Fire Your Boss (16 page)

There were also times these private openings were created through the personal whim of an executive. Maybe the CFO’s nephew had just graduated college and hadn’t yet found a job. His mother turned to her brother at a weekend barbecue and said something like, “You’re a big-shot CFO at Acme Inc. After all I’ve done for you and your kids over the years, why can’t you get my son a job?” The CFO then went to the human resources director the subsequent Monday morning, presented his nephew’s résumé, and “asked” if there were any jobs for this dazzling young man. Depending on the clout of the CFO, and yes, the merit of the young man in question, the HR director might have created or forced a place for him.

As more and more people recognized there was a backdoor job market, as well as the more public job market represented by the help wanted ads, people developed a new job-search approach. Answering ads was no longer enough. You had to network.

The principle behind networking is that the best jobs are filled, not by answering ads, but by making business connections. The idea is to develop a mutually supporting network of individuals with whom you have business relationships. These could be people you worked with, worked for, competed against, partnered with, sold to, or bought from. You meet these people informally, let’s say for lunch, and talk about what you are doing and what they are doing. The idea is to create sources of information about those private job openings. The more you network, the more of an insider you become. The quid pro quo is that you too are ready, willing, and able to help others find those private jobs.

Along with their own contacts, ambitious networkers go to events, meetings, conventions, and trade shows, and meet people who might know about some private job openings, or meet people who know other people who know about some private job openings. Even if no immediate private job opening appears, they press the flesh, hand out their business cards, and subtly make it clear that they are in the market for any such openings that might one day appear. Sometimes these networks revolve around industries, other times around professions. Perhaps all the dental hygienists in a city gather regularly for a meeting at which they hear a manufacturer’s representative talk about a new piece of equipment, have dinner, complain about dentists, and share inside information on private job openings.

As networking became more widespread, and as people began to look to move beyond their own industry or profession, a variation developed. This is what I called Rolodex renting, and it involves the use of informational interviews.

You may want to shift to a job in the widget industry. Unfortunately, you know only one person in widgets. Rather than relying on social gatherings and your own limited set of contacts, you ask your contacts for help in finding people who might be able help you “learn if the widget industry is right for you.” In effect, you rent other people’s Rolodexes, asking them to introduce you to any of their own contacts in the widget business. In this way you exponentially increase the reach of an existing network.

Once you get a name, you call, write, or e-mail the individual, asking for an informational interview, dropping the name of the person who referred you. Outwardly you are simply asking to pick the interviewer’s brains about the widget business, since it’s something you find interesting. Actually you are trying to get him or her to hire you, but saying so would limit the number of people willing to speak with you.

At these informational interviews you do everything you can to impress the heck out of the interviewer and get him or her to give you a job. If that doesn’t happen, you simply ask for the names of other people who might be helpful in your fascinating voyage of discovery in the land of widgets. You then call these new names and repeat the process, dropping the name of the person who made the referral.

The interviewers are not necessarily motivated by your being able to help them get a job, since they are probably much higher on the corporate ladder than you; instead, they want to be able to refer their own contacts to the person who referred you. Instead of it being a direct quid pro quo — “I’ll help you if you help me” — it is second-degree quid pro quo — “I’ll help the person you send me if you help the person I send you.”

This process of working your own network, renting other people’s Rolodexes, and then going on a series of informational interviews is the method of choice for most people looking for good-paying, mid- to upper-level, white-collar work. Sure, the want ads are still there and actually got a boost from the Internet, but they aren’t seen as being either as effective or as sophisticated as the informational interview circuit.

But in the past couple of years this circuit has run out of power. Since the bursting of the Internet bubble, the terrorist attacks of September 11, and the subsequent recession, it has been getting more and more difficult for people to find anyone willing to give them an informational interview. I have to admit I’ve stopped giving them myself. That’s because it’s obvious to everyone now that these are nothing more than job interviews in disguise. With so many people requesting informational interviews, and with so few actual job openings, it has become time-consuming and ultimately fruitless to give these interviews.

Human resources departments have successfully fought against filling positions through networking. All those behind-the-scenes interviews and meetings threatened their existence. Why have a personnel department if you weren’t going to use it to find and screen candidates? In order to provide the secrecy many executives sought, the HR people took to hiring headhunters (often former HR people themselves) to do the screening of potential candidates. (See the box on page 133: How to Attract Headhunters.)

One of the themes I keep coming back to in this book is that merit isn’t enough to succeed at work anymore. It’s also not enough to get a foot in the door these days. I hate to say it, but in today’s job market it’s not what you know, but who you know. To get the multiple job offers you’re looking for in your job-fishing efforts, you’ll need to draw on personal relationships.

Let’s say there’s a job opening in your department. Your sister has been out of work for about six months, relying on her husband’s income and help from your parents to make ends meet. She’s qualified for the job…but so are the two dozen people represented by the file folder of résumés sitting on your desk. Do you tell your sister about the job and also do everything you can to help her get it, or do you simply treat her like every other candidate? Of course you bend over backward to help your sister get the job.

It’s human nature to give preference to those closest to you. That’s just accentuated when times are hard, as they are in the job market today. The people making the decisions on whom to meet with, whom to interview, and whom to hire naturally give preference to individuals with whom they have personal relationships. For example, during one of the last major economic downturns in New York a good friend of mine who was a part-time professor and actor was having a hard time making ends meet. I needed help in my office with general office chores and deliveries. Rather than hiring someone with experience, I offered the job to my out-of-work friend. I chose to hire based on personal connection rather than competence. I don’t think that’s unusual. That’s why I think the key to getting jobs in today’s work environment is to expand your personal network rather than your business network, and use the former not the latter to generate job leads.

Some of my clients balk when I first tell them to expand their personal network and use it to generate job leads. “That’s terribly cynical,” they say. “At least when you do business networking the quid pro quo is overt. Developing friendships just for business reasons seems dishonest.” They’re partly right. Developing friendships for business reasons is amoral, if not immoral. But that’s not what I’m suggesting at all.

I don’t think you should choose your personal relationships with an eye toward their business potential. In fact, I’d suggest you avoid that. Instead, I think you should pursue your true interests. (See the box on page 136: Inventory Your Interests.) Join clubs focusing on a pastime you enjoy, not one that has lots of CEOs as members. Pursue hobbies that will bring you joy, not those you think will bring you affluent chums. Become friendly with people whose company you enjoy, who share your values, who make you laugh. If your efforts at expanding your personal networks are phony you’ll get neither personal satisfaction nor job leads. That’s because you’ll never actually make the kind of personal ties you need. If you’re just showing up at the chess club simply because you think you’ll get job leads there, your ploy will soon be obvious to everyone. Join the chess club because you love chess, and let the job leads develop naturally.