10 Ways To Know If You’ve Got A Healthy Professional Network
Whenever the economy gets shaky, it’s a good idea to revisit the makeup of your professional network. This is true for two reasons. First, you might get canned. Down economic times lead lots of companies to lay people off, so you better be ready. Second, you might get promoted. As the underperformers get cut loose, you may have an opportunity to take a new role with expanded responsibility. So again, you better be ready. Here’s how to know if your professional network is ready to help you.
1. Is someone in my network an executive?
It is not a matter of what you know; it is a matter of who you know. You’ll never get to the top unless you know people at the top. It is best to have an executive in your personal network because then you have an opportunity to really learn from their experience. However, having an exec as part of your professional network is a good place to start.
2. Have I built a relationship with someone from another company or industry in the last 30 days?
A healthy professional network is one that is continuously growing and evolving. If you are in sales, you meet new people all the time so this should be easy. However, sales is the exception. Most jobs have you insulated and you see the same people every day. This is a recipe for stagnation. Go to events. Meet your friends’ friends. Try going to a Jelly event.
3. Do I have a mentor?
Having a mentor is the top-down approach to network development. It is a good way to learn from someone else’s experience at basically no cost. Your mentor doesn’t have to be from your company, it could be someone from your personal network like a friend of one of your parents. You could also try something more formal like SCORE, which is basically retired executives who volunteer their time to help small businesses and young entrepreneurs.
4. Am I mentoring anyone?
Being a mentor is the bottom-up approach to professional networking. Find someone younger than you and show them the ropes. You’d be amazed how much you can learn from the next class of professionals behind you. I guarantee they are going to have better ideas for monetizing Twitter than we are.
5. Do I have a champion at my current company?
If a position becomes open, will there be someone at that meeting to recommend you for the job? A champion is typically one or two levels above you in the org chart. You need someone like this to advocate on your behalf for new jobs that come open, or even to recommend the creation of a new job that is custom tailored to you. Essentially, you need to be “on the radar” of someone who makes staffing decisions.
6. Do my current connections know what I’ve been up to lately?
Think of a your professional network as a living thing. If it is inactive, it will die. LinkedIn.com is a great tool for keeping your network up to speed on what you are doing. Your connections will get little alerts and one of those alerts might find someone who is looking to hire someone with your expertise.
7. Have I checked with my personal network (friends and family) about career opportunities?
Most jobs get filled without ever being posted. So if you want a job, you better be an insider. The quickest way to get “inside” other companies is to know someone there. I bet your immediate family and friends represent at least 10 different companies that you have access to.
8. Have I updated my LinkedIn profile in the last 30 days?
In my opinion, LinkedIn.com is THE tool for managing your professional network. Almost 100% of my professional network uses it, so I will rely on it heavily the next time I make a job change. I repeat, your network can only be considered healthy if you are actively working it. Take advantage of LinkedIn’s setup wizard, which forces you to jump certain hoops before it considers your registration “complete” … I’m still only at 95%.
9. Are my references recent?
Check your resume. If you haven’t spoken with your references in more than 18 months, find some new ones.
10. Is someone in my network a professional recruiter or head-hunter?
You probably never want to meet a mercenary, but in a time of war … I’d bet you’d be glad to have one on your side.
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October 20th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Great topic. I agree with every point you made… though I had never heard of LinkedIn. I can assure you #1 is very true.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
I’m guilty of letting my professional network fall to the back of my priority list. This is a good reminder that you need to make network management part of your basic routine–that way you’ll be ready for that next opportunity.
October 20th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I was in the same boat. That’s what prompted me to write this post … my networking was lagging. It would be an interesting project to make a list of all the things you should “keep up on”. I bet an understanding of that list would also lead to an understanding of the anxiety that permeates the workforce these days.
October 20th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Linkedin was added to the About.com Top 10 Employment site list with 2 other sites but linkedin is still the only social netwoking site on the list. The 3 new sites are:
http://www.linkedin.com (networking)
http://www.indeed.com (aggregated job listings)
http://www.realmatch.com (matches you to the perfect job)
Good luck to all those searching for jobs.
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Leveraging your network is one of the most important things that you can do. As a young entrepreneur, I have to constantly leverage my network in order to find people that will help out my company for free. This means I constantly go back to UCLA to meet with my friends who are undergrads to see who wants an unpaid internship that will give them a tremendous amount of good experience.
Because of this, I am currently a mentor to a lot of people.
I have had a much harder time finding a mentor. My business partner Yu-kai Chou seems to easily find mentors who guide him throughout life. Unfortunately for me, I haven’t quite found anybody who can be my mentor yet. There will a couple of prospects, but they are just too busy to contribute some of their time for me.
Either way, I am constantly trying to meet new people and develop a valuable group of friends that support each other in every which way.
Great post and I definitely learned something new.
- Jun Loayza