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Concept

The importance of creating and keep contact with people who may help us to find a job y very important if we take into account that the 70% or 80% of the labour market offers are covered through this searching method.

Many times, companies prefer to use the “word of mouth” and cover their vacancies using “contacts” of their own acquaintances, workers or people related to the company, rather than to resort to selection companies or publish an advertisement.

Therefore, the best employment agencies are, in most occasions, your acquaintances, friends and relatives and other people belonging to your social network to whom it is necessary that you inform about your status, interests and professional capacities. 

Next, we present a series of sections that may help you to: Define your Network of contacts; Know which steps you can follow with this searching method; the fears you have to overcome; what you must take into account and the registration system that may help you.
 

 

 

Define your Network of Contacts

A contact will be that person who, even though you do not know them well, is willing to speak about you in their company or in their professional environment or can give you valuable information about the job you are looking for or where can you obtain this information from.

Now, we suggest some examples of the people who could well be part of your network of contacts:

  • Former university mates
  • Professionals belonging to your own activity who develop their work life in another organization.
  • Family members
  • Friends
  • Classmates from educational or vocational cycles
  • Neighbours
  • Teachers and instructors of courses, seminars, etc.
  • Customers and Suppliers
  • Partners from sportive activities or other recreational or social action associations.
  • Bosses, Secretaries
  • Professional advisers
 

 

 

Types of relationships

Strong:
Relationships characterized by their symmetry and homogeneity (family and close friends).
Weak:
Characterized by their asymmetry and heterogeneity (neighbours, workers of other entities, people responsible for Human Resources, Secretaries to Managing Director, teachers, etc.) This are the kind of relationships that we have to generate and reinforce in our job searching process.
 

 

 

Types of social networks

Formal
We can define these networks as the structures generated by agents and entities catalogued as “official” or dependent of institutions or Public Administrations, such as INEM (National Employment Office), Autonomous Services of Employment, etc.

Informal
Those non-official institutions constituted by the relationships between different individuals, and not subjected to regulated norms of relationship (friends, partners, neighbours, etc).

These are the kind of relationships that we have to mobilize, as we are going to obtain information mostly from them.
 

 

 

Steps to follow

  • To identify and elaborate a network of contacts, establishing what is your relationship with them.
  • To identify which are your strong relationships enclosed in your professional environment and inform them about your search status and the kind of employment that interests you.
  • To identify the group of weak relationships within your professional environment (partners, suppliers, customers, teachers, etc.) and tell them what is your professional project.
  • To locate companies and persons (nodes) who you do not know directly or personally but with which it would be interesting to come into contact (human resources managers, secretaries to managing directors, workers, department chairs, companies lists, etc.).
  • To start the necessary actions to come into contact with these companies and with the persons who manage the employment in them, in order to be able to establish contact. We suggest you to visit the section “Self-presentation”.
  • To keep a periodic contact with each one of the located links (in person, by telephone or through mail).
 

 

 

Overcome your fears

  • Telephobia: the most difficult thing is to start
  • Fear of Rejection: to reach the “Yes” you have first to assume refusals
  • Not knowing what to say or how to do it: prepare it, now you must know what you can offer and what you want to achieve
  • Believing that you do not have contacts: you will be surprised, if you invest your efforts in making a list
  • Not wanting to use your acquaintances: Consider that you are only asking for information, no strings attached
  • Lack of self-confidence: find out your strengths, practice them
  • Distrusting the method’s efficacy: the studies’ results are clear, ask other people how they have achieved their job
  • Clash with secretaries: involve them in your search, use your Social Ability
  • Boredom because of the lack of outcomes: everything takes time
  • Elitism and feeling of superiority: if no one knows that you are looking for a job, it is difficult that you may find it
  • Being too selective to obtain contacts: practically all the people you know can be a source of information.
  • Not asking for contacts or information, but jobs.
  • Embarrassment for being unemployed: you are searching because you are interested in stopping being unemployed.
  • Difficulty to ask for help: we all need other people, there are lots of people who want to lend you a hand.
  • Lack of creativity: it is made up for with interest, work and preparation; train in them
  • Laziness: if you do not show interest, no one will go for you
 

 

 

Registration

  • Date of Contact
  • Full name of the person
  • Position and Role
  • Medium and address of the contact
  • Schedule
  • Information obtained (other contacts, potential references, status of company concerning the contracting of staff, possibility to other interviews, etc)
  • Next date of contact
  • Personal evaluation of the Contact maintained (good choices and improvements to develop