Your Career: The Single Best Way To Speed Up Your Job Search…Again & Again, People make the Same Mistake: They Underestimate the Value of Human Relationships

Again and again, people make the same mistake: they underestimate the value of human relationships. This is true when you are looking for a job, and – for most – it remains true after you find a new position.

Instead of looking for a job, look for people with whom you would like to work.

By the way, I never applied for a job as partner; I simply sent an email to one of the partners along with a strategy statement I had written based on their ideas. Ten days later, I was a partner in their firm. My motivating factor was that I was drawn to Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, two highly innovative authors with whom I wanted to work.

To me, job descriptions are little more than clues. They tell you a bit about a company and its current needs, but they don’t represent the sum total of opportunities at a firm.

When I worked at WGBH, Boston’s public television station, I escaped an entry level job by writing a job description and giving it to my boss’s boss’s boss. Two weeks later, he tossed a job description on my desk and asked if I’d be interested in the position; it was my draft with a new title and a few words changed here and there. (I took the job.)

There are two reasons that gambit worked. First, I had already built a relationship with him. Second, I took the initiative rather than rotting away in a dead-end job.

Most people slow down their job search and limit their opportunities by being reactive. If you are simply applying for jobs and submitting resumes to companies, you are probably in for a very long slog.

But if you use social media and weak connections to find interesting people, the reverse is true; you can speed up your job search.

I say weak connections because most business and career opportunities arise through weak connections… friends of friends of friends, or someone you met once four years ago.

Farm your interests and past for such connections. Look for people who attended the same school as you, grew up in the same state, or played the same sport. If you like programming or glass blowing, find others who do, too.

It is not enough to find people with just one interest in common; look for people with whom you share two or more interests. These are the people who will lead you to a great job.
For example, if you simply look for someone who also likes glass blowing, it is unlikely that person will lead you to a viable job. But if you look for healthcare administrators who also are glass blowers, the odds are pretty good such a person can lead you to a solid healthcare position. You will be able to quickly establish a relationship.

By focusing on people rather than positions, you put human connections first. In doing so, you acknowledge the way the world really works. Very few workplace decisions are based solely on objective facts. Most are strongly influenced by human relationships. People act based on interactions with others they like, trust and respect. That’s true whether someone is hiring a new employee or deciding whom to promote.

Here’s the bottom line: to speed up your job search, don’t look for a job. Look for people with whom you want to work.

Bruce Kasanoff is a ghostwriter and speaker.

Forbes.com | March 20, 2015 | Bruce Kasanoff