The MVPs in your network

I'm running my first ever free in-person workshop for job seekers this week. It’s a hands-on workshop, not a presentation. It’s forced me to get some of my career coaching ideas and guidelines out of my head and built out as tools and worksheets.

You’ve probably heard of the 80/20 rule - poshly known as the Pareto Principle if, like me, you forked out for an MBA 🙂. It’s a rough rule of thumb that seems to run through most of life. 20% of something leads to 80% of something else…Roughly 20% of pro soccer players score 80% of the goals, 80% of the cars bought are made by 20% of the auto makers etc.

Applying that principle to job seekers, 80% of your job referrals will come from 20% of your network. That's big. Because getting a solid referral into a company is golden! Your network has always been the best way to land a new gig. But right now I think it’s more critical than ever. It’s the best way to avoid the cold application black hole that so many job seekers are getting burned out by.

So, if 80% of your job referrals will come from 20% of your network, identifying that 20% matters. Because once you do that, you can leverage them differently, more productively.  My hunch is that most people don’t think much about the composition of their network. So I tried building a tool to help with that.

There's both a spreadsheet version and a pen-and-paper version in the comments. If you think it might help you, give me a shout and I'll share it with you.