A Job Search Tip: Better Than Networking

 Networking is shallow and self-centered. You can become an insider and reap richer fruits.

Exercise: Communitize

We'll say good-bye to what used to be called networking right now.

Simply by turning "community" into an action verb, you aren't just going to a network lunch and standing in the corner talking to competitors about how no one has jobs. You aren't following a script of conversation starters. You don't join every single online networking site, only to get bombarded by e-mails that don't apply to your search at all.

When you communitize, you become woven into the fabric of a community --- any community. Because communities have needs and needs are springboards to work.

The action in communitizing comes from being able to provide an answer to the question: if I were part of this community, what need could I fill?

When you communitize, you look for the needs of a community from the inside. Not from the outside like a networker. In the needs of a community as seen from an insider's perspective, you find clues to finding work. The Communitizing Principle stands on the shoulders of the groundbreaking work of Bob Beaudine's book, "The Power of Who."...

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Communitize. It's a word we made up here, simply by turning community into a verb. Communitizing is not networking. It is mot going to a network lunch and standing in the corner talking to competitors about how no one has jobs. Networking all too often has a one-dimensional quality. "We are here to get jobs. That's it!"

In contrast, communitizing is multidimensional. As a member of a community, actively participating in the life of the community, your actions are multidimensional. You directly participate in working community challenges through to completion. You celebrate community joys. You interact with communities connected to your own. When one communitizes, one becomes woven into the fabric of a community --- any community. Communitize is an action verb.

COMMUNITIZE AND YOU'LL FIND NEEDS

The more embedded in a community you become, the more you see needs. As we've said, needs, not job postings on the Internet, are what prompts work. In this section, well explore more deeply how to find needs.

Want to find work when there are no jobs? Stop looking for the jobs! Look for the needs.

Often, needs start out as being abstract. More like ideas. Needs like safety, healing, power, communication, or organization. But the more work you do within a community --- the more you communitize --- the more down-to-earth and real the needs become.

You start to see community needs in terms of the concrete stuff of everyday life. That stuff we all need to touch, hold in our hands, hear, smell, and get done.

Working from the inside of the community to your fullest, you are in the absolute best position to find those needs and connect them to work for you. You are embedded in the community. You are communitizing.

"Finding Work When There Are No Jobs", page. 22, 83