The Networking Game

Jenny Konopasek applied for about 80 jobs during both her senior year at Boston University and in the summer after graduation, but she only received a few cold calls in return.

So how did she land her job as an advertising sales coordinator at Variety magazine?

She networked through the BU alumni network.

A friend of a friend of a friend, worked at Variety, and when she heard that the 2004 College of Communication graduate was searching for a job, she contacted her for an interview.

While Konopasek “did all the standard stuff” in her job search, such as posting her résumé online, she said she found her job at Variety through contacting people beyond her immediate circle of friends who would keep her in mind for job openings.

“It’s definitely about connecting with people that you know that are already out there in the professional world,” she explained.

Konopasek’s experience is far from unique. Other BU alumni and career service professionals agree that networking is an essential part of the post-graduation job search.

From the Net to the Work?

Richard Lager, director of the BU Office of Career Services, said networking is the most important aspect of searching for a job because it allows for personal, rather than electronic, interaction.

“Networking is just critical to the whole process, because job searching is a very human process,” Lager said.

But many students and recent graduates fail to grasp the significance of networking in a competitive job market, Lager added.

“I think too many [graduates] do not network enough,” he said. “They think that by posting a résumé electronically they’re networking, but they’re not. Networking goes way beyond the internet. Networking is people talking to people.”

The primary method of networking among BU alumni includes attending events sponsored by the university and its alumni clubs, according to BU Executive Director of Alumni Relations Meg Umlas.

“We know that networking is extremely important in today’s job market,” Umlas said in an email. “We hear this often from our recent graduates. The Office of Alumni Relations as well as the various school and college alumni offices across campus endeavor to program accordingly.”

In addition, Alumni Relations maintains the Career Advisory Network, an online database of BU graduates who have volunteered to help students and fellow alumni looking for jobs or advice, Umlas said. More than 3,000 advisors are available through the CAN, and more than 30,000 searches were conducted on the CAN last year, she noted.

Lager said Career Services also offers job fairs and programs that bring alumni back to campus to help students network, but emphasized that successful job-hunters are the energetic kind.

“Luck has less to do with this than strong effort,” he said. “What determines whether people get jobs is how well they strategize and job hunt. Those opportunities will go to the people who are the best job hunters.”

So Many Loyal Alums

Individual colleges, such as the College of Communication and the College of Engineering, also offer career centers oriented towards their students’ more specific career goals.

Dana Leavy, COM ’04, described how some of her friends at other universities could only take advantage of one career office, while at BU, students’ needs are addressed more specifically.

“[Individual colleges] are more firmly tied to the students in their field,” she said, noting that the networking opportunities in COM are especially numerous because many of the professors have spent time in their respective industries and are fine networking contacts.

Leavy said she met a photographer in her freshman year at BU, and by her junior year, the photographer had helped her get an internship at a modeling agency, which turned into her first full-time job after graduation.

“It was just kind of a strange series of events that I didn’t plan for … that ended up turning out really well for me,” she said.

Marie Geary, associate director of Career Services at Boston College, said BC has a program similar to the CAN in its Career Network Database, which she estimated includes 7,000 to 9,000 alumni.

Like Lager, Geary said networking is an essential tool that students are often reluctant to take advantage of because they want to avoid the extra work.

“Networking is absolutely indispensable,” Geary said, citing in a recent study, 85 to 88 percent of students end up networking as part of their job search processes. “We encourage it as strongly as we can.”

Geary said there are an especially large number of networking opportunities at BC because BC alumni are “extraordinarily loyal,” which encourages alumni to help each other in their job search processes.

“A loyal alumni group is a big part of having a good, active network,” Geary said. “The more the university encourages loyal alumni, the better the network.”

Cath Amory, a career counselor specializing in alumni relations at Northeastern University, said Northeastern also offers an alumni directory in addition to an array of advising and self-assessment services.

“There’s a definite commitment here of staff time and energy to the alumni population,” Amory said, estimating that 90 percent of Northeastern alumni are “very satisfied” with the career services they receive from the university.

“We feel as though it’s a really critical factor in the life of alumni to be able to come back to their school to get career services,” Amory said. “We think it’s a great way for the university to stay around and useful to their graduates and to engage people past fundraising.”

Beyond local universities, career service professionals stress that networking is critical in tackling today’s job market.

Matthew Weeman, a career counselor at The Work Place, a career services center in Boston, said job searching in the Internet age only makes networking more important in finding the right job.

“The more that the job search becomes involved with technology and online, it really takes that personal touch out of it,” Weeman said. “There’s such a risk in hiring. That’s why networking has become popular.”

But at the same time, networking among today’s college graduates goes beyond one’s circle of family and friends to include organized networking groups, such as the online networking communities at craigslist.com, Weeman added.

“It’s kind of everyone’s goal, but it’s very difficult to network on your own,” he said.

While the job market may seem tight at first, Weeman said it is not very difficult for people to find their first jobs after graduation.

“There’s jobs everywhere, and a lot of jobs aren’t advertised. You kind of need to create them,” he said.

Friend of a Friend of a Friend

But getting the job requires in-depth networking — going beyond one’s immediate contacts and talking to the contacts’ friends, their friends’ friends, and so on, Weeman said.

Alfred Neal, a career associate at JobNet, another local career center, stressed that everyone is a potential contact.

“Don’t overlook your barber or your hairdresser. A lot of these people know people,” Neal advised.

While Neal said today’s job market is “very tight [and] very competitive,” due in large part to international competition for jobs, he agreed that, through networking, people can eventually find the right job.

“I think people have ample opportunities in this particular job market,” he said.

For Konopasek, the advertising coordinator at Variety, the networking opportunities are a “great benefit,” but recent graduates have to take advantage of them, she said.

“Now I tell everyone that I know, ‘You have to network, you have to reach out to people.'”