While it’s been overstated that networking is the key to finding a gig in this environment, not enough has been said about how to manage your existing contacts and friends to help your search.

It’s critical that you educate and manage your networks within companies.  Every contact, with whom you have a close relationship, should be aware not only of the type of positions within firms that interest you, but also how he or she may best of use to you.  Oftentimes, one of your contacts may say, “Well, I don’t know anybody in Strategic Planning (or insert any department of your choice here) at Pepsi.”  Your response to this should not be one of defeat, yet one of further probing and exploration.  You should follow up to this comment with, “Well who exactly do you know and in what department?”  Then educate the person as to why that other department may still be useful to you.  Explain to your contact that his or her contact may have exposure to folks in the Strategic Planning department.  Moreover, don’t rely on your contact to go and have a conversation and probe his or her contact for you.

For example, if you friend knows someone in the Finance department who works with the Strategic Planning team, don’t have your friend talk to his finance contact asking for contacts into Strategic Planning for you.  Get your friend to set up a conversation between you and the finance contact, after which you can plug the finance contact for referrals into Strategic Planning.   This way you have also developed a more close relationship with the Finance contact, have more closely controlled how you are positioned, and can better navigate through Pepsi as opposed to being a few degrees away from your target group.

In conjunction with managing your networks, it’s absolutely critical that you educate them as well.  They should be keenly aware of your elevator pitch and should be able to succinctly deliver it to another person for you in an introductory email or conversation.  If your contact doesn’t understand how you want to be positioned, or worse off, positions you incorrectly, he or she has proved to be detrimental as opposed to beneficial.

This is exactly what happened to me with my foray into New Balance nearly a decade ago.  My friend Steve, is an ecommerce software developer at New Balance and has had some periphery encounters with people in various Strategic Marketing and Business Development Groups at the company.  When I told him I was interested in a Business Development type role, he said he knew some folks and could certainly talk to them for me.  While this was positive, the mistake I made was not educating and managing Steve as he presented my background.  He said to his contacts, “This is my friend Puneet who’s very good at market research.”

I was very unhappy when I learned that Steve said that.  Immediately his contacts thought that I was simply a research professional without any ability to strike partnerships or any other strategic capabilities.  Moreover, even if they got my resume, in their minds they have the strong perception that I’m a market research person since they received that message from Steve, despite my resume demonstrating that I had other valuable skills.  Naturally, I did not get called in for an interview.  First impressions are critical and this was one first impression that I could not change.  Had I managed Steve better, and educated him on my elevator pitch, or better yet provided him one, I would have had a better shot at coming into the company.