Networking & Job Searching Simultaneously

Being in a situation where you are both networking and actively searching for a job is incredibly stressful! It is hard for anyone to know the appropriate contact, how to communicate, and what questions are relevant. As a job seeker, it is essential to build relationships but not ask for a job. With these challenges, how are you to start creating relationships when you don’t have them?

Let’s start with the appropriate contact. Your first step is to determine if there is a position that you have applied to recently or will soon. If the answer is yes, in the U.S., this will most likely limit your conversations to those not directly involved in the candidate hiring process. For equity reasons, human resources and hiring managers won’t be able or want to discuss the open position. The good news is that you can still talk to potential colleagues, reporting staff, or clients of the organization to get information that will give you a leg up in the application and interview process.

When you are in the application process, be strategic when approaching colleagues, reporting staff, previous staff, and clients. There are three easy steps for your request.

1. You don’t want to take anyone by surprise, so when you make your request for a conversation, let them know that you have or will be applying to an open position in their organization. By doing so, if they are involved in the hiring process, they can politely decline the conversation.
2. Second, be sure to include you are looking for a brief conversation around 20 minutes to ask some questions about the job.
3. Finally, provide them a few options for dates & times. Getting your application in on time is essential, so you don’t want the conversation a month after the job posted. You can always mention if these dates don’t work that you can be flexible if they would like to name another time.
4. If you don’t get an answer to your request, send a reminder with additional dates. You could use a statement like “Just bringing this back to the top of your inbox, as I know you may be busy.”

Finally, you will want to develop a list of questions that will help you to craft a robust application and prepare for interviews.

Application questions may include:

• Asking about the preferences in resumes. For instance, you might ask about the length of a resume, if you are changing sectors. In the higher education sector, it is quite common to have a two-page resume, while in business, it is more common to have a one-page resume.
• Questions related to performance. For instance, you may ask what success looks like in the role. This knowledge can help you determine what experiences to highlight in your cover letter or resume.
• Focusing questions on responsibilities, i.e., what are the top three responsibilities? These types of questions can help you prioritize and highlight the correct transferable skills in your background.

Interview preparation questions may include:

• Questions to determine the interview process, i.e., Is the first interview, typically a screening interview with human resources or how many rounds of interviews I can expect? These types of questions can help set your expectations and timeline for preparation.
• Asking about stakeholders or collaborations with colleagues. Knowing the interactions with people can help you to determine questions that will come from their angle.
• Focusing questions on work culture, i.e., what are shared values in the organization? This question can tell you how to position yourself in interviews. Another culture question might be, how is risk-taking viewed? If the organization is risk-averse, you won’t want to use a lot of examples where you have taken risks.

These questions are just a few to get you started when you are actively seeking a job. You’ll want to develop your own set of questions to position yourself as the candidate of choice. Being prepared for the conversation with pointed questions will give you a boost in the search without ever asking for a job.