This is the advice given by both Guerrilla job-search expert Kevin Donlin and Dan Sullivan, founder of The Strategic Coach, a focusing program for entrepreneurs.

Think about it you enjoy networking and you go to numerous meetings, but you hate the follow up calls, because most of the people you call have either forgotten who you are or do not have time for you right now, well the idea is to get them to want to make time for you. Hence the radically new idea: Stop networking; instead, start trying to be useful to other people

The advice “Be as useful to as many people as you can for one week and see where it leads you!” According to Sullivan, if you can bring confidence and clarity to people in your network by researching their needs and then offering something useful – in the form of product news, information about their customers, contacts, expertise, etc. He believes that not only will they make time on their calendar to talk to you but they will remember you with favour the next time potential job leads cross their desk. The trick is making it useful to your target and not simply a newsletter that looks to have been sent to 200 other executives.

My thinking is that this is still networking, or even in some instances cold calling, but it is simply a fresh approach to the task at hand.

Good Hunting,
Peter B. Giblett