Also be realistic as well as idealistic. The sooner you learn that you must first survive in order to thrive, the better off you will be. Ultimately, it’s your life and times that matter.

Love your web site!!

Regarding Networking, because it did feel sleazy and because I didn’t feel comfortable asking people for something with out being up front about my intentions.

Your idea totally turns things around.

I was renting an apartment in Boston and need two roommates to pay the rent. Of course, finding roommates was a harrowing experience with all kinds of odd people coming into my apartment, plus the fact that I was a motivated “Buyer” almost led me to live with some of them.

Anyway, couple of weeks in, someone comes to check out the place who was a good forty years older than me. Even so, we sat down and talked and turns out that he was a very cool guy. In addition, he was a curator of a local art gallery. He helped me get my old comedy troupe, Late Night Players, into a showcase there where we met other cool groups, which led to more shows with them as well as our own solo show at the gallery. At one of our shows, we met the head of a local Improv club who helped us get a recurring show then. This all snowballed into making comedy a fulltime gig by traveling around and performing at colleges.

Huzzah for networking

I have always believed in serendipity and the power to influence your destiny. And that was also the reason I DID go to that party that night. I think this is a very good example of good and fruitfull networking…

The librarian got the book because it was on hold for me. As she passed it to me she said, “I read that book.”

We then discussed the book a bit and she said it was helpful and useful to her. She was a newer librarian that I had not met before but I think we just “networked” over the book.

My networks are CBC and CTV (one of those darn Canadians that populate the Internet) My card is Mastercard. But my relationships are priceless.

I found the perfect job opening. I wanted it. I immediately began to talk with my mentors and contacts to see who knew any of the partners at the firm which had the opening. Luck would have it that my mentors and friends knew several attorneys and one was currently working on a case with the hiring partner. I asked them all to help me in any way they could. They did.

As an added measure, I researched each partner and associate at the firm. I saw that one was an adjunct professor who I knew casually. I called him with a genuine interest to learn more about the firm.

He brought along two other attorneys. We had a great lunch and I attempted the deep bump with each (by this time I had read Never Eat Alone, which is my number one book next to Getting Things Done by David Allen). At the end of this casual lunch, one of the attorneys asked if I had sent in my resume. I said yes. Surprisingly, he then said he would look for it when he got back to the office and make sure I got a first intervew, with HIM.

I also talked with an assistant dean, with whom I had several deep bumps and worked with closely. He connected me with the newest associate of the firm, who had been hired just a year previously, from my school. I spoke with her, and found at the end of our discussion that she would be the other interviewer.

Before the first interview, I had met with and connected with the two interviewers through connections I had made over the previous two years.

More amazingly, in the end, my first interview was a formality, because my lunch meeting went so well, the adjunct attorney I went to lunch with offered me a second round interview BEFORE I had my first interview. He had taken personal interest in my candidacy because of my attempt to connect with him.

I had made enough solid personal connections, with enough people to leapfrog through the process. I was later offered a position and told that in the end, I was the top candidate by far, because of the connections I had made.

It didn’t hurt that I researched the second round interviewers and the firm so that I could execute a deep bump in each interviews by discussing real problems and real cases that they were currently working on.

Keith shifted my paradigm. I previously hated networking because I saw it as a shallow exercise in futility. I felt shallow. However, once I felt the power of the deep bump, I felt the shift. My deep human desire for honest personal connections was not an impediment to networking, but rather, my desire is the heart and soul of true networking.

Thanks for a moment to share and the forum to do it.

The best experiences have always come from the satisfaction of helping peers in professional pursuits while knowing that they may never be able to reciprocate.