Here’s the interesting thing about networking for a job search. The relationships that you develop during this time may or may not lead to you finding “the job.” But, if you continue those relationships they may turn out to be critical business contacts, friends, support, mentors, etc. Perhaps you will be able to help them over the years. You never know where its headed.

I think when you are unemployed, or in a serious job search, is a great time to develop new relationships. But the time to end or drop those relationships is — well — never!

That’s one reason why I think (total biased opinion coming here) you need to use something like JibberJobber FOREVER. Track the relationships – the strength of each relationship, log significant events, put their photos and birthdays in your database, etc. And keep in touch, reach out, offer to help, ask for help and advice, etc.

Jobs won’t last, but some key relationships can and should, right?

Having said all of this, I agree with your comment… there is a nice quality vs. quantity debate on a yahoo group for LinkedIn that I’ve bene following, and there are people passionate about different stances.

I loved this post – metrics are one of my favorite topics, and I’m a *total* Excel geek… everything in my world needs a spreadsheet with a pretty graph.

Except this.

The thing about the process of finding a job that you truly love is that it’s non-linear. The thing about that non-linearity is that it’s often less about “how many” contacts you make than about whether you make the “right” contacts. And, while many people suggest that you need to make more contacts in order to make the right ones, I don’t believe that.

The important question to ask is a simple one: who could I meet today in order to move my process along? And then, who in my current network would know them? Or, who would know someone who knows them?

In my experience, it’s more about following the path than it is about indescriminently meeting scads of people.

Networking is a lot like dating, in my experience – the benefit of selectivity in who you want to date up front keeps you from having a lot of bad dates (or sleeping around a lot .

-Mike

I love the idea of using metrics to determine the success of your job search / networking efforts.
There is one metric that I think you could add; how many consulting or “internship” project did you land through your networking? Most adults do not think about internships as a way to find a job since they are not in college anymore. However, forget about the name and focus on the work. An internship is a short term project with a company in your field of expertise. If you are job searching for a job I cannot think of a better way to find a job then to do some free or paid work for a company you want to work for. As an adult you will not be able to call it an internship but contract work or consulting work is acceptable. In the age of a leaner workforce consultants are used to get projects done more than they ever have been.

justin driscoll
http://www.justindriscoll.net

1. Have metrics that are not misleading,
2. Have goals that stretch you.

When I was job searching right after I got laid off I was putting about 60 hours a week into my job search. So perhaps the 50/10 is achievable… but even if it isn’t you are making dang good progress. But you are right, don’t have a number just to have a number. If it isn’t working, or is discouraging when you consistently don’t hit it, then change it.

Hey, metrics are good. Accountability is good. But goals have to be achievable, otherwise your reporting system gets “played.” I have been in work situations where the accountability was tied to continued employment. We were told that our ‘goal’ was a product mix of 20% or better. Guess what, EVERYONE achieved the numbers… but the product never achieved any success and had to be discontinued. TWo guesses why….

The old adage that you only achieve to the level at which you set your goals is pretty true. Also that you should ‘inspect’ what you ‘expect’… but if your expectations are too high and the consequences for overly aggressive goals too severe, then expect your numbers to be absolutely worthless.

This financial sustainability is going a little off-topic for my blog, but it is fun conversation! Perhaps I should have said “a goal/target of financial sustainability.” I’ve seen too many people focus on their alexa traffic – even though it has been noted time and again that the data/report is not accurate. Or the fact they have a Google page rank of 5 or whatever, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have visitors, users, etc.! My main point on these metrics is that just because they may be popular doesn’t mean that you should use them as your principle metrics, and definitely question the data/results. Translate that to job search or networking ==> if Jason Alba says that you should have 50 network contacts a week – maybe that is bunk for you. But some folks will include an e-mail, a phone call, a voice mail, etc. as a contact. Is that appropriate? I think so… but others might choose to include/exclude some of these listed.

Not saying that they don’t seem like the valuable metrics, as I think they do.

Also, not sure that “the real metric should have been tied back to financial sustainability” is realistic given the startup nature of your (or my) web business. I’m of the opinion that building traffic and THEN monetizing is a viable way to make money from the web. Also, there is the underlying business plan to which one should be comparing his or her result.