Are you really staying in touch?

STAY IN TOUCH, we say after a meeting with friends or former colleagues. The amazing thing is, we don’t, no matter how often we utter the phrase!

The folks at LinkedIn who are experts in the art of staying in touch (or networking) carried out a global survey early this year, and found that professionals, managers and executives don’t match their words to their behaviour.

This PME group of workers are the most vulnerable to job termination in the present economic downtrend. And when they lost their job, they usually have great difficulty looking for a similar job because they seldom stay in touch. They didn’t know, until too late, that a Career Network is absolutely essential in finding another suitable job!

The LinkedIn survey found that 38 percent of respondents find it hard to stay in touch, and nearly half say they don’t because they don’t have enough time. And yet the majority (79 percent) agree that networking at the professional level, known as career networking, is valuable.

Developing your own Career Network

In the happy hunting field where jobs might be found, you have four ways to hunt down your quarry:

(a) the mass communication approach where you shoot out as many e-mail job applications as you possible could in answer to job postings;

(b) the one-on-one chat approach where you talk to people you know (e.g., friends working in related jobs, former classmates and professors in your university days) and mention casually that you are “open to new career opportunities”.

(c) the socialising approach where you attend career talks, job fairs, alumni gatherings and other related social events,

(d) the online approach where you sign up onto a professional network and interact regularly with other members in the same network.

Even when you’re cruising half-awake in a well-paying job and where you think all your bosses and colleagues are happy with your work, you still need to organise and maintain a broad, active Career Network.

The reason is simple: the world is flat and whatever happens in Chicago or Chongqing could impact you suddenly while you are comfortably ensconced in Changi Business Park. This happened to Rin who used to be an IT support executive for an American company selling business software programs. The company was bought out by its competitor in Chicago, and the new owner wanted all existing products that were written in the old proprietary code to be converted to SAP, a popular enterprise-level language used in many business processes.

“I was told by my manager that if I wanted to continue working in the company, I need to code in SAP which I have no knowledge of,” says Rin, in her mid-50s. “If I enrol in SAP courses, the company is not paying my fees. Each module costs over $4,000 and I have to master at least four modules. Since I don’t have the cash for the course, I was asked to submit my resignation!”

Rin has no marketable skill other than coding in her former employer’s proprietary software which is now useless in a fast-changing IT industry. She has no personal Career Network on standby and knows few people in the computer profession. At the Lifelong Learning Institute where she went for job counselling sessions, she was offered a position to look after a care centre for young latch-key school kids. The job pays less than one-third her former salary and requires little skill or knowledge.

No, you don’t want to be in Rin’s shoes – a highly-trained professional with a comfortable job for many years who then suddenly found that her specialised knowledge was unwanted! “And to think that my Master's in IT and Management which I acquired years ago from the University of Wollongong is irrelevant today!” she cries.

If you have not done so, devote some time and effort now to build up and keep active your Career Network while you’re still gainfully employed. Such a network involves using personal, social, professional or industry contacts to keep in touch, to keep abreast of who’s who and of developments in your field, or to learn about another field that you would like to work in (known as a Second Career Strategy).

Even if you think you don’t need a new job now, having a Career Network can still be beneficial. When you maintain it actively, you never know what new job prospects would unexpectedly come your way. Luck is no more than being prepared for serendipity.

Note: The LinkedIn online survey was conducted from February 6 to March 18, 2017 among 15,905 LinkedIn members across 17 countries.