Mammal Hunt

Everyone brings happiness. Some by arriving, and some by leaving.

When searching for a job, I recognize the importance of keeping in touch with the people who will be doing the hiring, and the people whom the people who will be doing the hiring might ask about you, and the people who might tell you that the people who will be doing the hiring are about to start hiring. That means telephoning, writing to, or calling on those people on a regular basis. I know I don't do this enough, because otherwise I would be flying something faster and with more knobs and switches in the cockpit.

I have been on the receiving end of pilots 'keeping in contact.' I was once the senior pilot at a base, and pilots who hadn't done their research believed that I had some say in hiring. There were two people who did the 'keeping in contact' thing extraordinarily effectively. I am terrible at remembering people, but I still remember their names. But their efforts were a dismal failure because firstly, they were bugging the wrong person, and secondly they annoyed the heck out of me. If I had had a word of input into hiring them, the word would have been 'no.' I knew just enough about them to know I didn't want to work with them.

I don't want to be like those pilots. Naturally I don't want to alienate people I want to work with or for, but I also don't want to annoy anyone, regardless of who they are. I want people to be happy to see me, not happy to see me go. I think the secret lies in short, meaningful, varied contacts. I'm going to make a top twenty company list and contact someone from each company at least once a fortnight. (Maybe I should randomly assign some companies to a control group that gets a mailed resume once every six months, and then I can report back on the most effective method, based on interview callbacks).

By way of monitoring myself, I have placed a list in the sidebar of this blog, showing how many days it has been since I last made contact with which companies. A contact doesn't necessarily mean talking to Steve B. Mammal: it might make more sense to talk to an employee or a former employee. Sometimes I'll visit, sometimes fax, sometimes e-mail. You are encouraged to mock me if you find me slacking in my contacts.

I think I'll throw my mom in there, too. Something tells me I should probably call her at least as often as I call strangers in Sioux Lookout.