by Wendy S. Enelow, CPRW, JCTC, CCM
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It is extremely difficult to achieve your goals in isolation. Knowing this, successful people constantly surround themselves with other successful and positive people to support the realization of their goals. Your job search is no different. You can either go it alone or benefit from the combined expertise and support of a team working with you to keep you positive and on track, to provide sound advice and honest feedback, and to help you set realistic goals.
Your job search success team should be made up of individuals whose opinions you respect and who are positive, accessible, and straightforward.
To begin, contact five to 10 people who you would like to have on your team to discuss your situation and how you could benefit from their support. If they agree, arrange a mutually convenient time to meet. Possible tasks might include reviewing your resume and cover letter, making networking contacts on your behalf, recommending alternative career options, educating you on new market opportunities, providing feedback and helping you move towards action.
Who Do You Want on Your Success Team?
If you have been fortunate enough to develop a solid relationship with a mentor, this individual should serve as the foundation of your success team. Hopefully, this is someone who has known you well for years and is quite familiar with the depth and scope of your career, performance, knowledge and achievements.
If you've had a particularly positive working relationship with any of your past managers, invite some of them to join your team.
This will generally be a large group of individuals from which you will need to select one to three people. When evaluating whom to approach, consider the time they have available to assist you, other contacts they may have who could potentially be of value in your search campaign and their particular style.
These individuals can be valuable additions to your success team, particularly if they are well connected in the professional communities in which you plan to focus your search campaign. Furthermore, because these individuals often work on a consulting or contractual basis with many clients, they may be aware of opportunities and career options you might never consider.
Vendors tend to know a great deal about what's going on internally at their client companies. Use this information to your advantage by inviting a vendor with whom you have a particularly strong working relationship to join your team and share his or her expertise with you.
Think about whom you and your family know. Do you have personal relationships with key corporate players? These could be individuals with whom you've never associated professionally, but know quite well from social settings. Carefully review this list of people to determine who would be valuable additions to your success team.
Additional Things to Consider
1. Be sure there is a good mix of people on your success team. Your team will be of limited value if everyone comes from the same industry, same profession or same geographic area. You want diversity of ideas and input.
2. It is best to meet individually or in small groups of two to four people. If you assemble everyone at one time, it is often difficult to absorb the valuable information each member has to share with you.
3. Be sure you're the one who pays for meals or other fees during your meetings. Your success team is there to support you and your career efforts, not necessarily your pocket.
4. Surround yourself with smart, caring and giving people. You're then bound for success.
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