In Day 1, I introduced myself and my situation. In Day 2, I covered some of the mental turmoil that accompanies leaving a job, as well as my rough job search project plan and my targeted industries. Today I want to note some great networking opportunities I’ve found, how networking landed my first interviews and the results of those interviews. I also want to share a tip about resumes that I learned early in my career that has proved so beneficial that I have been sharing it with everyone in and out of my sphere of influence.

I am still a novice at networking, but one thing I have done through the years is kept almost every business card and a hard copy of every team phone list I’ve ever received. A few months ago I also started using LinkedIn, a professional networking system and have slowly been adding contacts. There are other professional networking systems out there – alumni, corporate, communities, and more. Some people use several, but I’ve heard that most people tend to keep to one primary system for simplicity. Also, I personally do not use any of the social networking systems, such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube since they do not have the features, security and to be honest, the professional appearance that I want for my professional business needs.

Here’s a quick survey for you:

● What networking systems do you use?

● Do you use more than one?

● About how much time do you spend per month maintaining your network?

Please share your answers by posting a Comment.

I have learned that the care and feeding of your network is on-going. If you don't maintain it, its value is near zero when you actually need it. For example, if someone habitually only calls you when they need something, like say, when they’re moving furniture, then you’re less likely to look forward to their next call. However, if that same person called you every three to six months just to say hi, pass on a great article, or even helped you land a new client, then you are far more interested in talking to them, and of course helping them. I personally let all my networking contacts know that I will honestly try to help them if they ever need me – and then I follow up on that promise with action. For example, with recruiters’ calls, I usually e-mail a reply back to the recruiter, and blind copy my potentially interested network friends so they can decide if and how they want to respond.

I’ve previously noted that I have already created resume accounts in several executive career sites, as well as in Military.com, MilitaryHire.com, OperationHeroForHire.com and several of the largest military contractors’ direct hire websites. I like MilitaryHire.com's site because it shows you what firms actually looked at your resume, including links back to their job listings. And, Military.com has a great networking resource I discovered just last week designed specifically for military veterans called the Veteran Career Network. Another great site I've found for information on and vacancies in all our federal intelligence organizations is Intelligence.gov.

Between all my networking systems -- including good ol’-fashioned phone calls, mail, e-mail and live meetings -- I have contacted over 175 people in the past 3 weeks, and I still have many more than that to go. That effort has paid off: two of my contacts panned out almost immediately.

The first was

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