Job hunt

A recent NYT headline: "Social Media History Becomes a New Job Hurdle." The gist of the article is that in addition to making people wish they'd never friended you, those mildly offensive comments, slightly obscene party photos, and other infelicitous postings you made on Facebook may eliminate you from consideration for a job should HR run across them pre-hire. Thank you, Times, for once again choosing to write about someone's roman holiday rather than reporting on something really important, namely that social media, and above all LinkedIn (whatever the WSJ may say about it), is revolutionizing how people go about getting a job.

I am engaged in a job hunt. Disillusioned by the state of the self-tracking industry post the first annual QS conference and now painfully aware that Big Data consulting, despite the hype, is still a long ways away from becoming a really significant and productive industry, I'm trying to find a comfortable niche with one of the very, very small number of local companies possessing large-scale data or, failing that, with a company further afield. Since returning to the US I have on several occasions tried doing things the old fashioned way:  find a job posting for which you are well suited, submit a resume as instructed, go in for an interview or two, discuss terms, you're hired.  That hoary process, as best I can tell, no longer works, at least not anywhere I'm applying.  There's no trouble with step 1, but an increasing number of companies make use of third-party hiring platforms (Taleo, Resumator) that, according to me, to people trying to hire me, and to the intermediaries in HR themselves, are more likely to drop applicants into a black hole than they are to get the right CV on the right desk.  At any rate, that process has failed to get me so much as a return email, automated "we have received your application and will contact you if necessary" messages aside (and some of these systems don't even seem to be able to produce that).

So how does one get a job these days?  As ever, by networking.  My current diagram for one of the companies I am targeting looks like this:

Let me point out a few things of generic interest:

• Networking begins by broadcasting your needs:  I need to get in touch with this one company.  Who responds and who can actually help is unpredictable, so just keep an open mind and start talking it up.  Widely.  In my case this led to a motley crew consisting of a long-ago colleague, friends, and even a playground contact.  This core circle is then expanded upon, hopefully exponentially, by meeting with their contacts and requesting from them additional introductions.
• All leads should be followed:  there's no one "not worth" talking to.  For example, my friend's current colleague who worked at the company a decade ago and who only knows one person who still works there?  Well, if he knows someone who worked there a decade ago and who is still there then that person is likely to be reasonably senior by now (indeed, a VP), so while it's a narrow line it's potentially important.  In addition, one is able to ask stupid questions of a non-employee where one might be hesitant to do so in front of a potential future coworker or boss.  Very valuable.
• Actually, not all leads should be followed.  In the diagram, above, I show a link from my college roommate to the CEO of this company.  I do not intend to ask for an introduction as I cannot imagine what I would say to this person.  Perhaps that will change as I go along.
• Recruiters can be helpful, but need to be managed for best results.  They do not have the expertise to do your (potential) job or even to understand it in much detail, and they are busy.  The good ones will understand well enough to get you started in the right place--and I have been lucky enough to meet a couple of good ones here--but you have to fight your own battles.  Also, not unimportant, they can make sure there's nothing wrong with your resume that could short circuit this process.  A recruiter, like everyone else, is more likely to invest in you if you are introduced to them by someone they know.
• Everyone will respond to a request to meet if properly motivated.  In the great majority of cases the mere fact that you're asking and that your request has a recognizable name attached to it is enough:  yes, people are busy, but people like to help; they like to help friends, they like to help themselves, and they even like to help strangers.  In the two cases where my request has been met by silence I solved one simply by asking my go-between to offer the introduction again, a reasonable period of time having elapsed, and the other (Chief Data Scientist, understandably an abnormally busy person) I will solve by barraging him with additional requests from other sources (Data Architect and Senior Director, Marketing Intelligence & Operations seem the obvious ones) once I have met them and convinced them of the worthiness of my cause.
• There is no substitute for a face-to-face meeting.  Wait if necessary, but accept no alternatives.

All this having been said, the real key to success in networking is leveraging one meeting into more.  This can only happen if the one meeting goes well.  And here's where LinkedIn makes the critical difference:  using LinkedIn (and, to a much lesser extent, Google and other sites) as a research tool, it is possible to enter most meetings with a thorough knowledge of your counterparty and his or her environs.  You can and should know who they report to, who they manage, where else they have worked both within and without the company, and, since companies are increasingly moving their hiring activities to LinkedIn, you should know what, if any, positions that person has open or is involved in filling.  All this in addition to knowing the company itself, which knowledge is also facilitated by LinkedIn's ability to reveal the internal structure of an organization.  It is not only we helpless individuals whose every secret is being revealed by nosy parkers sniffing around social networking sites.

As you network your way along you will inevitably start to sound more and more like someone who already works there.  You will learn the relevant topics and the right language in which to express them.  You will mention the right names at the right times.  You will know where to park and how to get a visitor's pass as quickly as possible and will therefore no longer keep anyone waiting.  All this helps.  And eventually--let us hope sooner rather than later given the frightening economic situation--this knowledge of and comfort with the environment will combine with your obvious capabilities to make the possibility of hiring you seem a very obvious step to take to someone in a position to take it.

One other thing deserves mention:  your desired goal in networking in the first place is likely to evolve as the process of networking unfolds.  This in itself is very helpful if, like me, your goal is not to get one particular posted position but rather to find, or if necessary arrange to have made, a job that really suits.  Where will I end up, assuming, as I must, that I end up somewhere inside?  In Big Data, Web Analytics, Corporate Strategy, or some other area yet to be defined?  My thinking on this evolves as my network grows, and if this process, laborious and time-consuming as it is, leads me to the right place then it will have been very well worth the trouble.