interest in them.

How to start reconnecting, genuinely, unobtrusively? Begin by building a network communication plan like the one facilitated by UpMo’s My Network module. Using My Network, you can upload your LinkedIn and Facebook connections with a few mouse-clicks, and then start sending and tracking communications. Even better, UpMo’s Career Toolbox provides e-mail templates you can use for reconnecting, for launching a job search, for sending business news and more.

Next, block out 15-30 minutes on your schedule each day to send personalized re-connection emails to three to five of your contacts until you work through your list. The objective is to pull them back into your network as active members. Need some help in formulating these? We’ll provide a sample communication in our next blog post.