Trials & Triumphs of Career Transition, v.13 - Fatema’s Lesson in How the Relationships She Built in the Past, can be Helpful to Her Future

Helping the job seekers at CMS to explore a wide variety of résumé marketing channels is the role of our outplacement program coaches.  Helping them to increase their potential pool of job opportunities and to zero in on the right ones, is key to their long-term success.  The most obvious résumé marketing strategy is often the one that is the most overlooked by inexperienced job seekers: networking.

Several years ago, we worked with a tier two automotive components manufacturer whose finance team was being relocated to the US.  All of the candidates we were asked to work with through our career transitions program were highly motivated to move forward into the next stage of their careers, although generally anxious as expected.  The same was true for Fatema.

Once her goals were clear and her résumé written, Fatema worked with her CMS program coach through the process of résumé marketing.  Applying to online job postings, connecting with recruiters and accessing the ‘hidden job market’ were all part of our efforts, but we found her reluctant when encouraged to connect with her personal and professional contacts.  Perhaps it was pride, or her innate desire for personal privacy, but Fatema needed our help to change her mind set in how proactively reaching out to people who already knew her, could easily change the direction of her search.  It was a chance to find opportunities where she had an inside track – and an automatic reference.

Networking of course is the exchange of information among people with similar interests, and often begins with a single point of common ground with the ability to grow exponentially from there.  Fatema had a long history in the field of accounting and when she put her mind to it, was able to develop a long list of former colleagues who worked in various finance departments across the country.

Once we helped Fatema to change her view on asking others for their help, and she finally took the plunge, she was amazed and quite frankly heart warmed at the positive response she received from her network.  Most of whom responded to her with concern and acted on her behalf connecting her with potential opportunities that they knew of, or other professionals in their field who could possibly help her in her search for a new job.

Networking can take on a variety of forms in a job search.  Asking one’s personal contacts for assistance, building and reconnecting with social media networks, and joining industry specific networking groups are all easy ways to advertise that one is open and available to new job opportunities.  And as Fatema found out, it’s also a lesson in how people truly want to be helpful to others that they have common ground with.  It also has to be said that networking has a powerful cyclical effect and help such as Fatema received, will most certainly be paid forward by him to someone else down the road.

It may seem like an obvious résumé marketing avenue to take for some, but for others networking can feel uncomfortable and awkward.  Helping job seekers like Fatema to overcome those preconceived beliefs and to see how networking can easily work to their advantage is just another way CMS program coaches help their candidates move forward in their careers through our outplacement programs.