Today's Washington Post describes a slightly different focus on networking for jobs than I've stumbled across in quite a while--using your alumni network to find a job. (A caveat: I work with networking processes, but I don't stay up on job search issues. You'll need to go elsewhere for that.) If you've kept up with your friends from business school, you may well have a gold mine on your hands, but, to stick with my metaphor, you've got to work the mine for a while.
The Post journalist interviews Lee Dudka, a Princeton alumni, who has obviously kept his finger in his college network for years. Google Dudka and you'll find his name and relationships with his college network all over the web. In the article, Dudka refers to a University of Michigan alumnus who visited D.C. about four years ago, meeting many of the local alumni. He ended up working for one of them. Check out the article Making the Grade in Your Alumni Network.
Dudka's recommendations showed an unusual level of street smarts, an absolute necessity for effective relationship building. Here's one insight:
Tapping your alma mater and its alumni when job hunting can be a smart strategy -- especially if you cultivate connections and your reputation before you need them. Managed well, an alumni network can open doors and even bring jobs or funds your way. Done wrong, it can smack of presumptiveness or begging, said Lee Dudka, president of the Princeton Club of Washington and a pharmaceutical and technology consultant.
Dudka makes some recommendations that I thought were especially wise: Be sure you give enough detail on why you're worth helping; job networking needs to happen in person; and, it's who knows you that counts, not who you know.
Numerous networking studies show that jobs come through a friend of a friend of a friend, but I suspect that in this environment it may take one more level of friend. I don't get a nickel out of this, but I regularly recommend Wayne Baker's Achieving Success Through Network for some of the best insights in the field. Although Baker completed his doctoral dissertation on networking, his book doesn't smell like the ivory tower and it's very readable.
A sidebar: Clients regularly talk to me about college choices for their kids, and though most are well aware of costs and reputation, I find that the one area few think about is the quality of the alumni network. One of the reasons that top schools are so powerful is their alumni--well placed and always willing to support other alumni in their endeavors. I've forgotten which, but one of the college books addresses network quality, and even makes serious comparisons among the various schools.