Career Advancement with Social Networking Technology
We hear it over and over again. It's not about what you know,
but who you know. If you're like most people, you probably have
at least 200 people in your rolodex. Having contacts is one
thing. Making the most of those relationships is another
challenge altogether.
With busy schedules, effectively staying in touch with people
and using connections to get doors opened is difficult. Just
within the past few months, technology has been developed to
meet these challenges and help people make the most of their
social networks. This technology is appropriately called "social
networking software."
Of course the most basic technology in this area is having an
electronic address book. Microsoft Outlook is basically the
industry standard program to use. After inputting your contacts
in Outlook, you can synchronize with a personal digital
assistant (like the Palm pilot). You can also use Outlook to
interface with any of the major social networking applications
out there, including all of the ones mentioned in this article.
Keeping in Touch
If you have 300 contacts in your address book but you only keep
in touch with 40 of them on a regular basis, the remaining 260
contacts are in danger of going "stale." Think of what happens
when you flip through your card file or rolodex and come across
a contact you haven't heard from for a couple years. Unless you
knew the person well, chances are you'll just throw out the
card. You may not ever remember how you met them!
A social networking software program called RelationshipSecure
was developed to address this specific problem. It provides
several features that help you maintain your existing
relationships and keep them from getting stale. It provides a
verification feature that lets you send out e-mail mailings to
your contacts asking them if their information is correct. If it
isn't, they can make any changes necessary and your Outlook
address book is updated automatically. It also lets you send out
other mailings like Birthday and Anniversary e-greeting cards.
To find out more about RelationshipSecure, visit
www.RelationshipSecure.com.
Expanding your Network
While RelationshipSecure is a powerful tool for maintaining your
existing relationships, other companies have developed
technology to help you expand your network of contacts. These
concepts aren't mutually exclusive: in fact, it makes sense that
you'd want to keep in touch with people so that the relationship
won't have gone cold by the time you need to ask them for an
introduction, a job, a meeting, etc.
LinkedIn.com is one of the most popular services for expanding
your network by getting introduced to other people who can help
you move ahead in your career. How it works is this: you enter
your contacts' email addresses or import them from Outlook.
LinkedIn then gives you a window into people your contacts know
and depending on their privacy settings, the ability to contact
people who may be able to help you. LinkedIn.com is most popular
among executives and other high-level professionals because of
the exclusive nature of their service and its powerful privacy
features.
Ryze.com is another service similar to LinkedIn.com, but with
fewer privacy controls. It is not as popular among executives
but it's worth checking out, especially if you want to network
with people who aren't in LinkedIn's demographic.
Reaching Recruiting Contacts
While these tools provide a powerful way for you to tap your
existing networking resources, it may be the case that you have
to reach out of your network to find someone who can help you. I
recommend using a service like ResumeArrow.com to get your
resume in front of recruiters and employers you wouldn't be able
to reach otherwise.