21st Century Networking

Protean:

1. Tending or able to change frequently or easily.

2. Able to do many different things; versatile. 

The 21st century career must be protean. A career that is completely driven by the individual, not the organization. A career that will be reinvented by the person, as the person, the environment, and the market change. This is why networking is now of paramount importance. Throughout your life you will collect all kinds of people and in this protean age, any one of them could be a valuable connection.

Quintessential Careers.com reports only 5%-25% of jobs are advertised.  
About.com says at least 60% of all jobs come from networking.

Meeting and rubbing elbows with people is easy. The complicated part has always been how to give them as much information about you in as convenient a way possible. Every article I read says “DO NOT go out anywhere without a copy of your resume in your car or briefcase.” Let’s clarify this and bring it into this century. First, keeping your resume in your car – I don’t know about you but if anything stays in my car for longer than one day it is inevitably covered in dried McDonalds barbeque sauce and has at least two different size footprints on it. So your car? Maybe not the best place to store important potentially life changing documents. Keeping them in a briefcase. Do you take your briefcase to dinner? To parties? No. You don’t always have your briefcase with you. These scenarios also leave out the inconvenience to whomever your giving your resume, to now, make sure it doesn’t get wrinkled or they don’t leave it their car, and to make a copy or scan it into their pc and get it to the decision makers. This puts a lot off onto this person your are trying to impress.

Cue technology and the 21st century. Networking cards have been around for a while. There have been several different kinds of networking cards through the years. Some with just your name and contact information. This gives your contacts no information except who you are. Then we had “shrunken resumes”, compact little pieces of paper that when unfolded revealed a truncated version of your resume and when folded up properly looked like a regular networking card. These were hard to read and harder to fold. Now we have email addresses or direct links to web resumes. This is much easier but let’s take it a step further.

With the rise of smart phones we have discovered how, in one step to get your information to contacts, making it convenient for both of you. Welcome, the QR code.

You may have seen these little graphics on products, some TV shows, cds, dvds or a myriad of other things. These are little pieces of code that when read by a smart phone will take you immediately to a website for that product or movie or album or…candidate. We redesigned the networking card to include your name, branding statement, contact information and QR code. When you hand these out, you are giving your entire personal marketing package to a contact in a way that is easy for you to always have on you. Even better, its easy for your contact to keep and access. The QR code, when read by a smart phone, will redirect to your web resume and cover letter. Your web resume can also include links to your LinkedIn profile or online portfolio, highlighting all pertinent accomplishments. From your web resume, your contact can save a copy of your resume, email it, print it, or send the link directly to your targeted decision maker.

All of these are solid, modern business reasons for this to work for you. The part that is not talked about as much but is equally compelling is…it’s really cool, brand new technology. People will stand in line to say they are doing the newest technology based thing. The convenience and innovation of this product will stick in your contact’s mind, further ensuring you will not be forgotten. Your contact is going to want to show this to everyone they know, there by growing your network without you even having to be around.

OMG! Resumes will build and host your web resume and cover letter with a unique URL and create your NetSmart Card with QR code. Call us today to make sure you never miss another networking opportunity again.