‧It is estimated that only one-third of all vacancies are advertised, so job-hunters not linked into a heavily-laden grapevine could be missing out on many opportunities.
‧If you are looking to change employers, or direction, or make a career move, you need to hit the hidden employment market, where you will find all the jobs that are not advertised, These are the jobs that people hear about in other ways, because someone is leaving, or because something is coming up.
‧Other things being equal, what is going to give you an edge? It is the relationships that you have that allow you to augment what you know, and allow you to take the "what you know" and actually to translate it into practice, into something the organisation can use. Networking makes all the difference.
1. Networking is important without a doubt. But it works differently if the job seeker is a student (as opposed to a professor looking for a different job). The social networks of advisers' are far more meaningful than the job seekers' in this context. Advisers are usually the promoters and marketers of their own doctoral students.
2. For young PhDs or ABDs, the best place to develop and nurture their social networks is academic conferences. If the job seeker is interested in non-academic jobs (industry jobs), then conferences with good academic-industrial mix would be a good place to develop network.
3. Networking is NOT just about exchanging business cards. For example, I would ask my new acquaintance at least a combination of following questions (strictly for illustration purpose):
a.What are your areas of research?
b.It's interesting. How do you test(define, collect data, etc) xxxx?
c. I think one of my projects are in line with what you are doing. It is about xxxxx
4. Research and your profession is a good starter for conversation. But generally you need something more to turn "we met in xxxx conference" to "he/she is my friend". Expand the boundaries of conversations to anything (sports, pets, families, travel, the miserable life of a doctoral student, etc.) within the comfort zone.
These are just random thoughts from my personal experiences. I received some interview invitations through my adviser's network and some just out of blue. The job I finally took sort of found me from an online database. However, friends I met and made in conferences and other academic gatherings have become the most valuable resource of mine over the years.
Posted by El Keridge
at April 2,2009 04:39
El Keridge的建議非常實在而且實用，特別是第3點與第4點，強力推薦有志於學術工作的年輕朋友可以好好看一看。
