Do you even network?

I can already hear it now. Before I even make it to the third sentence. "Curtis, I don't have time to go network. I have a family, and responsibilities". I know this may seem like a difficult task to start if you have never done it before, but you better believe that other people are out there talking with future employers, and you are sitting at home watching Elementary on CBS. Which if you are doing, shame on you. Sherlock on the BBC runs laps around that sad excuse for a TV show on CBS.

Networking events are happening all around you. No matter how small the city, or how small the subject. There is a group meeting and discussing something. Most groups meet at least once a month, maybe more, but almost always never less. And this is just for a couple hours, you can take a couple hours a month to meet up with a group and start networking. There are a lot of places to start looking to have a meetup. Let's discuss a few.

First off, there is the easy place to start looking of www.meetup.com/. This website will allow to search by city all the things going on in your city. Meetup is easy to use. Just create an account, or link to Facebook and go. You can add you interests and how far you are willing to travel and go from there. You will find lots of stuff there that might interest you. And let's say your interest isn't there? Well then, maybe you should start the meetup in your area. You will be small at first, but it will grow. If you are looking for a group to meet, you better believe that you are not the only one. Just not anybody will start a group, you should be that somebody.

OK what if you don't want to meet up for a particular interest, just want to meet new people. Well there are other options there as well. If you city or county has a chamber of commerce, check there. Here I just did a quick search at the Johnson County, where I live, chamber of Commerce and find this link. nejcchamber.com/networking/ Right there are networking events listed for you to travel to.

Now the most important part of this, why? Why Curits, should I go and network? Do you have a job? Do you love it? Are you making enough money to be happy? Do you not want to physically hurt anybody you work with? If you answered no to any of these you should consider networking. If you answered no to all of those, why are you still at that place? It sounds awful. You can look online for jobs, and you can post your resume on Dice or Monster(please don't). But so are about 100 other people, and they are just sitting back and waiting for opportunity to fall into their laps. That isn't they way it works in real life. You have to go out and make your own luck.

Sales and looking for a job have a lot in common. If you are working in sales, you have a product that you have to be knowledgeable about. You must be passionate about it, and you certainly need prove to a person who is unsure about the product that it is everything they could want and more. Looking for a job is no different. You are just selling yourself, you are the product. So just as before you must show people why you are a good buy. Looking at your resume is just as good as a product description online. You are still going to want to talk to an expert before you make a purchase that is going to cost you 10's of thousands of dollars a year. You are that expert. So if you have been networking, you have a leg up on those who don't. Employers can now put a face to a name, and now your personality. They will know if you are good fit with their culture over another applicant.

When a job posting is listed, 100's of resumes are set to HR. They have a list of keywords to look for, and if they aren't there they will move on. Unless somebody has told them to just call you. Make sure you network, so that your name will get brought up. Just by showing up to an event, you put yourself ahead of at least 50% of the people applying for the job. Depending on where you live, getting a job is a competitive sport right now. You want every advantage that you can get on this playing field. As this game, can mean life or death.