Good buddies can provide moral support—and market exposure
Douglas B. Richardson
Ah, the complexity of friendship. As your mind races about in the initial moments after receiving a pink slip, one of the first things you’ll likely think about is your friends. But what a jumble of
conflicting thoughts!
Do I tell them? What do I tell them? What can I expect from them? What should they expect of me? Are they going to be a source of support and help to me, or am I going to be a source of embarrassment to them? Are the rules and relationships changed now that I’m out of work?
Maybe your best buddies are the people you trade jokes with at lunch or the pals you grew up with and defend to the end. No matter what your friendships are like now, they’re likely to change somewhat before your search is through. The stresses of job hunting inevitably will bring some friends closer and make others more distant. In any event, friends and acquaintances can provide enormous direct and indirect help during a job search. To take advantage of the opportunities they can provide, review the following precepts about friends and job hunting:
Precept No. 1: Some friends will disappoint you. As soon as you ask for a little help (isn’t that what friends are for?), some of your pals will head straight for the hills.
When you enter a room, long-time friends may avert their eyes and drop their voices to a whisper. The regular Wednesday lunch with your old chums may lapse into forced bonhomie, awkward silences and ultimate disintegration. Your spouse’s bridge game with other colleagues’ spouses may die a similar death. Some of your oldest, dearest friends will make you feel like a leper, and it’s going to make you mad.
Why will they do this? Once you get past the suspicion that all people are basically rats, try to imagine what they’re thinking:
I’m your friend. I want to help you. I’m supposed to offer my assistance. But what if you ask for help I can’t provide? What if you come and dump a bucket of problems on my desk, ask me to make sense out of your life, save you, find you a job or lend you fifty grand? I can’t deliver all that, and I feel guilty that I can’t serve the friendship the way you want. If I ask, “Is there anything I can do to help?” I’m afraid you’re going to say, “ Yeah, put me, my wife, the kids and the dog up in your guest room until I find work.” Rather than risk feeling guilty or overburdened, it’s easier just to stay away from you.
Of course, in many cases, the friendship isn’t designed to bear the stresses of tough times: It’s just a pleasant, superficial relationship defined primarily in terms of your work identities and status. When that equation is abruptly altered, you’ll quickly learn the difference between friends and acquaintances – to your short-term pain but long-term wisdom.
Precept No. 2: Some folks are going to come through like champs for you. You’ll get such incredible support from unsuspected quarters that you’ll have to bite your lower lip to keep from getting teary-eyed. (I’m not talking about patronizing pseudo-support, either, where a friend brings over a chicken casserole and states that everything will work out fine.) Your steadfast supporters can’t work magic or change the job market, but they can and will marshall resources, give objective advice, make contacts, provide references, use tough-love to pull you out of passivity and self-pity, and generally prove Machiavelli wrong. That is, they will if you don’t screw it up.
Precept No. 3: We’re all adults here, and everyone has to act grown up. If you hide the truth, put an absurdly rosy spin on rough news and deny that you need any help, how can your friends provide
appropriate support? It’s not their job to wrestle you to the floor and force their good offices on you. You may have trouble accepting help even in good times, or feel shamed or embarrassed about losing your job, but it’s unfair to assume that friends will judge you instead of identify with you.
In short, don’t ask for too little help. If you have resources available, be mature enough to use them. However, don’t ask for too much help either. In times of uncertainty and upheaval, even firmly grounded folks may indulge in some form of Rescue Fantasy. Sometimes, job seekers try to avoid accountability for their fate by shifting it to others:
“But Larry, you said if there was a merger, you’d make sure I was taken care of.” “Oh, Lois, I feel so helpless. You’ve got to tell me what to do.” “Fred, you said you’d mention me to some of your friends. It’s been two weeks and I don’t have any interviews yet. What’s the problem? I really need a job.”
“Marlene, I’m so grateful to you for offering to help me with my job search. I’ve set aside all day Saturday for you to go through your Rolodex with me, review and type my resume, call your contacts, do my hair, serve as my psychotherapist and pick up little Brutus at hockey practice.”
You’re most likely to overdepend on friends immediately after a job loss, when you’re feeling overwhelmed and haven’t yet regained equilibrium. Remember that the inevitable question, “Is there anything I can do to help?” is more an expression of concern than an unqualified rescue offer. Respond accordingly:
Jill, you concern is deeply appreciated. Look, at this point, I need to let the dust settle and get my priorities and job-search plan in order. When I’ve got my act together, let me get back to you with some specific thoughts and ideas about how you might help. I think it’s up to me to figure out how to make the most of your kind offer.”
Sometimes, of course, the best help at a time like this comes from small but meaningful events: going to the movies together, companionship on your first trip to the unemployment office, an offer to help practice networking skills. Don’t be afraid to ask for little favors just because they’re little. The universal human urge to help and empower (the driving force of most friendships, it can be argued) is remarkably easy to gratify.
Once you’ve mobilized your job search efforts, friends can be more useful than you might imagine. First and foremost, they can spread the word and keep their eyes and ears open. They can serve as extensions of you, as antennae listening for choice information relevant to your search. No matter how aggressive your own networking efforts, there are limits to how many people you can see. If friends clearly understand what you want and offer, they can geometrically expand your marketing range.
Ah, but there’s the rub:
Precept No. 4: Your friends know you only in the way they know you. Just because Len has bowled with you for 20 years doesn’t mean he knows that you’re an investment banker and not a commercial banker – or even that he understands the difference. It’s your job to make sure each and every one of your friends can describe to someone else succinctly and accurately your level, the roles and functions you can perform and the settings in which you’re qualified to work.
Imagine how a friend will feel if he calls you to announce excitedly, “I think I got a terrific lead! First MergeCorp is looking for a middle market lender and I told them you were a great banker,” and you reply, “Thanks anyway, but that’s not what I do.”
In such a situation, your buddy has every right to be angry: You’ve failed the friendship by not telling him enough about your “product” so he can help you find a buyer. You owe your friends a clear focus, and if you can’t articulate your job search objectives, strengths and background clearly, practice with others until you can.
This “antenna theory” of networking addresses two oft-asked questions: “What’s the point of networking with people who aren’t in my industry?” and “What’s the point of having a networking meeting when I know the person won’t be of immediate help?” The answer is that networking is more effective at generating job-market exposure than in uncovering immediate leads. Even your idiot cousin, the notorious couch potato, can be taught to listen on your behalf. And he’ll feel great if his hot news flash from a convenience store checkout counter leads to an interview, so give him a chance.
In the best of cases, your friends can be more than coaches, cheerleaders or passive receivers of information: they can serve as an objective sounding board for your efforts. If willing, they can be organized into a powerful task force to strategize, brainstorm, debrief and discuss progress with you.
In their book, “In Transition,” (1991, Harper Business), Mary Lindley Burton and Richard A. Wedemeyer discuss creating a board of directors for your job search efforts with you as CEO. This isn’t a role-playing party game, but a serious, continuing collaboration of intelligent, objective souls who will agree to chat with you for 10 minutes a week or attend periodic group breakfast meetings.
The authors caution that many of your candidates will blow you off hurriedly or quietly wonder if you’ve taken up residence in la-la land. But overall, they say, “Those who have tried this approach have been pleasantly surprised at the results. They’ve formed boards of highly qualified people who, if used sparingly and regularly, helped the job seeker’s campaign.”
In such an approach, as in all forms of networking, be intensely considerate of people’s time. You’ve got a lot of time on your hands; they don’t. In networking meetings and even phone calls, keep your eye on the clock and never use more time than you asked for unless it’s offered spontaneously and voluntarily.
Precept No. 5: Friends may make offers of help and then forget to follow through. The road to nowhere, as they say, is paved with good intentions. You must assume that your friends’ desire to help isn’t as ardent as your need to find a job. So a friend may offer to “spread your resume around the podiatrists’ conference” and forget. Another may offer to “call Bill over at MergeMasters” and not deliver.
Some folks may conclude that the best way to serve the friendship is to create the appearance of being helpful. They’ll meet with you, but the meeting will be no more than a patronizing tea-and-sympathy session. The level of discourse will stay abstract: You’ll hear about general trends and industry characteristics, but get precious little information about specific people or specific opportunities. You’ll also get a lot of broad affirmation, such as: “With skills and experience like yours, you won’t have any trouble landing on your feet. The banking industry must be dying for people like you.”
Thus, you’ll sometimes have to lean on your friends to deliver promised bits of help. How do you do that without sounding pushy and ungrateful? First, never ask directly for a job. Don’t even imply that it’s somehow their responsibility to know of specific openings. Keep your networking meetings short and low-key.
To exert prudent pressure on those who have promised help, consider:
Precept No. 6: When you’re going to lean on your friends, ask them how they want to be leaned on. Start by making it clear that you’re going to act, not fade passively away. Then ask your friend what the best next step would be, and say you only want to follow up to spare him or her any unnecessary inconvenience, hardship or embarrassment. For example, when a friend says he’ll “mention you to Marvin Merge,” reply:
“Gee, that’d be great. Look, to spare you the possible embarrassment of my reaching Merge before you’ve gotten through, how about if I check back with you in a couple of days to see where things stand? What’s good for you? Thursday? Friday?
Or when a political friend says he’ll back you for the Mayor’s commission: “Boy, that’d be the most useful thing I could imagine right now. Should I wait a week or so and follow up with the commission directly, or would it be better if I touched base with you first?”
You might call this the “Triple-A Technique”: Ask for Alternatives Accommodatingly. Learn to think in terms of open-ended phrases: “Where do we stand?”, “What’s our best next step?”, “How about if I ...?” or “Does it make any sense for me to ...?
Precept No. 7: It’s essential to let friends know when they’ve helped you. Update friends on the consequences of their actions. Tell them where the leads led and how their ideas panned out. Constant positive feedback will allay their concerns (don’t mention all the dumb ideas that produced zilch). So tell your friend, “You know your suggestion that I talk with Marvin Merge? Well, in his hallway I got introduced to his partner David Divest, and he was very interested in how I sold off Universal Spittoon. We’re going to meet again Friday.”
“No man is an island” applies perfectly to job hunting. Isolate yourself from friends and you not only feel lousy, you risk losing invaluable exposure and information. In a job search, as anywhere else, friends are never more trouble than they’re worth.
This article is reprinted by permission from the National Business Employment Weekly, © 1993, Dow Jones & Co. Inc. All rights reserved. For subscription information, call (800)Job-Hunt. |
