Networking

"Helping yourself and helping others is not mutually exclusive :). Success in life comes as we do something that is counter-intuitive to our nature. It is natural to take care of yourself, think of yourself and focus on your needs. Little children only think of themselves and how they can get what they want. As they grow older, they learn they are not the center of the universe and have to get along with others.

The amazing thing is that the way to get what we want is to do the exact opposite of what comes naturally. It is natural to think of yourself. Hey, after all we all live in our own heads and see the world from our own perspective.

The delightful paradox of life is that we gain more by giving to others more. Zig Ziglar said, 'You can get anything you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.' The Zig man was right on target with that!"

http://www.bizjournals.com/extraedge/consultants/succeeding_today/2008/02/04/column503.html

This article on social networking has some interesting information for job seekers:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/social-networks


Specifically:
Social networks were first researched in the late 1940s. With the advent of the Internet, online communities and social networking websites, their significance has only increased. Any review hoping to be meaningful must begin with the normative contributions of the sociologist Mark Granovetter and the mathematician Linton C. Freeman who both wrote influential articles well before the Internet was popularized.

Granovetter (1973) argued that within a social network, weak ties are more powerful than strong ties. He explained that this was because information was far more likely to be “diffused” through weaker ties. He concluded that weak ties are “indispensable to individuals’ opportunities and to their incorporation into communities while strong ties breed local cohesion.”

Granovetter’s doctoral thesis demonstrated that most people landed jobs thanks to their weak ties and not their strong ones. It was the people that they did not know well, the ones with whom they did not have shared histories and did not see on a regular basis who were of most help. This is because people with strong ties generally share the same pieces of information and resources. Therefore they are of less help to one another.

If don't believe one piece of information or one contact can matter, then please take a look at this social networking diagram:


The Value of Networking


75 to 80% of all job seekers find a job through people they know