Career Networking
Published on 3 Apr 2006 at 12:27 pm |
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Filed under The Cargo Cults of Business, Manifest Masquerade, Principal Acronyms Only.
As an IT executive and hiring manager, I’ve been giving the job search process some thought for some time. On the whole the process doesn’t seem to be serving any of the participants very well. In particular, the practice of "Career Networking" seems to me to be a source of problems. Here is a very typical example of the kind of advice I’ve seen quite frequently.
The second paragraph is the meat of the thing, in it “networking” is defined.
Let’s examine that paragraph. There are 6 suggestions:
1. You meet people who might have insight into your job search.
2. You talk to people who know people who could help you out.
3. You chat it up with strangers at parties.
4. You cold-call people you’ve read about in the newspaper.
5. You write cordial letters to prominent community leaders.
6. You cultivate an arsenal of contacts.
Of the six, item 2 strikes me as reasonable, acceptable, and sensible. The rest range from making a nuisance of oneself to being down-right obnoxious. Imagine the reactions of the recipients of these “networking” attentions. I’m sure that prominent community leaders will be the least inconvenienced since staff members will move such letters to the circular file with great efficiency and dispatch.
Cold calls of the kind described are usually screened by office staff or technology, but they do occasionally get through. My experience of receiving such calls is that the recipient is embarrassed and inconvenienced, and frequently feels the need to find some sort of face saving way of getting rid of the unwelcome call without actually responding to rudeness with rudeness. Hardly the mental state which will predispose one to help with the caller’s job search.
Suggestion 3 is merely a specific case of suggestion 1. Both amount to taking advantage of social situations and interactions in order to buttonhole the unsuspecting with boorish requests for favors. I feel the agony of the poor soul sipping a drink at a party and searching desperately for an exit. “Oh, I think I hear my mother calling me, or maybe it’s the boss, gotta run. “ (This becomes especially egregious in a later paragraph of the article, section 4, which declares that there is no shelter from these attentions. "Networking Knows No Boundaries")
In some ways suggestion 6, in that second paragraph, (ie. cultivating an arsenal of contacts), is the most objectionable. Perhaps I’m reading more into it than is there, but isn’t this nothing less than a cynical suggestion that we maintain a sham interest in people for business purposes? I have no problem with the suggestion that one should stay in touch with one’s contacts and communicate about the job search in the context of those relationships. It is also true that some people form friendships easily and have a vast "arsenal of contacts." But to suggest that one should form relationships with job placement in mind strikes me as going one step too far. I also doubt that this technique would be effective for anyone who would needed to be told to pursue it.
Interestingly, as the article cited continues, it actually makes reference to the importance of being polite and well mannered. I simply don’t believe it’s possible to be rude in a well mannered way. I will however join the author of the article in saying "If you want to be treated with respect, treat others with respect." By which I would mean that I urge refraining from "career networking" outside of a real and pre-existing social network.
From another viewpoint, this process doesn’t work well as a means of selection. It’s pretty clear that hiring those we know personally or those who have been referred by those we know personally, makes a lot of sense, since it is so difficult and expensive to evaluate the skill set and cultural fit of someone entirely unknown. But, “Networking” takes this too far. Consider the kinds of personalities this process favors:
1. Aggressive
2. Insensitive to others
3. Perhaps over confident
4. Willing to cynically manipulate people
5. Insincere
6. Disrespectful of the work/home boundary
7. Perhaps unaware of the conventions of polite social interaction
8. Or, perhaps merely obsequious, needy, or desperate
Do you want the person this process selects reporting to you? Do you want them on your team? Do you want them in contact with your clients?
Furthermore, it’s a process that, with the arguable (I’d argue with it, but not today.) exception of sales, does nothing to evaluate any of the hard skills necessary to perform a job. In technical and engineering disciplines, in fact, "Career Networking" is probably as good a system as could be constructed to screen out qualified candidates in favor of those who are not. In the technical and engineering sub-culture, I think most would agree with me that the behavior described here is the earmark of a poseur.
In the end, I hardly know what to suggest. Where do we take hold? Those who are hiring managers can continue to have their calls screened and make a serious effort to hire based upon ability and cultural fit rather than through some obscure sense of social obligation or the short term ease of hiring candidates who press themselves upon them rather than the higher quality candidates they’ll have to seek out.
"Networking" is also frequently proposed as a response to the fact (if it is, indeed, a fact) that most jobs are not posted. This too, is a step we can take. If our organizations have a need, let us take the time and energy to evaluate that need, describe it clearly, budget for compensation, and post it. There are many conflicting demands on a leader’s time, but surely defining the roles within the organization and selecting the best team members must take a very high priority.
All of us can also refuse to tolerate this kind of boorishness. The difficulty there is in not answering rudeness with rudeness. I suppose we’ll all need to cultivate the fine art of making our excuses.
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May 12th, 2005 at 6:48 pm
Oh, my.
It’s brilliant. It’s scintillating. It’s spot-on. It’s lucid. It’s everything that we would hope this site to be about, and articulates just the sorts of values that we want propagated.
And as Vroomfondel said to Deep Thought and Majikthise, “We’re going to be lynched, you realize that, don’t you?”
A marvelous post for when the days arrive where we are internationally renowned pundits of the business world. But throw that out there early in the game and there’s no telling what havoc might be wrought on our future careers (such as they may be).
Unfortunately, it goes against my grain to lobby for “toning it down” or “putting a more positive spin on the content.” It also, IMO, goes against the site charter.
So, I’ve settled instead for generating this readily-deleted comment should you decide to let the post stand upon our eventual public debut. At least you have until launch to consider whether “let’s poke it with a stick” is a viable philosophy to be implementing with the employment industry– and us needing jobs, and all.
|-o
FWIW. YMMV. ETC.