Dashing Through The Networking Event…

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Gotta let you know, my heart is at home during the holidays and networking events, which do not center around my family, pale in my list of interests. However, I become aware while drinking my cup of hot chocolate and feeling cuddly after hanging the garland of old Christmas cards that ’tis the season to be searching–for relationships that may lead to a new career or new clients. Allow me to pass on a few ideas that seem to pop up in the advice I have been hearing and reading about surviving the networking fa-la-la-la-la.

Be visible during the holidays

Schedule holiday parties wisely, but  never cross them off the list simply because someone there might ask that dreaded employment status question. It seems that the closer the party-goers are in blood relationship the more unfeeling and embarrassing the questions will be. In a darkly humorous way, it is a good place to introduce or perfect the elevator speech and the “introduction” (how you introduce yourself to potential contacts).

Holiday events are often crowded, noisy places encouraging excess in eating and drinking. For the introverted souls like yours truly, I have found that taking a few visits to the restroom or outside in the dark, winter air provides a “cool down” spot when needed. I also have found that taking the smallest amount of food possible and limiting alcoholic drinks works to keep the head clear. Few negative experiences beat being barraged with stories by an inebriated social bully who insists on talking with a mouthful of crackers with ranch dip.

I keep uppermost in mind that holiday season networking events are parties in name only. Beneath the glam and glitter they are a species of business meeting. Basic rules for business meetings apply. The company holiday celebration (if applicable or if an invited guest) is in spirit a social event–a party–but it is also a prime opportunity to network when done correctly and good networking behavior applies.

Prepare. Prepare. Prepare.

Among the things in the purse I take to a holiday party at a corporation or a holiday networking event there will be a couple of working pens, a pad,  and networking/business cards.

Listen

Through careful, active listening and taking notes during bathroom breaks, much valuable information can be gained and many valuable relationships can be made.

The haul at the end of a holiday networking party could pay off big-time in the spring.

Related articles

• Christmas Countdown Week One:The list (victoree.wordpress.com)
• Networking with LinkedIn….Now even better with their all new LinkedIn Events (paulmbacon.me)

The “Doughnut Hole” Elevator Speech

I’ve walked around backstage in my life in a fog for a week mulling over “the elevator speech”. Don’t count me among the fans of that term. I prefer, “30 second spot/commercial” (advertising was going to be my little specialty back in journalism school). Yes, I like watching commercials.

One of my job clubs suggested I chain saw a major limb of job experience off my resume because it was dead: 5 years of failed jobs. Timber!  There went the “I’m experienced in” part of my elevator speech.

The problem is that I’ve racked up years of experience in careers/jobs where I have either failed miserably or  just don’t want to do anymore. Were you at Sally and Ray Strackbein’s seminar,“Strategic Bragging” , held in Reston, VA last week, the first lesson you would have learned is, “stop talking about what you don’t want” except to your confessor or your therapist.  Sally made us raise our hands and swear it! Strackbein is dead-on about the mechanics of the law of attraction. She tells people, “Talk about what you want and you’ll get it”.

Up to last life-changing week, I had talked about what I did not want in an elevator pitch and it turned out looking like this:

Hi, I’m Victoree. I’ve got over 10-plus years of experience in…

• (job type I am no longer physically fit to do)
• (profession where I got marvelous grades in school for theory, but was a terrible practitioner after)
• (job type that bored me to hair-fallout but did for an unacceptably low wage an inordinately long time to buy food and pay rent)

…I can apply my skill to write proposals for your company (but I haven’t got the specific knowledge or the 3-5 years of experience doing it yet, so I’ can’t prove I would be successful).

You like?

Well, neither contacts nor recruiters do either. I call it the “doughnut”–the elevator pitch with the hole in the middle. It’s an unsettling stage in a career  transition between “used to be” and “will be in the future” people stumble into (There be monsters: thunder and lightning, tear sodden pillows and dead bottles of Jack Daniels). It’s like being thirteen. People in both my network clubs said, “Get back to us when you know what you want to do”.

Now, on the internet and elsewhere tons of advice exist for people who already know what they want to do. Job clubs assume you already know.  That is the starting point where they help. There is no advice for people who don’t know except to read books, take tests and find career coaching. However, after you finish the books, interpret the tests and complete the coaching, you get down to brass tacks: the choice is yours alone. Responsibility for the decision you make in the time of the “doughnut hole elevator speech” is yours alone.  Nobody except you can tell you what you ought to do for a life. Nobody except you can tell you what your correct work is. Can you make a wrong decision and mess it up? Yes, you can, but you must push through failure to the success on the other side.

This is the heart breaking moment that seems to last forever; that keeps some immobile for a long, silent, painfully lonely time. It feels like being snowed in–like in the blizzard of 2010.  Unpredictable like the blizzard, this  period can last for a few hours, a few days, or a few years.

• People around you will wonder about your sanity.
• You will question your own sanity.
• Only they who have gone through it will understand it.

The time of the doughnut hole elevator speech  is a time of intense personal battle in the soul. As for me, the long snow is over in my career. It feels like it’s the Feast of St. Brighid or Imbolc, Celtic spring.  I’m “indoor sowing” the delicate seeds of my new career now. I’m also doing some hard pruning and dead wood clearing including the 5 years of bad job events on my resume and my hole-in-the-middle elevator speech. Talking about the process of creating a new resume and a new elevator speech that embraces Owning Up To My True Self  is another day’s work.

Finally, to everyone still in the winter of the job search: this special season will not last forever. Spring comes. Prepare.