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Your Net Worth is in Direct Correlation to Your Network

Now that you have your personal brand in shape, your new resume and LinkedIn profile updated, you are now ready to make a move and start firing up conversations with employers and recruiters.

Here is the transcription of this video training:

Hi there, Bonnie Power here, and today we are going to be talking about your network of people.
Now this is the last video in the Career Success video series. If you haven’t watched the previous 4 videos, then please go back and watch those just to give you a really good overview.
This is the final piece of the puzzle to really accelerate your career so that you are more satisfied and you are more successful. So Key number for to having a successful and satisfying career is building a strong network of people.
And there is a saying that is well known, it goes something like this: Your net worth is in direct correlation to your network. What that means is that the money that you bring in as an income, is correlated to the people who you know, the people who you hang out with, so if you’re hanging out with people who are very advanced in their thinking, who do their best, who constantly challenge themselves, then it’s likely that they are earning a lot of money because they are bringing more value to the world.
And if you’re hanging out with these people and doing similar things, then your net worth is going to be higher or in the same category as them. So it’s something to consider.
So at this stage we‘ve got your personal brand in shape from earlier videos.
You’ve got the new resume and your LinkedIn is all done and updated. Now you’re ready to really start firing up conversations with the right people. And this could include with employers, and with new recruiters and new search consultants. But before we do that we’re just going to have a look and see what we’ve already got, everything on our network. And this is something that a lot of people forget to do, but it’s definitely worth doing.
So I want you to think about your current network of people. This is your current colleagues and your past colleagues as well so if you were to write down, start writing down the list of people.
You can put me on pause at anytime because it is majorly important, is to start actually doing stuff with these videos, so write down, and I would even say go for 100 people. So you want to write down people, and this is the criteria: you don’t want to just write down everyone that you’ve worked with or every manager that you had or every client. You want to work with people who you know, like and trust, and who may be in a position to help you move forward in your career. So people who are inspirational to you, or people who are just positive or people who went the extra mile or people who you know who you believe they can help you move forward somehow. You might not even know how they can move you forward; just write their names down anyway.
So there’ll be colleagues, there’ll be maybe past managers or there might even be current managers that know of your situation, they know you are not happy, maybe you’ve already have a conversation with your direct report and you’ve told them for ages that you’re not happy but they’ve just refused to do anything about it. But they will totally understand if you go, sort of thing, so they might actually be in a position to help you, you never know.
Think about the clients that you‘ve got, past and current, and think about other stake holders who you know. Think about mentors that you’ve have had in the past, and current mentors you have at the moment. And think about people like your suppliers as well. Like people within your network, people who you work with on a day to day basis, week to week, month to month basis. And these people again are people who you know, like and trust, and believe that for some reason, you’re not even maybe sure, they might be able to help you move forward in your career.
And then think about the non obvious people, and these could be people who you know through you know, if you‘ve got kids, through your son or your daughter’s school like maybe their friends have got their parents who are in different industries, and you might meet up with them in a sporting event or at the school and that might be the perfect time that you start to get to know them a little bit more and just sort of see where the conversation goes, and you never know.
You know, you never know unless you start having conversations with people. Think about the people who are you know at your sporting clubs, any other extracurricular activities that you do. Start to take the blinkers off and look at everybody as a potential person who could help you.

So this is particularly with your work crew or your old work crew, or ex supplier etc. You want to get them to recommend you on LinkedIn. If you can get 3 or 4 recommendations for every job that you’ve had in the last 3 – 10 years, then your LinkedIn profile is going to look so good. It’s just going to be outstanding.
Can you imagine being an employer, you’re looking at all these resumes, and you’re looking at their LinkedIn profiles and they see your LinkedIn profile and you’ve got like a gorgeous awesome photo then you’ve got a professional summary and then they are looking down at the employment section, and they can see that you know, 10 people have recommended you.
It’s just you know, bit by bit you’re building this case that you are definitely someone who needs to be interviewed. The other thing, after you’ve ask them you know, well like you can ask them for LinkedIn recommendations over coffee, but at some stage you want to start giving, having you know, those belly to belly conversations as I’ve heard that sort of said.
If you can catch up for a coffee or after work drink and just have a conversation, and not even, you don’t even have to be specific at the start about what you’re wanting to do or what your agenda is but you just, you never know unless you just start meeting up with people and let them the know the general direction and start fishing around to see what might happen.
Put yourself in those situations a little bit more. The other thing you also want to do is to find out industry insider news, especially on the hidden job opportunities. Because I don’t know if you know this, but 80% of jobs are never advertised on seek.com – they’re not anywhere, they’re not advertised because they don’t need to be. Because most employers would love to fill those roles without all the hassle so they’ll put the word out through their current staff that they’re looking for a new account manager, or they’re looking for a new general manager or they’re looking for a new executive, or you know board appointment or you know, anything. So the hidden job market is alive, well and kicking and you have got to tap into it so that you can be aware of opportunities that are actually getting filled this week and next week. It’s all happening.

Okay so another thing that you can do to really start expanding your network, so you’ve written down your current network, now I want you to start looking, especially if you if you’ve got a long term career goals. Like if you’re wanting to go places in your career, you want to start building relationships with people who you will know in 5 to 10 years time. So you’ve got to start thinking bigger, thinking more strategically, longer-term, and so expanding your network by attending or even running events or workshops is one thing that you can do. Not only will you become more educated and up-to-date, within your industry, but you’ll also be sitting next to people who you just never know.

You know like there’s a room full of people who are all working in different organizations and it’s just amazing how powerful your network becomes when you start meeting people in these types of events and workshops. And if you’re a coach or consultant then you can start running events and workshops to help your prospective customers or clients by giving them you know, great valuable information in this type of environment.

So the next point is, when you’re networking, you become like a valuable contact by sharing your knowledge and expertise which is great for them, but this will present you for future opportunities so sort of like what comes around goes around. So when you’re going to these networking events you’re obviously not sort of desperately asking people for jobs or for new business, but you’re adding value, you’re participating in conversations, but really the underlying foundation is that you’re showing your expertise. You’re showing that you’re well informed, you’re clearly showing that you’re well presented, you’re well liked, you’re well known, you’re building your personal brand which will lead to future opportunities.

Now the next little tactic that I would say to do, especially if you’re looking for a contract or you know an employer or employee type role, is to find out which agencies are really hot to trot at the moment within your industry. So if you go to Seek for example and use the classification drop down menu and have a look and probably you want to look at 2 or 3 classifications because sometimes there’s different jobs.

Like there’s great jobs in different categories that you are actually qualified to do. So have a look around, and then start looking at the agency or the firm, you know the consulting search firm, that’s advertising for candidates and start making another list of the top recruiters who are advertising within your area. And what you’ll find is that there’ll be 5 or 6 really really busy recruiters like they’re just, they’ve got work on, they’ve got momentum going. Find out the actual recruiter who’s actually advertising for that particular role if you can, and send them your resume and let them know, say, “I’ve just noticed that you’ve got 3 really great positions available, you know.” I’m not sure, well maybe they’re not exactly right for you, but just say, “I’m interested in talking to you about similar roles if you could contact me at your earliest convenience. Here’s my phone number.”

Put your LinkedIn profile in there and then they will contact you. So, and recruiters will definitely not mind because you are a commodity to them. Like they deal in people so you know, perhaps you’ll be worth 20, $30,000 if they were to place you into a role. So it’s not like they’re going to say, “oh no, you know only apply for roles, only apply to me if you want to apply for a specific role.” If you’re really good, if you’ve got a great resume, you’ve got a good LinkedIn profile they will be crazy to not actually receive your resume. Because you know, you’re going to be going to another recruiter and showing them your resume and you are, you know you’re worth something to those recruiters so.

It’s just like you’ve gotta pay the game. In the other way you’ll notice when you’re on Seek, you’ll notice that you’ll see the top organizations that are recruiting, like a lot of the banks these days, a lot of the charities, and a lot of the big companies are just going direct. They don’t even use recruiters anymore because they don’t need to, because they’ve got LinkedIn and they’ve got Seek, and they just hire an in-house recruiter and then they save the $20-$30,000. So find out the big companies who are advertising within your industry niche and send a letter to, an email to the HR Manager or to the Manager who’s in charge of that department and say, “this is my resume. I’m really interested to work for an organization like yours, ” and let them know why, because of you know their reputation etc.”

Please feel free to contact me, you know, if you, I’d be really interested to speak to you for 15 minutes about future opportunities if that’s okay.” So you start really expanding your network with the right recruiters and the right employers who are in a position to be able to talk to you about roles that you’d be interested in.

So your assignment for this video is to consolidate a list of the people that you already know within your network, and then contact the top 5 recruiters and ask them to view your resume and consider what types of roles your may be eligible for because a lot of the roles don’t get advertised on Seek as well. And then the last point is to contact the top 10 companies that you would like to work for and let them know that you’ve got an interest in working for them by sending an email or connecting with them on LinkedIn or meeting them at an industry event. How you do it is up to you but just do it. So I hope that’s helped. If you have any questions feel free to get in contact. It’s been an absolute pleasure sharing these strategies with you. That does conclude this video series. I’d like to know your feedback if there’s any way you can you know, get in contact through our contact page or by leaving a note if there’s a comment section available. If you’ve got any questions definitely, definitely open to helping you answer them. Bye for now.

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