Nearly three years ago, I was fired from my job; a casualty of the post-9/11 economic downturn. After 18 months of looking for work without success, I sat down to write a book, entitled, "Blown Job: an unemployment odyssey." Here's an excerpt from Chapter Six. (See "Past Posts of Note" for earlier chapters. )
Chapter 6 - Networking, Or, How to Lose Friends and Influence No One
True story:
An unemployed nurse goes to her gynecologist for a checkup. While she’s in stirrups, the doctor asks her how she’s doing. She tells him she lost her job. He tells her there is (you should pardon the expression) an opening in his office, and asks if she’d be interested in working there. She responds enthusiastically and subsequently wins the job.
While this is the ultimate in networking, between you and me, I wouldn’t want to share a lunchroom with someone who’s made a clinical study of my whatzis. But hey, a job’s a job.
Networking: making the most of your contacts in order to find employment. These days, it is absolutely necessary to make capital of every relationship you have, no matter how tenuous or strained the connection. Too many applicants for too few jobs means that you have no choice but to pull hard on the old school tie, flatter your mortal enemy, and call in every favor owed. Shrinking violets need not apply.
I used to be painfully shy, to the point where I made up illnesses to keep from attending social functions. I’ve had food poisoning, labyrinthitis, even gout to avoid everything from my class reunion to the funeral of my former best friend. But losing my job has forced me to adopt all kinds of postures that I never would have considered before (except the one in stirrups.) The choking off of income is a powerful stimulus.
And so, I began my adventure in networking by contacting colleagues from the job I just lost. Each of them also had left the organization, either on her own or through a previous purge. My first contact had become an independent consultant. When I called her, she spent the first few minutes of the conversation commiserating with me and bad-mouthing our former firm, about which she got no argument. She then complained about the high cost of doing business as an independent and said that she couldn’t even afford a cell phone. I proceeded to tell her about the terrific one that I used, which didn’t require monthly fees or background checks. She professed an interest in this and I gave her all of the information that I had.
At the end of the call, she told me she would keep me in mind, in case she needed any help with written communications to prospective clients. Of course, I never heard from her. All I can say is, if she bought a Tracfone, I hope the battery dies when her car breaks down on a rural highway in a snowstorm at midnight.
I next contacted a fellow writer who had landed a job writing grant proposals at a non-profit. I took her to lunch and, after the obligatory small talk, she told me about an upcoming conference for non-profit professionals, at which it might be possible to make some networking connections. I soon found out that this kind of support was the most I could hope for. In almost all my interactions, instead of finding out about actual jobs, the best I could do was to obtain more networking advice. And so the chase began.
I called a third colleague, who also was working at a non-profit agency. She passed me along to a colleague of hers, to whom I sent a letter and from whom I never heard.
Next, I hit on friends of mine, who dutifully took my résumés and distributed them within their organizations or on to business associates. My friends even enlisted their nieces, nephews and cousins in the hunt. It was like a pyramid scheme gone wild – you tell a friend, and she’ll tell a friend, and so on….
One good friend put me in touch with an associate at a major publishing firm, who, in turn, gave me the phone numbers of three people in her organization. All of them were very nice and very solicitous, and none of them were able to help.
This I found to be particularly distressing, because I knew that this firm was hiring. The first person I spoke to was kind enough to disclose to me the positions that were posted on her firm’s intranet. I also checked the firm’s website and found other postings there. But I couldn’t get a nibble from the people conducting the interviews.
This brings up two troubling issues. The first is, why, in spite of my having inside information, could I not get an interview? There were several possible answers – the positions may have been filled from within; interviews already may have been conducted by the time I found out about the jobs; applicants whose skills more closely matched the requirements were more likely candidates. Or, it simply could have been that I’m too old and untalented and fated to die on my cot in a homeless shelter, once I lose my apartment because I can’t pay the rent because I can’t find a job because I’m unhireable after working too many years. Uh oh, that’s loser talk. But, can you blame me? I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. I should be accumulating a big fat pension now, instead of presenting myself, hat in hand, heart on my sleeve, and bile in my throat.
I’ll never know the reasons, and I’ll always wonder.
The second troubling thought is, what will the people who’ve been trying to help me think of me now? They already know that I’ve been fired from my job, and though I’ve told them it was a mass purge that eliminated my entire department, some of them must be thinking, what the hell is wrong with her? Wouldn’t they have kept her on, if she was any good? And worse, when my friends have gone out on a limb on my behalf with their friends and colleagues and I still can’t get an interview, will they be tarnished for associating with a loser like me?
No one, but no one, ever has done or said anything to make me feel this way, but I’m pretty damned sure that this must be what they’re thinking.
*
These are just some of the highlights of my adventures in networking. The bottom line is, I’ve contacted everyone I know and, in spite of their help, every single lead turned out to be a dead end.
Anyone who professes to know anything about careers will tell you that networking is the very best way to find a job. I believe that this is true, in good times. But in a bleak economic climate, innovation is key.
So, if your adventures in networking have been anything like mine, my advice to you is, light a candle; perform a Santería ritual; avoid cracks in the sidewalk; dress only in yellow; listen to pronouncements from your pet; and parse the messages in your fortune cookies. Reliance on these unconventional methods will assure you the same brilliant success you’ll get from jeopardizing formerly solid relationships.
I absolutely believe that each and every one of the nine million of us will find a job just as soon as nine million new jobs are created. I figure between the Gap and Starbucks, it shouldn’t be too long now.
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