An important, and extremely rewarding, service I offer clients in my executive coaching practice, is to help senior leaders who are unemployed, or run the risk of losing their job, to find a new role.

An integral part of the search strategy I define with my clients is to review and test their existing network through activating it very early in their search process. Reason being of course, that networks are one of the best channels to find a new role.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, I recommend that you to do the same: start activating your network as soon as possible. Why? Because there is a considerable chance that, like many of my clients, you will discover that your network is not as strong as you think.

Once you start activating your network for your job search, you will quickly see that all your contacts fall in one of these 5 categories: Ghosts, Sympathizers, Google-Lights, Weak connectors, or Referrers, …and that the first three are completely useless.

1. Ghosts

Ghosts are people that do not react if you reach out to them for a meeting (even if they were the ones initially offering this). Here you probably miscalculated the nature of your relationship. Where you saw friendship, or at least some form of a long term relationship, your counterpart only saw one or more (potential) business transactions.

Continue reading →