How Not To Ask For Help With Your Job Hunt

How Not To Ask For Help With Your Job Hunt, Asking a friend, family member or other contact to ‘pass on’ your resume rarely gets you anywhere. How Not to Ask for Help With Your Job Hunt, How Not to Ask for Help With Your Job Hunt, You’ve heard it over and over–networking is key to helping you find a job. You may not know that asking everyone you see to help you land an opportunity could be one of your worst job-hunting mistakes.

Why? Most people have no idea how to help you. Of course, they want to assist, but without your specific guidance, they don’t always know how to proceed.

Here are a few ways you should not ask for help, plus some better suggestions of what to do:

1. Via an email blast. Do not send an email to 100 of your closest friends explaining you’ve just been laid off and are open to considering jobs in the following 15 or 20 industries. Why not? Two reasons:

–When you send mass emails, many will disregard your inquiry as impersonal and not give it the attention needed to solicit replies.

–When you fail to specify and name the organizations, locations, and types of people you are targeting in your job search, you put the onus on the reader to figure out exactly whom you might like to meet. People are busy; they need guidance to help them focus and help you.

Do this instead: Create a short list of places where you’d like to work and the types of organizations that interest you. Send individual emails to people who might be willing to assist. Include a personal note in each one, and gear each email to inspire a reply. For example, “I know you are so well connected at X company, I hope you will be able to suggest a senior-level manager in the Y area who might be willing to meet me to have a casual conversation.”

2. “Hello, nice to meet you, I am looking for a job.” You know people who attend networking events with a metaphorical flashing letter J for “job seeker” on their chests. Unless the new contact knows of a job opportunity for you, it’s likely he or she will nod and smile politely until it is time to move on to meet someone else. The “hello, I need help” networker rarely engages someone enough to move him or her to act.