Are you eager to embrace today’s executive job search?

Hold on.

You may be sabotaging your best efforts because you’re going about it all wrong.

In my experience, many people think that executive job search in the digital age means they need to spend most of their time posting their resume to as many job boards as possible.

Then, they continually check email and voicemail to see if they received any interview requests.

That’s about all they do to land a job.

They seem to forget that the last time they got a new executive job, it probably came to them through networking, not as a result of blindly sending out their resume.

Someone in their network (or second, or third degree network) who had an “in” at a great company introduced or referred them as a good-fit candidate.

Or they were regularly pursued by their recruiter network because they were in-demand candidates throughout their careers.

In a competitive job market, executive job search requires much more proactivity than before.

Waiting around for or expecting people to come to you with opportunities is much less likely to happen.

Networking (the old way) is still the best way to land a job.

Yes, good old networking is still the most successful way to land an executive job. Thousands of surveys and studies on best executive job search strategies reveal that by far, networking gets the job.

If you’ve been smart, you’ve kept up with your network even while you weren’t actively job hunting. You’ve kept them primed and ready to help you. They are your career insurance.

If you’ve neglected your network because you were securely employed and didn’t think you needed them, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

The digital age offers more ways to network than before.

The ways to network have expanded in the digital age. Social media makes it possible to get closer quicker to key decision makers at companies you’re targeting.

The key to networking in the new world of executive job search is to balance online and real-life efforts.

Go to networking events, attend job search support group meetings, get active with relevant professional associations, etc. But also learn how to use all that LinkedIn and other social networks have to offer.

Don’t take on so much social media responsibility that you do none of it well, or you neglect real-life networking.

Understand that you may initially connect with someone through social media, or people sourcing candidates may be introduced to you through your online identity and Google search results.

But it will be the real-life interaction that closes the deal – a phone call or a real-life face-to-face meeting. Social media is one way to get you to that point.

Don’t get me wrong. Job boards do have value. Use them for research, not to land jobs.

Otherwise, don’t spend 85% of your time on job search methods that yield perhaps a 5-10% success rate (job boards, that is). Stick with what worked in the past, and has been proven to work probably for as long as job search has been in existence – networking.

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