Lose the Resume, Land the Job

Chapter FiveNetworking Is a Contact Sport

1. Why Networking Mystifies
2. The Point of Contact
3. Networking 101: Check the Boxes
4. The Golden Rule: It's Not About You
5. The Value of Validation
6. Networking Your References
7. Looking for Winners
8. Be Prepared for the Long Haul
9. Networking Doesn't End with a New Job

Extroverts think they're pros at it. Intro-verts dread it. Most people end up somewhere in the middle. “It” is networking.

Some people think it's as easy as working a room and chatting up everyone they see. They'll dive into a networking event like a hungry seal in a school of fish. Or they approach it like a 1950s door-to-door salesman trying to sell vacuum cleaners to everyone he meets. This is not networking; it's stalking with a resume—and it's happened to most of us in some peculiar circumstances. Consider what happened to me one Saturday morning.

At the top of my weekend to-do list was a trip to the dry cleaners to pick up my shirts and drop off another batch to be laundered. I was in my typical Saturday uniform: jeans and a T-shirt. There was nothing about me or my demeanor that indicated I was anything other than a typical dad doing some errands in between my children's sports practices and games. I greeted “Mrs. Jones,” the owner of the dry-cleaning store, picked up my shirts, ...