Networking at a Distance: Find a job in Washington, DC

Dear Dr. Friedman: I am a mid-career professional who would like to relocate from a medium size town to a major city. My question is: how does one conduct an effective job search at a great distance? I have been in my field for the past fifteen years and I have been quite successful in obtaining positions. While I do have solid skills, I attribute much of my professional success to my ability to network. I am genuinely perplexed as to how to network at a distance. What would you suggest? City Slicker

Finding a job out of town

Dear City: You raise an important and, I think, difficult question. Friends and colleagues, who read this column, will find it particularly ironic that you pose it to me, as I have struggled with this question myself. Because I do not have a fully adequate answer to the question, I am going to do two things. First, I will provide you with some preliminary thoughts and suggestions. Second, I am inviting the readership to send me any suggestions that they might have. Specifically, I would be interested in knowing the following things: 1) Has anyone come across any helpful readings on the topic? My search of Amazon.com came up empty. 2) Has anyone conducted a successful distance job search which was targeted toward a specific city? 3) Does anyone have any helpful suggestions? I promise to publish any suggestions that I feel will be helpful to you. Some months ago, I posed this question to Jack Chapman, an established career counselor and author of How to make a $1000.00 a minute. He suggested that I review Richard Germann's 1985 book, Job and Career Building, in it Germann has a chapter on precisely this topic. Although not easy to obtain (I could not get it through Amazon.com and I had to special order it from Barnes and Noble) and a bit dated (it was written before the internet took off), I found it very interesting and helpful. I recommend it to you. Now for my thoughts on the matter. I am assuming that you would like employment, not self-employment, though the latter topic warrants a column of its own. If you would like a full-time job, I suggest that you obtain a list of places of work in your field in the city of your choice. For example, if you work in the corporate world, you may want to obtain a listing of the Fortune 1000 companies in the area. Or, if you are in health care, you may want to obtain a list of the hospitals in the area, etc. Now, you want to do a variant of the strategy that I recommend to graduating psychology majors who are looking for a research job. I tell them to do the following: Obtain a listing of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) funded grants. Review funded grants in their city of choice. Generate a listing of grants that are of interest to you. Read articles written by the principal investigator. Write a letter to the investigator. Express interest in their research, an intense desire to relocate to the area and request a meeting. Enclose a carefully crafted resume or vita. My experience has been that most investigators will schedule such a meeting. However, when the meeting is denied, the student is encouraged to follow the letter with a phone call. The student might say, I'd appreciate a little bit of your time, I realize that you may not have any positions yourself. However, I would appreciate the opportunity to talk with you, to learn more about your research and to let you get to know a little bit about me, so that if you might be able to refer me to a colleague or if your situation would change, you would have some familiarity with me and my skills. Richard Germann has some interesting variations on these ideas; his position is that you should never ask for a job, just a consultation. I think that his position may have some merit to it. You are not a student, and you are not seeking a research position. However, I would think that many of the elements of this strategy might apply. The key here is that you must identify the gatekeeper within the potential place of work and establish, through your letter, a common ground. As a professional person, one way to do this is to join professional organizations in the city to which you hope to move, and attend their meetings. I realize that this is much easier if you are within a few hours than if you are on another continent. But, even if you must journey at a great distance, it may be worthwhile to attempt to attend local conferences. At the very least you may want to network with the organization's leaders. Good luck. Please let me know how it turns out. And, readers, please fill me in on any ideas that you think might be helpful to City Slicker. Dr. Friedman

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