The Networking Resume - A Missing Link

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The Missing Link in your Toolbox:The Networking Resume

It’s no secret that jobseekers need a stellar resume. However, particularly when actively unearthing job opportunities through reaching out to your network you might not always want to send a full-blown resume to every contact you have.

The Resume Disconnect

Even if you feel comfortable circulating your full-blown resume, there is some vital information the receiving end will not pick up from your resume.

For example, your resume typically does not address some of the following questions:

• Who do you want to be connected with or talk to?
• What industries or specific areas are you targeting?
• What are the types of company cultures where you would blossom in?

I could go on, but you get the point. Typically, you would include this type of information in a respective email that you send to your network contact.
However, when doing so, you now face the dilemma that the “pointers and guidelines” for your network contact of what you are looking for are now separated from your resume.

Suddenly, it is up to your networking contact to put the pieces together when introducing or connecting you with another person.

And that is obviously not good enough. Why? Because you don’t want to depend on a third party for this important networking step. Everything that is “too much work” or “too confusing” for your contacts bears the risk of your outreach going nowhere. So, what to do?

The Networking Resume Fix

Enter the networking resume. The networking resume is a great hybrid of an abbreviated version of your resume combined with a section or two of highlighted guidelines where you specify how your network can help you and whom you would like to meet and talk to. For this purpose, you will want to radically trim down your resume to create the necessary whitespace for including the “networking part.”
I personally, have found compact 1-page formats to be very effective. Anything longer carries the risk of being too much to “digest” for your network connections.
Remember, attention spans are getting shorter every day.

Of course, you have heard the advice out on the web numerous times of how networking is all about giving first.  Well, I am not advocating to be rude to people or sending your new networking resume out to people you haven’t spoken to in 5 years.
However, it is a simple fact in job searching as well as life in general that most people will actually want to help, but they usually don’t know how to help. And with a no-nonsense networking resume, you can avoid exactly this dilemma.
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Let me know how it works out for you!