I always loved that scene in the film Pretty Woman where the newly groomed Julia Roberts returns, laden with expensive carrier bags, to the boutique that had refused to serve her when she was dressed in scruffy denim and looking like, well, a hooker. Julia shrugs her Vuittons and Chanels at the salesclerk and grins. “Big mistake. HUGE mistake.”
I remember that scene whenever I hear someone advising job seekers to network their way to their next job.
First, let’s be clear about what networking means. Networking means that you talk to your friends and colleagues, and then you talk to friends and colleagues of your friends and colleagues, and then you talk to their friends and colleagues and so on until you finally hit an employer who actually would be interested in hiring you.
It’s hard to deny – and I don’t – that networking can be the path to finding jobs. In fact, the generally-accepted insight is that 2/3 to 3/4 of professionals and executives, and about a third of blue collar, entry, and clerical level workers find jobs via networking.
The way the chaotic, mostly un-systematic recruitment world works today, jobseekers would be foolish not to network to find a job. So it would seem.
But, what matters is not finding a job. It’s finding the right job.
Focusing on networking narrows your options. Let’s do the math:
So why does networking work?
Use networking? Big mistake, HUGE mistake.
The much better method is to get matched with the right job, the job where your special talents and traits match that job’s performance predictors. This is scientific, not chaotic and it reaches all jobs, not the tiny fraction inside the purview of the friends of the friends of your friends…
If you use networking, at least use it with care. Use it with the likelihood that it will land you in yet another job that doesn’t fit.
