Networking Sucks

We’ve heard it a million times:  “It’s WHO you know (or who you blow according to some), not what you know,” i.e., networking is the way to jobs, sales, boyfriends, whatever.  Now, the word “networking” is being sold as a learnable skill like typing, Excel or fire baton twirling.  In the universe of job hunting “tips & tricks,” mastery of the craft is touted as the magical key to career success.  There are books, articles, workshops and evil “networking events.”  As with meat market bars, I’d rather have dental surgery than go to one.  Eyes dart around awkwardly, sizing up each potential contact, deciding in a few seconds whether or not the other is worth a roll in the professional hay.  Corporate pose-fests.  Fake, fake, fake.  And everybody drinks just to get through them. 

I haven’t heard of anyone getting much out of these vocational speed dating rounds.  My profitable connections have come from actual friends who I can speak to without putting on my suit.  Opportunities have always materialized out of the most random, coincidental sequences of events.  Case in point:  I ended up at Verizon Wireless for thirteen years as a result of a tip from a veterinary technician.  

While I was phasing out of my performing career, I took retail job.  I got tired of living with fifteen roommates and eating Top Ramen everyday, so I decided to quit and look for a higher-paying, more upwardly mobile gig.  My good friend who worked as a veterinary bookkeeper convinced the doctor to give me a $7/hour job reorganizing the filing system.  While suffering through my cat allergy – a mixed blessing since it kept me from smelling the dog poop – I cold called on every entry level marketing want ad (yep, newspapers back in the day).  No response at best, rude hang-ups at worst.  Despair.  

Enter the vet tech:  “My mom is friends with the lady that hires for AirTouch Cellular (one of the companies eventually eaten by Verizon).  You should give her a call.”  I did.  She interviewed me the next day, and I was hired as a temp in the Equipment Services call center, grateful to be making $11/hr.  Temp became perm, and perm lead to tuition reimbursement.  Then I began whoring myself out to the MarCom department for side projects.  The colleagues I met along the way lead me to my target job in the advertising group.  I could not have guessed that the guy who clips dog toenails for a living would lead me to my next thirteen-year career. 

Each step was a coincidence based on contacts I made as a result of true interest.  Was strategy involved?  Sure, but I didn’t have to cruise a hotel ballroom with a fistful of business cards pretending like I cared about supply chain systems, blah, blah, blah.  

Has meat market "networking" ever worked for you?  Professionally, that is.  I don't want to hear about the salacious successes right now. 

This is how I like to network: 

Stick it In

When I was in high school, I learned how to handle a wiener.  It’s not what you’re thinking, nasty.  Well it is, but that’s a story for another blog. 

As a teenager with no useful skills, I landed a summer job at the now defunct NoCal theme park, Marine World Africa, U.S.A.  It was like a zoo, an aquarium and a water park had a drunken three-way and ended up with a baby that smelled like saltwater and hay.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to train dolphins or run elephant rides.  I worked in “Private Picnics,” which is a fancy title for “You’re a Kid Earning Minimum Wage for Three Months so We Can Make You Wear Brown and Orange Polyester and do Whatever Crappy Food Service Job we Tell You to Do Each Day.”  The main gig was to stand on a buffet line and dish out barbecue food in the sun at company picnics, but if it was a slow picnic day, we’d get loaned to other concessions at the park.  Bitchin’! Cross-training indoors at the “Giraffeteria” or the “Whale-of-a-Hot Dog Hut,” or whatever the hell those greasy places were called. 

On several occasions, I was deployed to the hut that served such authentic African fare as corn dogs and Cokes.  Being too inexperienced to run the cash register and too young to work the fryer, I was assigned to corn dog sticking.  For six or so hours, I would stand and perform the following maneuvers:

1. Pull slimy, semi-frozen wiener from cardboard box
2. Position bottom end of dog into spring-loaded, plastic cup-like device
3. Load sharpened wooden stick into lower end of spring-loaded device
4. Grasp slippery wiener in right hand (a skill at which, as a teenage boy, I was quite good)
5. Slam dog down onto wooden stick
6. Transfer stuck wiener to bin to await frying
7. Repeat

Now, whenever I have dirty, mind-numbing repetitive work to do – and let’s face it, most work is – I always tell myself, “At least it’s better than sticking corn dogs.” 

Tell me in comments about your corn dog-sticking job(s).  

My Curious Careers

I’ve worked:

• as a waiter
• in libraries
• at theme parks
• on stages
• backstage
• fully-clothed in a Playboy video
• in an Oscar-winning film
• as a movie extra
• as a store merchandiser
• in a tuxedo shop
• as a pants-hemmer
• in a convenience store
• in an army surplus store
• at a deli
• as a paper boy
• in a dental lab
• for a veterinarian
• in a Christian bookstore
• as an English teacher
• for dance studios
• in trade shows
• in a puppet show
• wearing a dinosaur costume
• on cruise ships
• at the YMCA
• as a photographer
• for a floral designer
• as a writer
• as an editor
• as an office temp
• as an event planner
• as a tchotchkie buyer
• as a PR person
• as a call center rep
• a cell phone programmer
• a warranty program administrator
• for Actors’ Equity Association
• singing Disney songs in Spanish in Spain
• all over the U.S.
• wearing wigs
• doing magic tricks
• lifting women over my head
• through wardrobe malfunctions
• through degrading auditions
• on tour with a movie star
• at a nature store
• in a college speech communications office
• as an advertising manager
• for mentoring bosses
• for bosses with martyr complexes
• for bosses with ADD
• for bosses who let me boss them
• and as the kid who inserts wooden sticks into corn dogs...

I know these all tie together somehow.  Let’s see if we can figure it out.  

Why?

"Start serving people from who you are  — not who you pretend to be."  

-Scott Ginsberg