Last week we talked about how brutal the job market can be without experience. This week we should talk about how brutal it can be if you don’t know anyone.
Generation Z or Generation Next or Generation Wireless or whatever the hell our generation of socially retarded, 30 year old brats surfing facebook 4 hours a day and tweeting such useful information as “This peanut butter and jelly sandwich is ballin” is probably going to go down in history as the Asperger’s Generation. This is the generation where a slight form of Autism went mainstream, and where a nation of angry internet kids with the social skills of wolverines made it hard to tell the difference.
Quid pro quo doesn’t really carry a lot of weight with the new generation, who generally expect something for nothing and everything for free. Day after day, I receive countless requests to vote for an-aspiring-model-of-the-week in a “Best Titties Contest” or something like that under the pleas that it is “their dream.” However, if I were to ask if that same person knows a literary agent, that isn’t even worthy of a response because it is “my dream.”
Young people more than ever don’t believe in helping each other largely because sharing and teamwork were just never emphasized in a generation that—if it wanted to—doesn’t really need to see a flesh-and-blood person for months to interact with people every day. You can log onto facebook, Twitter, MySpace (if you’re a sex offender), X-Box Live, World of Warcraft, the Sims, and a hundred other diversions to “See” people every day without such downers as the look of defeat in their eye when you blow off helping them find a job. Who needs that shit when you can see a picture of that same person having a good time at a keg party two years ago in an old facebook album?
It is said networking is the most important tool for being successful. People who know people get shortcuts, and people who don’t are always forced to take the scenic route. Too often, the people who can help you won’t and the people who would help you can’t. So what do you do when everyone you know is unhelpful or unwilling or downright worthless, your back’s against the wall, and you’re tired of not getting something because someone—that probably owes you—won’t make a phone call?
Invent friends. What I mean to say is if you don’t have the network of friends you want, invent it. Whoever won’t help you but could, go over their head, around it, under it, or through it to get what you need. Example: They know someone you need to know but won’t introduce you; introduce yourself to that person (via facebook friend request or at a party). They work at a place you want to work but always stall when it comes to talking to their boss for you; put them down as a reference anyway. And then there’s always someone you know doesn’t like you but you need their help anyway: take it. Tell whoever they know that you’re best friends with Frenemy McDouche, and worry about it when it comes up (and you might be surprised that not everyone checks things like that).
Now I can almost hear people talking to their computer screens: “That will definitely backfire and cost you the job.” “You’re out of your mind.” “This is the best way to kamikaze a relationship that could be useful later by pissing that person off.” Wake up: there is no relationship. That person is never going to help you out or lend the assist, and will only give you the time of day AFTER you’ve leapfrogged them, which you will never do if you wait for them to pull the necessary strings. You can’t “cost yourself a job” that way because you won’t get the job if you don’t. If it doesn’t work, you’re where you started, no job and a friend that wasn’t really going to lift a finger anyway. If it does work (and it won’t always, but what have you got to lose) then isn’t it worth it?
good post
Networking works when done right.
i know it pisses me off that the people that can help you won’t and the people that would help you can’t
“…probably going to go down in history as the Asperger’s Generation.”
Bloody Hell, where have you been hiding all this talent. My favorite quote of the year so far.
Cheers,
WAR DAMN EAGLE
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