Fragment 10 - Using online network

I define my online network as people I have as contacts on e.g. Linkedin, xing, Ecademy and Internations. I may have met these people face-to-face but not necessarily. Especially my large and relevant network on Linkedin proved to be useful in my job hunting.

For instance I contacted a person in ny network wh was working for a mobile operator in the Arabian Gulf region, by sending him a mail telling that I was looking for a job. He forwarded the mail to the marketing department and a member of the executive management. Unfortunately the marketing department did not have openings for people with my profile. However the marketing executive forwarded my mail to a recruiter in South America. Subsequently I had mail correspondance with her. The member of the executive management forwarded my mail to another operator in the region, and I had some correspondence with them as well. Nothing concrete came out of this but a lot of relevant people got to know that I was in the market. And the story shows the viral nature of networking.

Similarly via Linkedin I identified and contacted other previous colleagues who worked in companies that were attractive for me.

Another angle that I used in Linkedin was the company search function. Via this I was identifying attractive companies, and instantly I could see if anybody in my network worked for the company in question, or had contacts there. This I used as a platform for further investigation.