Job Hunt Blog

Company Alumni Reunions

We just had a giant reunion of former employees of Digital Equipment Corporation (R.I.P.).  In the early 1990's, there were over 100,000 of us in many countries.  The company HQ was in beautiful, downtown Maynard, MA, and probably around 35% to 45% of the total staff were located in the Massachusetts-New Hampshire area.

[For a list of company alumni groups, visit Job-Hunt.org's Company/Military Alumni page.]

Most of us, including me, enjoyed our time at "DEC," as it was known, and I really looked forward to attending the reunion, hopefully seeing some old friends and getting reconnected or caught up with what has being going on in their lives over the past 10 years or so.  Didn't happen...  Why?

I ran into 4 people I knew from the old days (and it was WONDERFUL to see them!), but that was 4 people out of hundreds that I had worked with and out of probably over 1,000 people there.

1)  Overwhelming response - don't know exactly how many people showed up, but it was clearly many more than were expected.

2)  Not organized well - when it's hard to walk through a room because it's so crowded, it's too crowded for good networking.  You have no idea who's there, and where they are.  You can't see everyone.  Hanging out by the food (or bar) is usually good networking, but there were about 4 "stations" for food and/or drink scattered across 2 large rooms and a big outdoor patio area.

For "next time" in September, I hope that they put up big signs for where the people from Central Engineering, Government Systems Group, US Area Sales, etc. can meet other people who worked in those organizations during their DEC career. 

I signed up to volunteer for the September reunion.  We'll see what happens.

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Job Networking Examples

I recently attended the Career Masters Institute Conference in Louisville, KY, and had interesting discussions with several members, all of whom are career coaches, resume writers, or both.  It was a great conference in a beautiful city!

Right Hand vs. Left Hand

One conference attendee shared her favorite networking story with me - it was for one of her husband's job searches.  He identified a company he wanted to work for (GREAT strategy!), and applied for a job he found on one of the job sites.  At the same time, he asked members of his network if anyone had a contact in that same company.  Someone did, and he was invited to quickly interview for a job.  The result: a couple of weeks later, he received a rejection letter for the first job application - in the same mail - as a job offer letter for a different job with that employer based on the interview set up by his network!

One Funeral = 3 Jobs

My favorite networking story revolves around employment connections made at a funeral.  I know it's true, because it happened right in front of me, and I know all the participants.  We were all former co-workers attending the funeral of another co-worker.  We hadn't been in touch for a few years (time flies!!), so while we waited to enter the funeral home, we spent time catching up with each others' lives and activities.  One former co-worker worked at a company with several job openings, several members of the group were looking for new jobs, and the rest is history.

So, networking works, and sometimes it works in the strangest places. 

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Networking Works!!

As a job search strategy, as well as an employment-survival strategy, networking is the most effective method you can use.  I'm always interviewing people about how they landed their most recent job, and the answer 97% of the time is NETWORKING!  Not Monster or CareerBuilder or even Job-Hunt.  Networking.

Benefits of Networking

Someone asked for the benefits of networking as a job search strategy.  In about 5 minutes, I came up with this list, but I'm sure there are many more than just those on this list:

• Having your own private sales force - your network - helping you find a good job.

• Making your resume stand out from the others because it is an internal referral.

• Finding out about jobs before they are posted anywhere, through your network.

• Getting an inside track on a job you want.

• Keeping current on what's going on in an industry, profession, or employer.

• Checking to determine if an employer is a good fit for you - someone to provide the "inside scoop" on how things really work at the employer.

• Beating the job search blues. A job search can be very demoralizing. It's really a sales effort with yourself as the product, and that makes it very hard on the ego unless someone is lucky enough to land the first job they apply for. Someone with a network sees other options and hears encouragement from other members of the network, so they often have a better attitude toward their serach (and, thus, more success).

• BEST - Ending the need to conduct a job search. After you've networked for a few years, you don't usually have to look for a job again. The jobs find you through your network! You go seamlessly from one job to the next. Think of it as 21st century job security...

Employers in competitive labor markets (like hospitals) and smart employers often have "employee referral programs" that reward employees for referring a friend who is hired and stays a specific length of time. Research seems to support the idea that a hire made as the result of an internal referral is usually more successful that an "outsider" hired.

So, go out there an NETWORK!  IT WORKS!!!

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