One of the most important parts to a job search – and your career management – is effective networking and relationship management.
Not only can networking create opportunities, but it can also allow you as a job seeker, to understand more about labour market trends and hiring shifts in the industry that you are looking to apply.
With that being said, while the values of networking are obvious, and often emphasized by university career centres, career coaches, and online blogs-many job seekers struggle to start networking!
Why is this?
At CareerJSM we have spent time figuring out why job seekers struggle to start networking, and how we can help them. We know that confident and extroverted individuals are more comfortable approaching strangers or acquaintances and asking for help, but that this is something that does not come naturally to each job seeker.
Getting Started
Job seekers struggle to start networking strategically:
- Who do I contact?
- What do I ask them?
- Am I going to get ignored?
These anxieties can challenge a job seeker looking to leverage their network, and stop them in their tracks.That is why, after receiving feedback from existing customers, CareerJSM is proud to introduce our networking workflow, that places an emphasis on:
- Helping job seekers identify networking opportunities
- Contacting networking opportunities automatically
- Managing contacts and relationships
Identifying Networking Opportunities
We have an advantage that was not available to previous generations. When we graduate from University and College we have an existing social network. Did you know that the average Facebook user that is 18-25 has approximately 640 Facebook friends.
Unless you are pursuing an extremely unique career odds are that there are multiple people within your immediate network that work in a role or industry that you are interested in.
As well, you might have parents, extended family, or former bosses that can help your job search. CareerJSM helps you identify these individuals, and add them to your contacts on our platform.
Reaching out
Once a job seeker identifies individuals they want to work with, the next step is reaching out and contacting them. This is the part that individuals struggle with the most, and where CareerJSM is providing the most value added help.
We have structured email templates that job seekers can select based on how well they know the individual. These email templates are completely customizable but offer a guide as to how a job seeker should approach a contact. Here is an example of Tristan, our CTO reaching out to me to chat about his (hopefully fictional) for an upcoming job search.
This structure provides job seekers with the nudge they needed, showing them how to reach out and interact with their network. When they have written an email are happy with it, our app sends it automatically.
Managing the process
Your inbox is cluttered. You have emails about school, work, extracurricular activities as well as updates from your mom.
Tracking all of your activity when you are looking for a job can be stressful, and that is why in addition to the networking workflow, CareerJSM has built an entire contact manager so that you can track all of the important contacts related to your job search. Here is where you can store notes, track interactions, and stay on top of relationships as you search for your next great job.
We are so excited as our platform expands from tracking specific opportunities, to the entire offline and online workflow to successfully looking for a job.